The State in Conflict and After: Post-Conflict or Post-Statehood?

Abstract

This text is the guest editor’s introduction to the special theme of the issue on “Anthropology of the State”, comprising a set of articles that emerged as a result of two-year-long activities of the interna- tional research seminar “Post-Conflict” initiated at Université Lumière Lyon 2 (France). The seminar brought together over a dozen anthropologists working in different countries and different fields in order to discuss epistemological problems related to the erosion of the nation-state, which has been long seen as the epitome of the epoch of modernity, and the rise of alternative forms of organization of social life, more attuned to the needs of societies and communities of nowadays. The selection of articles, intended to represent the geographical and theoretical scope of the seminar, includes contri- butions by Jacky Bouju, Dejan Dimitrijevic, Fabio Reis Mota, Montassir Sakhi, and Elena Filippova.