Imagining the Post-Apartheid State An Ethnographic Account of Namibia [Paperback]

In northwest Namibia, peoples political imagination offers a powerful insight into the post-apartheid state. Based on extensive anthropological fieldwork, this book focuses on the former South African apartheid regime and the present democratic government; it compares the perceptions and practices of state and customary forms of judicial administration, reflects upon the historical trajectory of a chieftaincy dispute in relation to the rooting of state power and examines everyday forms of belonging in the independent Namibian State. By elucidating the State through a focus on the social, historical and cultural processes that help constitute it, this study helps chart new territory for anthropology, and it contributes an ethnographic perspective to a wider set of interdisciplinary debates on the State and state processes.

List of Figures
List of Abbreviations

Introduction

Chapter 1.Imagining States
Chapter 2.State Imaginings

PART I: GOVERN-MENTALITY IN KAOKOLAND

Chapter 3.How Do You Feeling about Freedom
Chapter 4.The Art of Being Governed

PART II: COURTS, LAWS, AND THE ADMINISTRATION OF JUSTICE

Chapter 5.In the Matter ofThe State v. Custom
Chapter 6.JudicialStatements
Chapter 7.Legal States of Imagination and their Effect?????? ????????? ????????????? ?????????

PART III: CHIEFSHIP AND THE POST-APARTHEID STATE

Chapter 8.Making Politics, Making History
Chapter 9.Tradition, Authority and the State in Northern Kaokoland

Conclusion

Chapter 10.Towards an Ethnography of the (Namibian) State

Notes
References
Index

John Friedman convincingly uses the ethnographic context of KaolCa