1st Edition

Rethinking America The Imperial Homeland in the 21st Century

By Jeff Maskovsky, Ida Susser Copyright 2009
    336 Pages
    by Routledge

    336 Pages
    by Routledge

    How has domestic life been reorganised to accommodate the new U.S. imperial ambitions? What are the consequences of empire for the people living here "at home"? This new collection of essays answers these questions by exploring the cultural, political, and economic shifts that are now under way in the United States. Encouraging a radical rethinking of what the country is today, this book highlights the connection of U.S. imperial strategies to the production of insecurity, uncertainty, and deepening inequality at home. Rethinking America also explores the instabilities and contradictions of the new imperialism from the unique vantage point of the newly emerging U.S. "homeland." Comprised of work from leading figures in the field of U.S. ethnography, this book is essential reading for anyone interested in understanding the changes taking place in the United States in the early years of the twenty-first century.

    Prologue: The Death of Neoliberalism? Ida Susser Acknowledgments Introduction: Rethinking America Jeff Maskovsky and Ida Susser PART I: HUMAN RIGHTS AND IMPERIALISM AT HOME AND AWAY Chapter 1: U.S. Foreign Military Bases: The Edge and Essence of Empire Catherine Lutz Chapter 2: JROTC and Latina/o Youth in Neoliberal Cities Gina Perez Chapter 3: Human Rights in the Imperial Heartland Sally Engle Merry Chapter 4: Torture Is US: Public Amnesia and the School of the Americas Lesley Gill Chapter 5: Imperial Moralities Ida Susser PART II: TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY CULTURE WARS Chapter 6: Whose Homeland? The New Imperialism, Neoliberalism, and the U.S. Public Sphere Micaela di Leonardo Chapter 7: Home Front: The Culture of U.S. Imperialism from Vietnam to Iraq August Carbonella Chapter 8: "Ghetto Fabulous" in the Imperial United States: Black Consumption and the "Death of Civil Rights" Roopali Mukhuerjee PART III: GOVERNANCE IN THE AGE OF PREEMPTIVE WAR Chapter 9: Torture and the Biopolitics of Race Dorothy Roberts Chapter 10: "Fragmented" Security: Protecting the Homeland in the Twenty-First-Century United States Jeff Maskovsky and Hilary Cunningham Chapter 11: Republic of Fear: The Rise of Punitive Governance in the United States Roger N. Lancaster Chapter 12: Liberal Social Democracy, Neoliberalism, and Neoconservatism: Some Genealogies Don Robotham PART IV: COERCION AND CLASS IN AN ERA OF INSECURITY Chapter 13: "In Harm's Way": The Distributive Effects of Welfare, Tax, and Military Policies on the Home Front Sandra Morgen Chapter 14: The United States and the Underworld System: Predatory Crime, Illegal Trafficking, and Sponsored Criminality Jane Schneider and Peter Schneider Chapter 15: One Big Labor Market: The New Imperialisma and Worker Vulnerability Jane Collins Chapter 16: What's Wrong with the U.S. Immigration Debate? Peter Kwong Index About the Editors and Contributors

    Biography

    Jeff Maskovsky, Ida Susser

    “This book helps us to understand a relatively neglected aspect of contemporary American imperialism: its antidemocratic impact on policies and institutions within the United States. This is engaged anthropology at its best—well-informed, compassionate, and intelligently argued. Important reading for our times.”
    —Talal Asad, City University of New York

    “Jeff Maskovsky and Ida Susser have brought together fine essays that explore the multifaceted interconnections between U.S. imperialist aggression abroad and our increasingly distorted domestic political economy. The imperial power has produced, they say, an imperial homeland, economically, politically, and culturally. We need to read this book.”
    —Frances Fox Piven