On the Nature and Features of the (Early) State: An Anthropological Reanalysis* Dmitri M. Bondarenko Institute forAfrican Studies, Russian Academy of Sciences, 30/1 Spiridonovka St., Ru-123001 Moscow Abstract. The stateis usuallyconsidered to be acentralized and specialized coercive institution for gov- erning asociety . Contrariwise, our approach stems from the presumption that the state should be stu- died as a type of society forwhich this institution isadequate. This leadsto the necessity of paying special attention to the coming to the fore of the non-kin relations in state society . Political centraliza- tion cannotbe regarded as a feature specificto the state, as it isapplicable tomany non-state forms of societies. In the meantime,the feature typical only forthe stateisspecialization resulting in adminis- trators’professionalization,that is, in the formation of bureaucracy whichisrelated directlyto the non- kin social tiescoming intoprominence. As forthe rightto coerce, it isa dependent variable:the legit- imate violence in states is exercised through and by bureaucrats who operate within bureaucratic insti- tutions. [state, society, kinship, territoriality, political centralization, administrative specialization,bureaucracy , le- gitimized violence] The state as a societal type Up until the presenttime, hundreds of definitions of the statehave been proposed, and it turns out to be actually impossible to combine all (or even almost all) of them into one “generalized” definition. However ,it still maybe argued quite safelythat within the framework of the overwhelming majority of modern theories of the state this phenomenon isconsidered to be aspecialized and centralized institution for gov- erning asociety . The state’ srightto exercise coercive authority (legitimized violence) is often added as the state’ s critical characteristic feature” (see, e. g., “ summarizing” defi- nitions in anthropological encyclopedias and text-books of the 2000s: Abélès 2000; Kottak 2002:104,242, 269, 509; Kradin 2004:268; Ferraro and Andreatta 2011: 319– 320, 429). Thisapproach to the state,rooted in the European political, philo- Zeitschrift für Ethnologie 139(2014) 215–232 Ó 2014 Dietrich ReimerV erlag ZfE – 04_Bondarenko – Seite 215 – 28. 10.14 – stm *The paper isanoutput of aresearchproject implemented as part of the BasicResearch Program at the National Research University Higher School of Economics (HSE) in 2014. The author isalsograteful to Mr . Kirk Sorbo for bringing the text of the article in accordance with the rules of the Englishlanguage.