David Nugent is Professor of Anthropology, Emory University. He is President-Elect, American Ethnological Society and North American Editor of the journal Critique of Anthropology. He is the author of Modernity at the Edge of Empire: State, Individual, and Nation in the Northern Peruvian Andes (1997), and the editor of Locating Capitalism in Time and Space (2002).

Joan Vincent is Professor of Anthropology Emerita at Barnard College, Columbia University. She is author of numerous books and encyclopedia articles on political anthropology. Her works include Anthropology and Politics (1990, reissued 1995) and The Anthropology of Politics: A Reader in Ethnography, Theory, and Critique (Blackwell, 2002).

This Companion offers an unprecedented overview of anthropology’s unique contribution to the study of politics. Explores the key concepts and issues of our time - from AIDS, globalization, displacement, and militarization, to identity politics and beyond Each chapter reflects on concepts and issues that have shaped the anthropology of politics and concludes with thoughts on and challenges for the way ahead Anthropology’s distinctive genre, ethnography, lies at the heart of this volume