By Tatjana Thelen.

Published in 2022, in Fahimi, M., Flatschart, E., Schaffar, W. (eds) State and Statehood in the Global South. Springer, Cham.

Abstract :

In this chapter, I outline a social anthropological approach to the state, called stategraphy. The term denotes an ethnographically grounded perspective that focuses on relational modalities, forms of embeddedness of actors, and boundary work as constitutive factors of the state. These avenues of analyses enable a nuanced understanding and comparative investigation of change and continuity of mechanisms of inclusion and exclusion in various contexts. The approach is based on a relational understanding that seeks to bridge the analytical gap between state images and state practices that developed within interdisciplinary debates on the state.