This is an ethnography of the shadows. The term shadows as I use it here refers to large-scale systems of affiliation and exchange that occur apart from formal state structures. Ethnography underscores the fact that much of the data presented here comes from fieldwork conducted in epicenters of political violence.

In the frontier realities that mark political upheaval, the people, goods, and services that move along shadow lines are often closely and visibly linked to the most fundamental politics of power and survival. Significant amounts of arms, actors, and supplies flow into a country at war while extensive amounts of valuable resources flow out of a country to pay for these inflows. A good deal of this takes place outside formal state institutions and international law. In fact, shadow transactions can equal a third to a half of a country's entire GNP in many locations in the world. Globally – the shadow networks along which goods and personnel flow are by definition transnational – shadow economies can involve trillions of dollars annually, and this brokers significant political power.

This is also an ethnography of power and socio-political transformation. Shadows represent a juncture of global politico-economic trends and local dynamics, a juncture that can represent sites of power capable of reshaping the character of states in the world today. Power is essentially transformative (Bhabha 1994; Comaroff and Comaroff 1991; de Certeau 1986; Nordstrom 1995).