"Featuring ten of the leading scholars in the field, this exploration of these transformations develops an ethnographic methodology and theoretical apparatus to assess perceptions of power in three regions where state reform and violence have been particularly dramatic: Africa, Latin America, and South Asia. Rather than a geographic border, the term "margin" describes areas far from the centers of state sovereignty in which states are unable to ensure implementation of their programs and policies. Understanding how people perceive and experience the agency of the state: who is of, and not of, the state; and how practices at the margins shape the state itself are central themes." "Drawing on fieldwork in Sierra Leone, Sri Lanka, Peru, Guatemala, India Chad, Colombia, and South Africa, the contributors examine official documentary practices and their forms and falsifications: the problems that highly mobile mercenaries, currency, goods, arms, and diamonds pose to the suite; emerging non-state regulatory authorities, and the role language plays as cultures struggle to articulate their situation. These case studies provide wide-ranging analyses of the relationships between states and peoples on the edges of state power's effective reign."--BOOK JACKET.