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The very institution of the state is widely conceived of as inseparable from war. If it constitutes peace within the borders or order of its sovereignty, this very peace may be the condition for its potential for war with those other states and social formation outside it. This volume represents different analytical standpoints and positions within global processes, inviting further discussion on contemporary realities and the development of new formations of war and violence

Chapter 8. Nationalism, Tradition, and Political CultureNotes; References; Appendices: Legends of People, Myths of State and the Current Context; Appendix 1. In the Wake of Legends; Appendix 2. Violence, Evil, and the State in Sri Lanka; Appendix 3. Empty Spaces and the Multiple Modernities of Nationalism; Appendix 4. The Social Genesis of Anzac Nationalism; Appendix 5. The Australian Society of the State; Index

The civil war in Sri Lanka and the part that nationalism seemed to play in it inspired the writing of this book some twenty-three years ago. The argument was developed through a comparative analysis of nationalism in Sri Lanka with the author's native Australia. At the time this constituted an innovative approach to comparison in anthropology, as well as to nationalism and its possibilities. It was not based on differences but on the way in which perspectives from within the two nationalisms, when seen side-by-side, could present an understanding of their implication in producing the violence

Anthropology has often been criticized for its exoticism and orientalism. They are the paradoxes of a discipline focused on the comparative study of difference and diversity and are at the centre of the discussion here in the larger context of the importance of anthropology in the humanities and social sciences. The emphasis is on the role of the exotic as vital to anthropology's study of difference and to its overall coherence and significance for the understanding of humanity as a whole.

Abstract
The essay addresses Victor Turner′s radical approach to the study of ritual and in particular the creative and generative potential of liminal processes. Two objectives guide the analysis. The first is to develop an approach that is not over-constrained by the dramatic or theatrical metaphor of performance that dominates much discussion of ritual. The second is to reorient an approach to the liminal as a stage in a process in itself and to explore it in terms of the concept of the virtual. In other words, the liminal as thoroughly an opening of potential and innovative emergence, a major direction of Turner′s approach.