Peripheral Visions is based on Wedeen's eighteen months of field research in Yemen spanning a period of great political and economic change starting in the early 1990s, and on close examination of the substantial literature specialising in this diverse and fascinating country. Wedeen is interested in the continuous processes by which collective national and religious identities are shaped by the everyday practices and ritualized “performances” and discourses of both citizens and leaders in a constantly changing regional and international environment. Republican Yemen is a particularly interesting focus for such a study; it is a relatively new nation-state born after a revolution in the 1960s against the theocratic Zaydi-Shi'ite imamate, which only achieved its present geographical extent as the “Republic of Yemen” after unification between the northern Yemen Arab Republic and southern People's Democratic Republic of Yemen in 1990. The same ruler, President ˋAli ˋAbdullah Salih, has held power for over three decades. But despite this remarkable political survival, and the benefits of significant oil and gas resources and generous foreign aid, his “quasi-autocratic” regime has no monopoly on violence, has instituted only patchy and inadequate development, cannot maintain nationwide order, and has recently faced growing and increasingly bloody internal dissension as a consequence of divide-and-rule policies and military reprisals.

Wedeen describes how, despite or because of the Yemeni state's weakness, types of “informal” organizations, activities, and events which often pass under the radar of her fellow political scientists (though they are routinely subject to anthropological scrutiny) flourish, and promote and express nationalistic, pious, and democratic values by providing space for “communal imaginings.” Her analytical attention ranges across tribes, religious movements, sectarian and political resistance, poetry, radio and television broadcasts, tape-recorded sermons, pseudo-democratic elections, national celebrations, and daily social gatherings lubricated by qat chewing. Wedeen provides a rich and nuanced theoretical discussion of these, cites and interrogates a wide range of political and social ideas, and injects her own Yemeni-inspired insights.