Herzfeld argues that "modern" bureaucratically regulated societies are no more "rational" or less "symbolic" than the societies traditionally studied by anthropologists. He suggests that we cannot understand national bureaucracies divorced from local-level ideas about chance, personal character, soc[...]

In this new updated edition, Herzfeld includes more discussion about what cultural intimacy has come to mean for other authors and researchers, and how it can contribute to present studies of global processes and the forces that resist them.[...]