Rethinking America: The Imperial Homeland in the 21st Century / Edition 1

by Jeff Maskovsky, Ida Susser

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781594513831
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	04/30/2009
Pages:	336
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)

About the Author

Jeff Maskovsky, Ida Susser

Table of Contents

Introduction, Jeff Maskovsky, Ida Susser; Part I Human Rights and Imperialism at Home and Away; Chapter 1 U.S. Foreign Military Bases, Catherine Lutz; Chapter 2 JROTC and Latina/o Youth in Neoliberal Cities, Gina Pérez; Chapter 3 Human Rights in the Imperial Heartland, Sally Engle Merry; Chapter 4 Torture Is US, Lesley Gill; Chapter 5 Imperial Moralities, Ida Susser; Part II Twenty-First-Century Culture Wars; Chapter 6 Whose Homeland?, Micaela di Leonardo; Chapter 7 Home Front, August Carbonella; Chapter 8 “Ghetto Fabulous” in the Imperial United States, Roopali Mukherjee; Part III Governance in the Age of Preemptive War; Chapter 9 Torture and the Biopolitics of Race, Dorothy Roberts; Chapter 10 “Fragmented” Security, Jeff Maskovsky, Hilary Cunningham; Chapter 11 Republic of Fear, Roger N. Lancaster; Chapter 12 Liberal Social Democracy, Neoliberalism, and Neoconservatism, Don Robotham; Part IV Coercion and Class in an Era of Insecurity; Chapter 13 “In Harm’s Way”, Sandra Morgen; Chapter 14 The United States and the Underworld System, Jane Schneider, Peter Schneider; Chapter 15 One Big Labor Market, Jane Collins; Chapter 16 What’s Wrong with the U.S. Immigration Debate?, Peter Kwong;

Editorial Reviews

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

From the Publisher