  We define a universal state sum construction which specializes to most
previously known state sums (Turaev-Viro, Dijkgraaf-Witten, Crane-Yetter,
Douglas-Reutter, Witten-Reshetikhin-Turaev surgery formula, Brown-Arf). The
input data for the state sum is an n-category satisfying various conditions,
including finiteness, semisimplicity and n-pivotality. From this n-category one
constructs an n+1-dimensional TQFT, and applying the TQFT gluing rules to a
handle decomposition of an n+1-manifold produces the state sum.
