Tatjana Thelen is full professor in the Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology, University of Vienna, and recently fellow at the Center for Interdisciplinary Research, Bielefeld University, leading the research group on “Kinship and Politics.” She coedited a special issue of Focaal – Journal of Global and Historical Anthropology entitled “Social Security and Care after Socialism” (2007) and the volume Reconnecting State and Kinship (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2017).

Larissa Vetters currently acts as research coordinator of the Law and Society Institute at the Humboldt University of Berlin. She previously worked as a lecturer at the Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology of the Martin Luther University of Halle-Wittenberg (2011–2013). Her research focuses on processes of (external) state-building in Bosnia and Herzegovina and, more recently, on migrants encounters with the German state in the frame of administrative court cases.

Keebet von Benda-Beckmann is professor emeritus, former head of the Project Group Legal Pluralism, and currently associate of the Department of Law and Anthropology, Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology. Recent publications include the coedited Rules of Law and Laws of Ruling: On the Governance of Law (Ashgate, 2009) and the coauthored Political and Legal Transformations of an Indonesian Polity (Cambridge University Press, 2013).

Introduction to Stategraphy: Toward a Relational Anthropology of the State
Tatjana Thelen, Larissa Vetters, and Keebet von Benda-Beckmann

Chapter 1. Contingent Statehood: Clientelism and Civic Engagement as Relational Modalities in Contemporary Bosnia and Herzegovina
Larissa Vetters

Chapter 2. The State, Legal Rigor, and the Poor: The Daily Practice of Welfare Control
Vincent Dubois

Chapter 3. Relationships, Practices, and Images of the Local State in Rural Russia
Rebecca Kay

Chapter 4. Acts of Assistance: Navigating the Interstices of the British State with the Help of Non-profit Legal Advisers
Alice Forbess and Deborah James

Chapter 5. Images of Care, Boundaries of the State: Volunteering and Civil Society in Czech Health Care
Rosie Read

Chapter 6. State Kinning and Kinning the State in Serbian Elder Care Programs
Tatjana Thelen, Andre Thiemann, and Duška Roth

Chapter 7. Workings of the State: Administrative Lists, European Union Food Aid, and the Local Practices of Distribution in Rural Romania
Ştefan Dorondel and Mihai Popa

Chapter 8. Creating the State Locally through Welfare Provision: Two Mayors, Two Welfare Regimes in Rural Hungary
Gyöngyi Schwarcz and Alexandra Szőke

Bibliography
Index