The insecure American : how we got here and what we should do about it / edited by Hugh Gusterson and Catherine Besteman ; foreword by Barbara Ehrenreich.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Gusterson, Hugh.

Besteman, Catherine Lowe.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Security (Psychology)--United States.

Security (Psychology).

Nationalism--United States.

Nationalism.

United States--Politics and government--21st century.

United States.

United States--Social conditions--21st century.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (387 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Berkeley : University of California Press, c2010.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

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.

Contents:

Front matter

Contents

Foreword

Acknowledgments

Introduction

1. A Nation of Gated Communities

2. Warmaking as the American Way of Life

3. Republic of Fear The Rise of Punitive Governance in America

4. Neoliberalism, or The Bureaucratization of the World

5. The Age of Wal-Mart

6. Deindustrializing Chicago: A Daughter's Story

7. Racism, Risk, and the New Color of Dirty Jobs

8. Normal Insecurities, Healthy Insecurities

9. Cultivating Insecurity: How Marketers Are Commercializing Childhood

10. Uneasy Street

11. Body and Soul Profits from Poverty

12. Useless Suffering The War on Homeless Drug Addicts

13. Walling Out Immigrants

14. Compounding Insecurity: What the Neocon Core Reveals about America Today

15. Deploying Law as a Weapon in America's War on Terror

16. Death and Dying in Anxious America

17. Get Religion

contributors

Index

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780520945081

0520945085

OCLC:

727649107