Sorcery has long been associated with the "dark side" of human development, along with magic and witchcraft. This text argues, however, that sorcery practices reveal critical insights into how consciousness is formed, and how human beings constitute their social and political realities. Kapferer foc[...]

The civil war in Sri Lanka and the part that nationalism seemed to play in it inspired the writing of this book some twenty-three years ago. The argument was developed through a comparative analysis of nationalism in Sri Lanka with the author's native Australia. At the time this constituted an innov[...]

" ...Kapferer's introduction is an intellectual tour de force, perhaps the most important rethinking of the problems of rationality that underlie the study of witchcraft and sorcery since Evans-Pritchard." * American Anthropologist " ...teems with interesting theoretical insights, and all the chap[...]

What is the 'state' and how can we best study it? This book investigates new ways of analysing the state. The contributors argue that the state is not a fixed and definite object. Our perceptions of it are constantly changing, and differ from person to person. What is your idea of the state if you a[...]