A treasury of ideas

Abstract

A treasure chest, as depicted on the cover of this issue, carries so many resonances. In Arabic, treasure chest is the etymological and conceptual source for the term for the state. This is a theme explored at length in the article by Judith Scheele in this issue ’ s Special Section on political vocabularies. The links between the concepts of a state and a treasure chest can easily be grasped when one thinks of the importance of a national “ treasury ” in contemporary political formations. But the implications of beginning our imagination of “ the state ” from a treasure chest instead of, say, a monopoly on the legit-imate use of force, are multiple. Here we would like to extend the metaphoric links of this idea further — to the importance of an anthropological treasury of ideas about the relationships among power, sovereignty, politics, economy, persons, and collectivities. Such an anthropological treasury cannot be formed solely from ideas from political science in Western nations, but must include a variety of concepts that emerge in the ethnographic investigation of the entire range of human, nonhuman, and metahuman societies. The Currents section in this issue focuses on “ Russia