Preface
Introduction: The Politics of Culture
Why comparative politics cannot handle culture
What is culture and how does it matter?
Part I. Framework
Introduction
1. Critique of Grand Theory
The universalist fallacy
Red herrings
2. Working Assumptions
The implications of diversity
Against reductionism
3. Analytical Foundations
Understanding differences
Dead ends
Part II. Approach
Introduction
4. Culture and Political Identity
How who we are matters to what we believe....
....but do we do what we are?
5. Culture and Political Order
What power means in its local context
The political uses of culture
6. Culture and Political Change
The myth of timelessness
The fury of modernity
Part III. Method
Introduction
7. Thinking Inductively
The terrain
The analysis
8. Thinking Semiotically
Reading the evidence
Translation
Part IV. Application
Introduction
9. The Meanings of the State
Culture and states
States in mind
10. The Guises of Political Representation
An interpretative approach to representation
Ostentation, modesty and legitimacy: representation in context
Conclusion: In Defence of Eclecticism
The illusions of paradigmatic ecumenism
The perennial dilemma of ethnocentrism or the problem of reference
On the merit of conceptual and theoretical eclecticism
Bibliography
Index