Breaking Boundaries

Agnes Horvath is a co-founder and editor of the peer-reviewed journal International Political Anthropology and is a visiting scholar of Sociology at Cambridge University. She is the author or co-author of eight books, including, most recently, Reclaiming Beauty (co-edited with James B. Cuffe, Ficino Press, 2012), Modernism and Charisma (Palgrave, 2013), and Statesman: The Politics of Limits and the Liminal (co-edited with John O'Brien, Tivoli, 2013). Bjorn Thomassen is Associate Professor in the Department of Society and Globalisation, Roskilde University, and is a co-founder and editor of the journal International Political Anthropology. His recent publications include Liminality and the Modern: Living Through the In-Between (Ashgate, 2014), and the edited collection Global Rome: Changing Faces of the Eternal City (Indiana University Press, 2014). Harald Wydra is a Fellow of St Catharine's College at the University of Cambridge, where he has taught politics since 2003, and is a co-founder and editor of the journal International Political Anthropology. His books include Communism and the Emergence of Democracy (Cambridge University Press, 2007), Democracy and Myth in Russia and Eastern Europe (co-edited with Alexander Woll, Routledge, 2008), and Politics and the Sacred (Cambridge University Press, 2015).

• List of Figures Introduction: Liminality and the Search for Boundaries Harald Wydra, Bjorn Thomassen, and Agnes Horvath PART I: FRAMING LIMINALITY Chapter 1. Liminality and Experience: Structuring transitory situations and transformative events Arpad Szakolczai Chapter 2. Thinking with Liminality: To the Boundaries of an Anthropological Concept Bjorn Thomassen PART II: LIMINALITY AND THE SOCIAL Chapter 3. Inbetweenness and Ambivalence Bernhard Giesen Chapter 4. The Genealogy of Political Alchemy: the technological invention of identity change Agnes Horvath Chapter 5. Critical Processes and Political Fluidity: a Theoretical Appraisal Michel Dobry Chapter 6. Liminality and the Frontier Myth in the Building of the American Empire Stephen Mennell Chapter 7. On the Margins of the Public and the Private: Louis XIV at Versailles Peter Burke PART III: LIMINALITY AND THE POLITICAL Chapter 8. Liminality, the execution of Louis XVI and the rise of terror during the French Revolution Camil Roman Chapter 9. In Search of Antistructure: The Meaning of Tahrir Square in Egypt's Ongoing Social Drama Mark Allen Peterson Chapter 10. Liminality and Democracy Harald Wydra Chapter 11. Liminality and Postcommunism: The Twenty-First Century as the Subject of History Richard Sakwa Chapter 12. The Challenge of Liminality for International Relations Theory Maria Malksoo Notes on Contributors Index

"In well integrated chapters, the [volume] proves the relevance of the concept across disciplines, particularly for the study of moments of instability and possibility, as well as for understanding the transformative potential of participation... In addition to helping one understand in-between experiences overall, [it] invites the reader to rethink the complicated relation between individual agency, social order and cultural transmission... a remarkable contribution to sociology, anthropology and critical theory." - European Journal of Cultural and Political Sociology