The State and the Social: State transformation in Botswana and precolonial and colonial genealogies
本书基于民族志研究，分析博茨瓦纳国家形成中的社会过程，提出其可持续发展源于西方理念与本土权力结构的辩证融合，而非单纯西化。
Gulbrandsen's thorough ethnographic knowledge of Botswana is evident in this conceptually rich analysis of state and social processes that have been critical to state formation and consolidation. Notably, the front cover of the book features the three dikgosi monuments, which recognize the three dikgosi (Batswana chiefs) who are credited with laying the foundation for Botswana's independence. They secured Queen Victoria's protection through their protest against the incorporation of their land into white minority-ruled Southern Rhodesia. Blending existing historiographical and anthropological work with his own ethnographic insights, the author drives the central thesis that Botswana's unique trajectory of sustainable development owes its origins and evolution not so much to Westernization and globalization of its socio-political and economic structures, but rather it ‘is best comprehended as a unique, complex formation arising dialectically from the intersection of Western ideas and practices with indigenous structures of power’ (p. 1). The Foucauldian notion of genealogy enables appreciation of how the state's own unique processes of development connect its pre-colonial to its colonial and post-colonial genealogies, and helps to highlight the continuities, discontinuities, and transformations that have been critical to its formation.