Gusterson / Besteman The Insecure American

How We Got Here and What We Should Do About It
1. Auflage 2009
ISBN: 978-0-520-94508-1
Verlag: University of California Press
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)

E-Book, Englisch, 392 Seiten

Americans are feeling insecure. They are retreating to gated communities in record numbers, fearing for their jobs and their 401(k)s, nervous about their health insurance and their debt levels, worrying about terrorist attacks and immigrants. In this innovative volume, editors Hugh Gusterson and Catherine Besteman gather essays from nineteen leading ethnographers to create a unique portrait of an anxious country and to furnish valuable insights into the nation's possible future. With an incisive foreword by Barbara Ehrenreich, the contributors draw on their deep knowledge of different facets of American life to map the impact of the new economy, the "war on terror," the "war on drugs," racial resentments, a fraying safety net, undocumented immigration, a health care system in crisis, and much more. In laying out a range of views on the forces that unsettle us,
The Insecure American demonstrates the singular power of an anthropological perspective for grasping the impact of corporate profit on democratic life, charting the links between policy and vulnerability, and envisioning alternatives to life as an insecure American.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Gusterson, Hugh

Besteman, Catherine

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Foreword by Barbara Ehrenreich


Acknowledgments

Introduction Catherine Besteman and Hugh Gusterson


Part One Fortress America


1. A nation of Gated Communities

Setha M. Low


2.Warmaking as the AmericanWay of life

Catherine Lutz


3. Republic of fear: The rise of Punitive Governance in America

Roger N. Lancaster


Part Two The New Economy


4. Neoliberalism, or The Bureaucratization of the World

David Graeber


5.The Age of Wal-Mart

Jane L. Collins


6. Deindustrializing Chicago: A Daughter’s story

Christine J.Walley


7. Racism, risk, and the new Color of Dirty Jobs

Lee D. Baker


Part Three Insecurity as a Profit Center


8. Normal Insecurities, Healthy Insecurities

Joseph Dumit


9. Cultivating Insecurity: How Marketers Are Commercializing Childhood

Juliet B. Schor


Part Four The Most Vulnerable


10. Uneasy street

T.M. Luhrmann


11. Body and soul: Profits from Poverty

BrettWilliams


12. Useless suffering: The War on Homeless Drug Addicts

Philippe Bourgois


13.Walling out Immigrants

Peter Kwong


Part Five Insecurity and Terror


14. Compounding Insecurity:What the neocon Core reveals about America today

Janine R.Wedel


15. Deploying law as aWeapon in America’sWar on terror

Susan F. Hirsch


Part Six Insecurities of Body and Spirit


16. Death and Dying in Anxious America

Nancy Scheper-Hughes


17. Get religion

Susan Harding


Notes

List of Contributors

Index

Über Autor(innen)

Gusterson, Hugh
Hugh Gusterson is Professor of Anthropology at George Mason University. He is the author of Nuclear Rites and coeditor (with Besteman) of Why America's Top Pundits Are Wrong, both from UC Press. Catherine Besteman is Professor of Anthropology at Colby College and the author of Transforming Capetown (UC Press).