ABSTRACT
Given the conceptual and geographical breadth of the chapters in this volume, any attempt to provide an integrative statement to introduce this volume is a formidable challenge. In the end I chose a strategy that is congenial for me but runs the risk of self-embarrassment. My strategy is to struggle with the issue of breadth by taking an even broader view. That is to say, I believe I can serve best by taking a critical look at the main conceptual frameworks that organize the various chapters. Among the frameworks are identities of dispossession, the state, the growing porousness of international borders, transnationalism (including globalization), and the regulation of violence. Each of these frameworks is itself complex, and the relations among the phenomena identified are even more so. In my remarks I hope to contribute to the theoretical clarification of the frameworks, to raise some skeptical observations about some dominant presuppositions relating them to one another, and to point toward more adequate formulations and explanations. My mission is therefore both ambitious and modest—ambitious in that I intend to venture into very uncertain seas as though I have confidence that they may be made more certain, and modest in that I hope to provide a conceptual apparatus that will not challenge but will rather tease out some of the general implications of the many case studies that constitute the real content of this volume. For documentation I have relied on a general search of the literature on the relevant topics, but also I have exploited the recently accumulated treasure of synthesized knowledge available in the International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioral Sciences in which I had a major editorial role.
