1In the context of interlocking global and national desires for the revitalisation of the state both institutionally and affectively, this dissertation offers an ethnographic account of contemporary state re-making, attending to the subjective and structural dynamics shaping coupled processes of constitution-writing and federal reforms in post-conflict Nepal. Based on 27 months of ethnographic research in nested sites of re-making in Kathmandu, Dhangadhi and the far western Tarai region, the dissertation examines overlapping efforts to determine boundaries for new federal units and traces the ways in which a wide range of actors – national academics, federalism experts and lawmakers; international constitutional lawyers; regional politicians and activists; and indigenous Tharu and Pahadi settlers – navigated the production of the federal system in reference to entangled pursuits of belonging to landscapes, kin and nation. Drawing on the anthropology of the state, environmental anthropology, phenomenology of place and kinship studies, the dissertation interprets the re-making of the Nepal state in light of emplaced environmental histories, episodic administrative reorganisation and the sympatric movement of peoples across the far western region –elaborating different vantages from which to ethnographically theorise and interpret states in the contemporary era. Through these channels, the dissertation sheds light on the centrality of Nepal’s state aesthetic – signalled by administrative boundaries – to the perennial quest for securing state integrity and the ideal organisation of society. In so doing, the dissertation describes pathways through which subjective relationships to land, people and nation entered into Nepal’s newest state design, generating lines of resonance and dissonance for future untangling.