This book has been many years in the making and incurred countless
debts along the way. Its seed was sown at the New School for Social Research, which proved formative for my intellectual development. I thank
Oz Frankel, Hugh Raffles, Vyjayanthi Rao, Sanjay Ruparelia, Hylton
White, and Ann Stoler for the knowledge and advice they shared at that
early and foundational stage. Claudio Lomnitz’s commitment to bringing
together history and anthropology, and his attentiveness to people’s experience of temporality as a historical force, have stayed with me throughout the years, animating the analytical perspective of this book.