EXPERIENCING THE STATE OIP

This collection of essays by 13 well-known contributors departs from a conventional analysis of the state that universalizes and standardizes what the state is does and means. The contributors engage state and stateness as it is encountered in everyday life ranging from village and urban life to big dams war torture hospital treatment cinema attendance and art exhibitions. The essays locate the state in time space and circumstance so that it is contingent and evocative rather than definitive and authoritative. . Experiencing the State discusses formative discourses on the state what we may think or say about the state and what images are evoked by its various manifestations through social and cultural forms. This volume begins with a non-essentialist perspective on state formation and concludes with an account of how the state is experienced in the post-9/11 world scenario in India and South Asia the US Europe including the former Soviet Union and the Far East.