Introduction: Oligarchic Corporations and New State Formations
Bruce Kapferer

Chapter 1. Making the Case for Kleptocratic Oligarchy: (as the Dominant Form of Rule in the United States)
Donald M. Nonini

Chapter 2. "We Exist to Fight": The Killing Elite and Bush II's Iraq War
Steve Reyna

Chapter 3. State and Big Capital in Russia
Jakob Rigi

Chapter 4. Analyzing African Formations: Multi-national Corporations, Non-capitalist Relations, and 'Mothers of the Community'
Caroline Ifeka

Chapter 5. "Everyone Has Done Very Well": Going through the Motions at the News Corporation AGM
Roland Kapferer

As corporate practices are becoming more fused with state processes, the state itself is increasingly taking on a corporate structure, as well as a more overt oligarchic character. Evidence of this can be seen in the growing domination of political organizations and institutions by close-knit social groups (familial dynasties, closed associations, or personal networks) that seek exclusive control over economic resources.

These new forms of state power that are emerging are not reducible to the past, and the nation-state, as the essays in this volume show, is giving way to a political-economic formation that has multiple state-like effects and is able to act in ways systemic with deterritorializing global processes.

Exploring these processes in different concrete locations from North America to Russia, West Africa, and Australia, the authors show that current configurations of global, imperial, and state power cannot be understood without examining their relation to formations of oligarchic control. They bring us closer to an understanding of the ways in which the nation-state is being transformed by globalization.

Bruce Kapferer is Professor of Anthropology at the University of Bergen. He has held academic positions in Zambia, Manchester, Adelaide, London, and Queensland and carried out extensive fieldwork in Zambia, Sri Lanka, India, Australia, and South Africa.