Stephen P. Reyna is a Research Associate at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in Halle/Salle and a Senior Research Fellow at the University of Manchester.

• PrefaceIntroductionPART I: EPISTEMOLOGYChapter 1. Literary Anthropology and the Case against ScienceChapter 2. What Is Th eory? Something, Time-Being, ArtPART II: ONTOLOGYChapter 3. Dialectics of Force: Contradiction, Logics, and Conservation of DéliresPART III: CRITICAL SCIENCEChapter 4. Right and Might: Of Approximate Truths and Moral JudgmentsChapter 5. Perpetual Peace? Dreaming in the Time-Being of EmpireIndex

“Starry Nights is Reyna’s grand attempt to develop a thoroughly holistic and galactic model that will supplement the theoretical architecture of anthropologists as they explore the modern world and should be required reading in any graduate-level theory course in anthropology.” • Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute“This is an important and timely collection of essays by one of the leading exponents of a scientific, materialist anthropology… I could see the usefulness of this collection in seminars on theory at the graduate and undergraduate level.” • David Sutton, Southern Illinois University