Breaking Boundaries

Agnes Horvath is a co-founder and acting editor-in-chief of the peer-reviewed journal International Political Anthropology and is a visiting fellow in the Centre for the Study of the Moral Foundations of Economy & Society, University College Cork (Ireland). She is the author or co-author of eight books, including, most recently, Walling, Boundaries and Liminality: A political anthropology of transformations (co-edited with Marius Bentza, Routledge, 2018); Walking into the Void: A Historical, Sociological and Political Anthropology of Walking (co-edited with Arpad Szakolczai, Routledge, 2017), and Modernism and Charisma (Palgrave, 2013).

“Breaking Boundaries is valuable for both its content and the expectation that the hegemonic conceptions of politics might be modified.” • Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute“The book [is] highly recommendable for its theoretical perspectives and for offering a rich dialogue between anthropology and other social sciences.” • Anthropology Notebooks“In well integrated chapters, the [volume] proves the relevance of the concept across disciplines, particularly for the study of moments of instability and possibility, as well as for understanding the transformative potential of participation… In addition to helping one understand in-between experiences overall, [it] invites the reader to rethink the complicated relation between individual agency, social order and cultural transmission… a remarkable contribution to sociology, anthropology and critical theory.” • European Journal of Cultural and Political Sociology“A topic with a very broad appeal, namely liminality, [is] treated here as an analytical concept. While liminality has been a widespread concept in anthropology and social theory for decades, largely owing to Victor Turner's seminal work, it has rarely been scrutinized properly, and this volume is to be welcomed. In some ways, this kind of book is long overdue.” • Thomas Hylland Eriksen, University of Oslo“The book is a timely intervention which secures firmer grounding for liminality as one of the key concepts in social theory... Theoretically strong, and with an empirical range that takes in pre- and post-Revolutionary France, the frontier building of the American West, Egypt’s Tahrir Square, and the liminality of the postcommunist Eastern bloc, the book provides a valuable contribution to debates on liminality, transformation, and contingency in the social and political world.” • Les Roberts, University of Liverpool

• List of FiguresIntroduction: Liminality and the Search for BoundariesHarald Wydra, Bjørn Thomassen, and Agnes HorvathPART I: FRAMING LIMINALITYChapter 1. Liminality and Experience: Structuring transitory situations and transformative eventsArpad SzakolczaiChapter 2. Thinking with Liminality: To the Boundaries of an Anthropological ConceptBjørn ThomassenPART II: LIMINALITY AND THE SOCIALChapter 3. Inbetweenness and AmbivalenceBernhard GiesenChapter 4. The Genealogy of Political Alchemy: the technological invention of identity changeAgnes HorvathChapter 5. Critical Processes and Political Fluidity: a Theoretical AppraisalMichel DobryChapter 6. Liminality and the Frontier Myth in the Building of the American EmpireStephen MennellChapter 7. On the Margins of the Public and the Private: Louis XIV at VersaillesPeter BurkePART III: LIMINALITY AND THE POLITICALChapter 8. Liminality, the execution of Louis XVI and the rise of terror during the French RevolutionCamil RomanChapter 9. In Search of Antistructure: The Meaning of Tahrir Square in Egypt’s Ongoing Social DramaMark Allen PetersonChapter 10. Liminality and DemocracyHarald WydraChapter 11. Liminality and Postcommunism: The Twenty-First Century as the Subject of HistoryRichard SakwaChapter 12. The Challenge of Liminality for International Relations TheoryMaria MalksooNotes on ContributorsIndex