State-like and state dislike in the anthropological margins
Résumé
This article argues for a return to the study of non-state political institutions, and for the need to free them from their association with locally circumscribed, unmarked, or even 'unthought' practice. There are several reasons for this. On the one hand, there is a growing interest beyond anthropology in non-state political arrangements, whether they are described negatively, as the result of 'state failure', or positively. On the other, a focus on the 'non-state', historical and contemporary, opens up crucial perspectives on 'the state', and, through it, on questions of different regimes of historicity and region formation. In other words, it might provide insights into political anthropology as a study of shared thought and imagination, beyond ideal-types of modern bureaucratic governance. This is what this article attempts to do, with special reference to North African and Saharan examples.