In this seminal, founding work of political anthropology, Pierre Clastres takes on some of the most abiding and essential questions of human civilization: What is power? What is society? How, among all the possible modes of political organization, did we come to choose the monolithic State model and its accompanying regimes of coercion? As Clastres shows, other and different re...(展开全部)

In this seminal, founding work of political anthropology, Pierre Clastres takes on some of the most abiding and essential questions of human civilization: What is power? What is society? How, among all the possible modes of political organization, did we come to choose the monolithic State model and its accompanying regimes of coercion? As Clastres shows, other and different re...(展开全部)

"The thesis is radical," writes Marshall Sahlins of this landmark text inanthropology and political science. "We conventionally define the state as theregulation of violence; it may be the origin of it. Clastres's thesis is thateconomic expropriation and political coercion are inconsistent with the character oftribal society - which is to say, with the greater part of human his...(展开全部)

The very form and reach of the modern state are changing radically under the pressure of globalization. Featuring nine of the leading scholars in the field, this innovative exploration of these transformations develops an ethnographic methodology and theoretical apparatus to assess perceptions of power in three regions where state reform and violence have been particularly dram...(展开全部)

The very form and reach of the modern state are changing radically under the pressure of globalization. Featuring nine of the leading scholars in the field, this innovative exploration of these transformations develops an ethnographic methodology and theoretical apparatus to assess perceptions of power in three regions where state reform and violence have been particularly dram...(展开全部)

The Ming dynasty (1368-1644), a period of commercial expansion and cultural innovation, fashioned the relationship between the present day state and society in China. This unique collection of reworked and heavily illustrated essays, by one of the leading scholars of Chinese history, re-examines this relationship and argues that contrary to previous scholarship, it was radical ...(展开全部)

This book is about the tension between de facto political power and the claims to intellectual and moral leadership of the shi ('gentleman class') in Early Medieval China. Shelun, or Hypothetical Discourse, is a hitherto neglected Chinese literary genre. The author for the first time places the surviving texts against the political background that accounts for its rise and decl...(展开全部)

For all the obstacles that remain, civil society is burgeoning in Japan, and the idea of civil society is at the core of the current debate about how to reinvigorate the country. The only volume of its kind, this book gathers the insights of American and Japanese scholars from the fields of political science, sociology, social psychology, and history to investigate the nature o...(展开全部)