Experiencing the State

by Lloyd I. Rudolph (Editor), John Kurt Jacobsen (Editor), Helmuth Berking (Contributor)

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.

412 pages, Paperback

First published April 27, 2006

About the author

Former University of Chicago political science professor Lloyd Rudolph was an expert on India and South Asia who did much of his work in collaboration with his wife and fellow faculty member, Susanne.