Contemporary Liminality
About the Book Series
This series constitutes a forum for works that make use of concepts such as ‘imitation’, ‘trickster’ or ‘schismogenesis’, but which chiefly deploy the notion of ‘liminality’, as the basis of a new, anthropologically-focused paradigm in social theory. With its versatility and range of possible uses rivalling mainstream concepts such as ‘system’, ‘structure’ or ‘institution’, liminality by now is a new master concept that promises to spark a renewal in social thought.
While charges of Eurocentrism are widely discussed in sociology and anthropology, most theoretical tools in the social sciences continue to rely on approaches developed from within the modern Western intellectual tradition, whilst concepts developed on the basis of extensive anthropological evidence and which challenged commonplaces of modernist thinking, have been either marginalised and ignored, or trivialised. By challenging the taken-for-granted foundations of social theory through incorporating ideas from major thinkers, such as Nietzsche, Dilthey, Weber, Elias, Voegelin, Foucault and Koselleck, as well as perspectives gained through modern social and cultural anthropology and the central concerns of classical philosophical anthropology Contemporary Liminality offers a new direction in social thought.
Heritage, Power and Liminality: Culture and the Crisis of Authoritarian Transitions in Myanmar
1st Edition
By Alicia Stevens
April 30, 2026
This book delivers a fresh approach to understanding cultural heritage amid an underexplored yet dynamic global force: the uncertainty of political transition. Since the turn of the twenty-first century, transition has defined geopolitics across the globe – from a sharp rise in hybrid ...
Technocracy: Knowledge and Power in the Information Age
1st Edition
By Paul O'Connor
March 16, 2026
In what is routinely described as a ‘knowledge society’, this book argues that contemporary knowledge is systematically filtered and distorted by the requirements of the bureaucratic-managerial organisations that constitute the structural core of hypermodernity. As knowledge becomes increasingly ...
Cold War Sociology: Societies of Distribution
1st Edition
By Alex Wade
March 11, 2026
This book positions the Cold War as a liminal time and space that holds sway in the second quarter of the 21st century, informing a broad and deep analysis of how contemporary society was – and continues to be – fashioned by the societies of distribution found in Cold War Sociology. As a conflict ...
Grammar of Loss: A Study in Liminal Linguistics
1st Edition
By Anne Storch
January 29, 2026
This book explores how language and linguistic knowledge can be encountered through walks, shared meals, conversations, and daily life rather than being written about in the style and genre of western academic grammar. Through an innovative exploration of the multivocal forms of knowledge ...
Gnostic Fools: The Occult Origins of Our Ideological Age
1st Edition
By Agnes Horvath
November 11, 2025
This book offers a political anthropological discussion of our contemporary situation regarding sceptical attitudes towards scientific expertise and authority, and the increasing role of power and politics. It does so through an exploration of the ‘fool’ or ‘Gnostic fool’ as a type, drawing on ...
Magic and the Will to Science: A Political Anthropology of Liminal Technicality
1st Edition
By Agnes Horvath
July 31, 2025
This book offers a political anthropological perspective on the problematic character of science, combining insights from historical sociology, political theory, and cultural anthropology. Its central idea, departing from the works of Frances Yates and the Gnosticism thesis of Eric Voegelin, is ...
The French Revolution and Its Legacy: Leaping Democracy into the Unlimited
1st Edition
By Camil Francisc Roman
June 30, 2025
This book offers an interpretation of the French Revolution and modern democracy, arguing that the revolution gave rise to a democratic power that is liminal by nature, and therefore unlimited, unaccountable on principle, and the basis for a state religion of continuous transformation. It ...
The Power of Empty Places: From Megalithic Monuments to Social Media
1st Edition
By Kate Bollard
February 27, 2025
Social media has been established as a central feature of the modern world and a propagator of contemporary culture. Political anthropology is employed as a method to understand digital fascination in the modern world. The theory of the void is utilised to examine the destructive features of social...
The Western Crisis of Truth in the Early 21st Century: As the Enlightenment Dims
1st Edition
By Arvydas Grišinas
December 16, 2024
The Western Crisis of Truth in the Early 21st Century explores the symbolic, experiential, and associative side of contemporary political culture, arguing that phenomena such as ‘post-truth’, digitalization, mediatization, propaganda, illiberalism, or populism, far from being curiosities, have in ...
Liminal Politics in the New Age of Disease: Technocratic Mimetism
1st Edition
Edited
By Agnes Horvath, Paul O'Connor
August 26, 2024
Liminal Politics in the New Age of Disease explores the phenomenon of ‘liminal politics’: an open-ended ‘state of exception’ in which normal rules no longer apply, and things which were previously unimaginable become possible – even appearing remarkably quickly to represent a ‘new normal’. With ...
Inhabiting Liminal Spaces: Informalities in Governance, Housing, and Economic Activity in Contemporary Italy
1st Edition
By Isabella Clough Marinaro
May 27, 2024
This book draws together debates from two burgeoning fields, liminality and informality studies, to analyze how dynamics of rule-bending take shape in Rome today. Adopting a multiscalar and transdisciplinary approach, it unpacks how gaps and contradictions in institutional rulemaking and ...
Making Sense of Diseases and Disasters: Reflections of Political Theory from Antiquity to the Age of COVID
1st Edition
Edited
By Lee Trepanier
May 27, 2024
This book examines diseases and disasters from the perspective of social and political theory, exploring the ways in which political leaders, social activists, historians, philosophers, and writers have tried to make sense of the catastrophes that have plagued humankind from Thucydides to the ...