ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book summarizes what anthropologists have written about parliaments so far and provoke questions for future research. It is divided in to three parts. The first is about how politics is entangled in sociality, the second grapples with culture and the third is about power and knowledge. The book relies on a partly conventional way of understanding politicians’ work as processes of campaigning, representation and scrutiny of government, in the hope that this way of conceiving of it will be recognisable to everyone. It offers a systematic way to study how members of parliament work by looking at the performance of rhythms through time and space, the riffs of meaning and how riffs and rhythms are organised by and through rituals, both in parliament and outside.
