POLITICAL ANTHROPOLOGY - NEW CHALLENGES, NEW AIMS

For a long time, political anthropology was concerned almost exclusive ly with the study of traditional organization in remote societies; it now has to take the changing modern world into account. Recently there has been some research on developments in the media which tend to dis play power as a form of entertainment; the main findings are set out i n this paper. Again, the re-ordering of political arenas and identitie s, the tensions due to globalization, the emergence of new transnation al organizations, all give rise to new questions. Anthropology has bro adened the framework of its investigations. The need to understand suc h phenomena as nationalism, the emergence of multicultural bureaucraci es or the participation of citizens in political action, has made it e ssential to revise concepts and issues and has given rise to original research, the main trends of which are also presented below.