This article argues for a return to the study of non-state political institutions, and for the need to free them from their association with locally circumscribed, unmarked, or even ‘unthought’ practice. There are several reasons for this. On the one hand, there is a growing interest beyond anthropology in non-state political arrangements, whether they are described negatively, as the result of ‘state failure’, or positively. On the other, a focus on the ‘non-state’, historical and contemporary, opens up crucial perspectives on ‘the state’, and, through it, on questions of different regimes of historicity and region formation. In other words, it might provide insights into political anthropology as a study of shared thought and imagination, beyond ideal-types of modern bureaucratic governance. This is what this article attempts to do, with special reference to North African and Saharan examples.

中文翻译：

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人类学边缘的国家喜欢和国家厌恶★

本文主张回归对非国家政治制度的研究，并主张需要将它们从与当地受限、未标记甚至“未考虑”的实践联系起来。有几个原因。一方面，人类学以外的人们对非国家政治安排的兴趣日益浓厚，无论它们被描述为“国家失败”的结果，或者是消极的，还是积极的。另一方面，关注历史和当代的“非国家”，开启了关于“国家”的重要视角，并由此开启了不同历史性制度和区域形成的问题。换句话说，它可能会为政治人类学提供见解，作为对共享思想和想象力的研究，超越现代官僚治理的理想类型。这就是本文试图做的，