“Possessing states”

Abstract

Should the state be understood as an entity, something standing outside and in relation to society, or only a mystification hiding that the state consists of nothing more than people and paper? This article argues that these two positions are not mutually            exclusive, but perspectival. The deeper one ventures to find the heart of the state, the more it disappears, but the further one ventures from the state, the more bounded and entity-like it appears. The article then investigates how the state entered a frontier, in the Zomian uplands of China. Finally, it investigates how analyzing ghost possession can provide tools for understanding the state as an entity. The article will show how the cadre’s speech and “Chineseness” are both forms of state possession.