Description
Book SynopsisHow does smallness shape a country and its relations with other countries? In comparative case studies that cover a diverse set of regions, Small Countries describes a number of similar problems with which small countries must cope, on domestic levels as well as in their transnational and global encounters.
Trade Review"
Small Countries is a remarkably fresh and engaging contribution to the anthropology of the nation-state. While such macroanthropology has often been understood to stand in tension with more traditionally localized sorts of ethnographic practice, the authors use the very smallness of the 'small country' to show how ideas and practices of national cultural intimacy disrupt received ideas of scale that still haunt our understandings of what is, and is not, anthropological. Through a fascinating set of cases presented by an impressive set of contributors, this stimulating book arrives at a distinctive and original perspective on the nation-state." * James Ferguson, Stanford University *
"
Small Countries is unique: its chapters cover a range of societies that do not get much analyzed anthropologically, a potpourri of far-flung places from New Zealand to Sierra Leone to Norway to Palestine united by the common trope of smallness. It is also remarkable because of the down-to-earth quality of its prose: its chapters are a delight to read. Not just anthropologists, but anyone who reads the
Economist or
Foreign Affairs, or for that matter a daily newspaper, can enjoy and learn from this collection of essays." * Gordon Mathews, Chinese University of Hong Kong *
