Patrice Ladwig is a Research Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity, and a Research Associate at the University of Cambridge.

• Introduction: Mimetic Governmentality, Colonialism, and the StatePatrice Ladwig and Ricardo RoqueChapter 1. Dances with Heads: Parasitic Mimesis and the Government of Savagery in Colonial East TimorRicardo RoqueChapter 2. Variants of Frontier Mimesis: Colonial Encounter and Intercultural Interaction in the Lao Vietnamese UplandsOliver TappeChapter 3. The Hut-Hospital as Project and as Practice: Mimeses, Alterities, and Colonial HierarchiesCristiana BastosChapter 4. Imitations of Buddhist Statecraft: The Patronage of Lao Buddhism and the Reconstruction of Relic Shrines and Temples in Colonial French IndochinaPatrice LadwigChapter 5. Colonial Mimesis and Animal Breeding: Karakul Sheep in Southwestern AngolaTiago SaraivaChapter 6. The Colonial State and Carnival: The Complexity and Ambiguity of Carnival in Guinea-Bissau, West AfricaChristoph KohlChapter 7. Mimetic Primitivism: Notes on the Conceptual History of MimesisPatrice LadwigPostscript: The Risks and Failures of ImitationPatrice Ladwig and Ricardo Roque

“This delightful collection of studies from Lusophone and Francophone colonies finally advances us beyond the critique of colonial representations, to an ethnography of the ambiguities and risks of a reciprocal colonial presence.” • Peter Pels, Leiden University