Globalization and postcolonial states

Abstract

The experiences of two programs aimed at poor rural women in India suggest that postcolonial contexts might give us reason to reconsider commonly accepted characterizations of neoliberal states. An anthropological approach to the state differs from that of other disciplines by according centrality to the meanings of the everyday practices of bureaucracies and their relation to representations of the state. Such a perspective is strengthened when it integrates those meanings with political economic, social structural, and institutional approaches. Although the two programs examined here originated in different time periods (one before and the other after neoliberal "reforms") and embodied ver..