Includes bibliographical references (pages 239-259) and index.
Introduction -- The myth of the kinship society : evolutionism and the anthropological imagination -- The imaginary tribe : colonial and imperial orders and the peripheral polity -- The state construction of the clan : the unilineal descent group and the ordering of state subjects -- The essentialized nomad : neocolonial and Soviet models -- Creating peoples : nation-state history and the notion of identity -- The headless state : aristocratic orders and the substrata of power.
0
In this groundbreaking work, social anthropologist David Sneath aggressively dispels the myths surrounding the history of steppe societies and proposes a new understanding of the nature and formation of the state. Since the colonial era, representations of Inner Asia have been dominated by images of fierce nomads organized into clans and tribes-but as Sneath reveals, these representations have no sound basis in historical fact. Rather, they are the product of nineteenth-century evolutionist social theory, which saw kinship as the organizing principle in a nonstate society. Sneath.
Master and use copy. Digital master created according to Benchmark for Faithful Digital Reproductions of Monographs and Serials, Version 1. Digital Library Federation, December 2002.