Anthropology of the United States

United States Vice President James David Vance published Hillbilly Elegy in 2016 to explain the plight of the White working-class in the United States, particularly in the Appalachian and Midwestern regions. The book is a memoir about Vance’s family, notably his grandmother, mother, and sister—and traces Vance's journey from school to the Marines to Yale Law School and his marriage (in 2014).

How do time, space, and movement interpenetrate to shape the life
choices of Mongolian men living in Los Angeles? In this article I contribute to an ongoing scholarly debate about how Mongolian lives have been affected both by socialism’s ‘end’ and encounters with capitalism. While attention has been directed to Mongolians remaining in Mongolia, I extend the debate in this article by scrutinizing the experiences of Mongolians who embraced the new forms of mobility that capitalism ushered in; specifically of those who migrated to Los Angeles in search of the opportunity to lead, what they deemed, better, more fulfilling lives. These Mongolian immigrants encountered new and completely foreign regimes of time discipline that sought to structure their lives in ways that were heretofore unimaginable to them. Throughout this article I demonstrate the all-pervasiveness of these encounters which occur in both
public and private life, and in areas as varied as people’s apartments, public parks, offices, and nightclubs. I also explore how a subset of Mongolian men responded to what they regarded as a profound imposition; how they sought employment opportunities in the logistics sector that allowed them to exert some agency over time and to pursue their own ethical goals. Long-distance trucking, the area of the logistics sector these men entered, might seem a puzzling choice because it has routinely been derided by scholars of logistics as akin to working in a sweatshop. However, I argue, in examining this final puzzle, that the choices these men make complicate scholarly assumptions about contemporary capitalism’s workings.

Aux Etats-Unis, la chasse réunit près de 12 millions de licenciés, soit 4 % de la population. Le nombre de pratiquants diminue toutefois depuis le début des années 1980, dans un contexte marqué par la politisation croissante d’une activité de plus en plus contestée. Or, amenés à justifier leurs activités, comment les pratiquants se défendent-ils face à l’émergence de discours « anti-chasse » de plus en plus audibles et structurés ? Alors qu’ils voient leur hobby attaqué, comment les chasseurs parviennent-ils à défendre le maintien de leur activité ? À partir d’une enquête conduite en Arizona, l’un des États américain les plus réputés pour la valeur et la qualité de son gibier, cette contribution montre comment des promoteurs de l’activité font paradoxalement d’un loisir polémique une activité où se construit, s’organise et se diffuse une (contre-)éthique de la chasse à portée politique.

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In the United States, hunting is practiced by nearly 12 million people, or about 4% of the population. However, the number of enthusiasts has been decreasing since the beginning of the 1980s, in a context marked by the growing popularity of “anti-hunting” discourse and by the politicization of the sport. How do hunters defend themselves against the emergence of an increasingly audible and structured anti-hunt movement? While they see their hobby under attack, how do they defend the preservation of their activity? Based on a study conducted in Arizona, one of the US states most renowned for the value and quality of its game, this article shows how hunting promoters paradoxically turn a contested practice into an opportunity to build, organize and disseminate a (counter)ethics serving political purposes.

In this paper I look at the possibility that uncertainty may not merely be a stage in the research process, but an outcome in itself. Exploring how university and scholarship collided with my own personal experiences and identity I discuss how a combination of poststructural theory and my encounters with peace, conflict and religion enabled me to value uncertainty, and I make the case that uncertainty can open up the future to the gift of chance. By intertwining discussions of both lived experience and academic work, the organisation of the paper reflects how the two became inextricably linked, continuously folding into each other, so that my sense of self influenced my research, and conversely, my research influenced my sense of self. The outcome is a discussion of how I incorporated uncertainty into my research and personal life, which I explore using the example of religion, and how I lost and gained my faith, rejecting my previous Christianity while reconstructing a kind of faith found in uncertainty, a sense of place and ethical space to come.

Smith is not defensive about the value of the liberal arts. He clarifies why we should welcome this new frontier, suggesting that the liberal arts are no longer the enclave of the wealthy. Several essays address the divide between religion and scholars of religion, concluding that religion scholars can enjoy a productive coexistence with many theologians as informants accountable to religious communities. Other theologians and some religious studies scholars ("transcendentalists," to Smith) eschew history and context, rejecting specific languages (academic or theological) and translation, and instead "striv[ing] for some Esperanto." In Part 2, "The Academic Profession," Smith addresses undergraduate curriculum, the religion major, meaningful graduate education, and the distinction between discursive communities and disciplines. Required reading for any scholar of religion concerned with the state and fate of the profession, the book should be read either prior to or at the outset of graduate studies in religion. The book is vital to any committee in the humanities or social sciences concerned with the aims of education and the mission of the university.

ABSTRACTHistories of the role of public health in nation building have revealed the centrality of hygiene to eugenic mechanisms of racial exclusion in the turn‐of‐the‐20th‐century United States, yet little scholarship has examined its role in the present day. Through ethnography in a Mexican migrant farmworking community in California's Central Valley, we explore the role of oral hygiene campaigns in racializing Mexican immigrant parents and shaping the substance of their citizenship. Public health officials perceive migrant farmworkers’ children's oral disease as a “stain of backwardness,” amplifying Mexican immigrants’ status as “aliens.” We suggest, however, that the recent concern with Mexican immigrant children's oral health blends classic eugenic concerns in public health with neoliberal concerns regarding different immigrant groups’ capacity for self‐governance.

Intentional communities in the United States are greatly varied. They may be religious, secular, autonomous, and exclude themselves from society physically, intellectually, socially, morally, and ideologically. The psychological factors, ways of life, religions, and histories have been well documented by many researchers (Kurzman 2008; Fournier 2002; Kanter 1973; Wallmeier 2017). This thesis dissects and explores a comparative framework of these factors within several different groups, from a cultural anthropological perspective. My research objective is to develop a better understanding of some of the influences for intentional community formations, some of the varieties of intentional communities' ideological values, structures, and lifestyles, and explore both the longterm sustainability, and disintegration of intentional communities. I draw upon my own personal experiences with two intentional communities, and reflect upon these experiences anthropologically. I then focus on a further understanding of intentional communities, which form in political, governmental, authoritative, structural, and social resistance to the United States, starting with the Vietnam War Era. I achieve this by researching literature on the breadth of intentional communities in the United States, from the 1960s onward, and by analyzing these data through cultural anthropological, post-structural, and postmodern theories.

American Antiquities and the Process of Ethnogenesis in the Early Republic This essay discusses some of the literary expressions dealing with the gigantic earthworkswhich the first European immigrants and people from the Atlantic seaboard discovered inthe Mississippi Valley, thus articulating the inchoate processes of ethnogenesis and nationbuilding in the early Republican period. I tumuli della Valle del Mississippi e il loro ruolo nel processo della costruzione della nazione americana L’articolo tratta delle espressioni letterarie che discutevano la presenza dei tumuli giganteschi scoperti nella ‘Mississippi Valley’ dai primi emigranti europei e americani provenienti dalla costa atlantica. Cio formulo, nel primo periodo repubblicano, importanti processi di etnogenesi e ‘nation-building’.

At a time of a “private equity oil rush,” this essay explores how oil industry entrepreneurs with ambitions of setting up their own oil-production companies are encouraged to “dream big”—yet are ultimately disciplined and let down—by private equity finance in the state of Colorado in the United States. Motivated by a desire to “do oil differently,” these start-ups articulate utopian visions that draw on inequalities in extractive economies to promote an ethos of care and inclusion. I argue that while economic imaginations are commonly seen to offer alternatives to and critiques of capitalism, it is important also to attend to articulations of capitalist utopia. As private equity has come to form a secreted infrastructure that underlies much of the world’s financial system and encourages entrepreneurial optimism and euphoria, I explore how the contemporary life of capitalism stimulates attitudes to wealth creation that remain markedly conventional and unadventurous.

American Antiquities and the Process of Ethnogenesis in the Early Republic This essay discusses some of the literary expressions dealing with the gigantic earthworkswhich the first European immigrants and people from the Atlantic seaboard discovered inthe Mississippi Valley, thus articulating the inchoate processes of ethnogenesis and nationbuilding in the early Republican period. I tumuli della Valle del Mississippi e il loro ruolo nel processo della costruzione della nazione americana L’articolo tratta delle espressioni letterarie che discutevano la presenza dei tumuli giganteschi scoperti nella ‘Mississippi Valley’ dai primi emigranti europei e americani provenienti dalla costa atlantica. Cio formulo, nel primo periodo repubblicano, importanti processi di etnogenesi e ‘nation-building’.

Life history interviews have been conducted in a wide range of social science disciplines (i.e. anthropology, criminology, folkloristic studies, education, ethnology, feminist research, geography, linguistics, psychology, political science and sociology) and with remarkable variation. 1 Some researchers are predominantly interested in using life history interviews in order to investigate how stories are told (life story) (Portelli 1991; Slim and Thompson 1993); what interests us here, instead, is how the story subjective reconstruction relates to what has happened in the respondent's life trajectory and, specifically, on activists' dynamic trajectories. Rather than relying on static approaches to data collection, such as large-scale sample surveys, which focus on structural factors in an a-temporal moment, by disconnecting activists from their life history and context, and representing them as static actors, life history interviews provide an impressive methodological tool allowing to focus on the permanent dialectic process between agency and structure; to articulate micro-, meso-and macro-levels of analysis in order to contextualize activists' dynamic trajectories; to place political participation diachronically, as a long-lasting social activity articulated through the transformation of different phases of a life trajectory (dispositions, primary and secondary socialization, partnering and marriage, parenthood, working, retirement, and so on); and 1 Life history interviewing is not the only method used for biographical research that seeks to understand the unfolding lives of individuals within their social context (Denzin 1989). There exist other biographical approaches, such as: oral histories, personal narratives, autobiographies, autoethnography, life narratives and interpretative biography. At the same time, many types of interviews, that focus on the life trajectories of individuals vary according to the author and the theoretical tradition: narrative interviews, biographical interviews, retrospective interviews, in-depth interviews, and so on. While it is not the aim of this chapter to describe different types of biographical methods and interviews (Tierney and Lanford 2019), we should be aware of the fact that this richness has often produced "a certain terminological confusion in the field" of life history research and biographical interviews (Bertaux 1981: 7).

Apresentação do debate clássico e/ou recente acerca da Moral e da Ética a partir da perspectiva antropológica e do seu diálogo com as demais disciplinas Humanas e Sociais. Indicação da transversalidade temática desta abordagem e da sua possível e existente interlocução com campos específicos (religião, política, economia, saúde e medicina, gênero e sexualidade entre outros).

For decades, studies have shown that white households have greater access and benefit most from the racialized US housing market. Homeownership is the material realization of the American dream, and for many it is read alongside middle-classness and normativity as cultural markers of hegemonic whiteness. Conversely, this article explores personal narratives from white homeowners that are excluded from this dominant understanding: white mobile-homeowners. I apply the concept of "untruths" to illustrate how my interlocutors discursively situated their racialized hopes, anxieties, and aspirations against the disparaging "white-trailer trash" trope. I then consider how I, as a white, working-class anthropologist conducting "home-work," was figured into these narratives as representing this idealizedyet deeply problematic-whiteness. Bringing together anthropological perspectives on lies and sincerity, I show how white racial "untruths" reveal a more complex and fragmented whiteness that belies the dreamlike fiction of hegemonic white normativity.

Franciszkańskie kalwarie – interesujący fenomen kulturowy, są istotnym elementem duchowości, działań duszpasterskich, bogatymi enklawami architektury i sztuki, znanymi i cenionymi nie tylko przez pobożnych pątników, ale też przez szerszy krąg odbiorców, zwłaszcza miłośników sztuki i piękna natury. Ogromne znaczenie dla plenerowych kalwarii mają topografia terenu i szata roślinna nawiązująca do realiów Ziemi Świętej. Naśladowcze zabiegi podejmowane w ciągu stuleci w kalwariach europejskich odsyłały wyobraźnię pielgrzyma do symboliczne-go słownika roślin biblijnych, co z kolei kształtowało doświadczenie sacrum i sprzyjało dalszym poszukiwaniom jeszcze lepszych koncepcji planistycznych oraz wykorzystania najbardziej optymalnych gatunków drzew, krzewów, ziół przystosowanych do określonych warunków środowiska. Te aranżacje jako założenia architektoniczne i ikonograficzne zanurzano w przestrzeni zieleni sakralnych ogrodów modlitwy, jakimi niewątpliwie były przez wieki i są również obecnie...

WENDELL H. OSWALT and JAMES W. VAN-STONE. (Smithsonian Institution Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletin 199.) Washington: U. S. Printing Office, 1967. viii, 136 pp., appendix, 7 text figures, index, literature cited, map, 16 plates, 6 tables. $1.75. Reviewed by ROBERT E. ACKERMAN Washington State University Tulukaghogamiut or "Crow Village," located on the north bank of the middle section of the Kuskokwim River in Southwestern Alaska, was an Eskimo settlement known to have been occupied between 1843 and 1912. Prior work in 1953-1954 by the authors in the 'Kuskokwim River region indicated that the excavation of this historic site would provide a further dimension to their study of culture change. The pe

This article analyzes the hierarchy of factors in the development of crisis trends in a consolidated democracy using the example of the United States of America. The authors assess the surge of political instability in the United States, which led to the deconsolidation of the liberal democracy regime, through the prism of centrifugal processes within the American elite and the erosion of democratic institutions over the past 30 years. The main problem of the study is the contradiction between the crisis of democratic regimes in the countries of the Euro-Atlantic region and the high indicators of the factors of the consolidation of democracy, according to classical political science theories. The authors use the path analysis method to determine the main path and hierarchy of factors of erosion of the liberal democracy regime in the United States, which is an example of the "old" democracy and, according to traditional political science, is the most protected from destructive processes. Consideration of the case of deconsolidation of the liberal democracy regime in the United States, thus, sheds light on the possible ways of democracy reversion and risk factors for stability of democratic political systems.

The purpose of this quantitative survey research study was to explore educational preferences among individuals of conservative and liberal political orientation and of both genders in the United States of America with a 13-questionnaire survey that includes questions relating to different educational preferences. The literature review has revealed previously conducted research study that suggest that individuals of conservative and liberal political orientation may have psychological differences in the domain of emotions, attention, self-control, and cognition. However, the literature review did not reveal research studies that explored educational preferences between individuals with conservative and liberal political orientation in the United States. The results suggest that statistically significant difference exists in the preference to study abroad (χ ² (1, N = 200) = 3.739, p = 0.05). Additional differences, but without a statistically significant differences, were found in t...

This volume testifies to the unresolved contradictions built into both the possible solutions to the problem of the paranormal and into the controversy itself. Scientific and theoretical approaches to the field usually do not seem able to resolve the contradictions of mediumistic controversies but rather add contradictions of their own. Furthermore, they tend to forget that the core of the controversy, or rather controversies, lies in practical negotiations and negotiations about practical exigencies. That is why an ethnographic approach shows time and again how local actors use all the theoretical resources of academic life and academic reasoning available to them, and that theoretical distinctions are bound to appear highly convincing in discussions but deeply flawed on the ground. This does not mean that the theoretical controversy is particularly different from practical controversies-on the contrary, it is just one practical way of dealing with the controversies about mediumship and a strand of the controversy itself. But practical mediumism is not about resolving theoretical questions or theoretical contradictions. In fact, it may even thrive on those contradictions. Based on anthropological fieldwork in California, where I followed the controversies surrounding the testing of paranormal claims and ended up among a deeply intertwined network of parapsychologists, spiritualists, ghost hunters, and skeptics, I will present in this chapter a seemingly banal case of mediumism that remains "basic" in many senses of the term: touching the base of modern mediumism and especially spiritualism, and being nothing but basic. But even this basic case is controversial on the ground, and necessarily so. By focusing on a banal but controversial case, I will ask the complementary question: is there an equally banal basis for our theoretical controversies?

In Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL), the design of a language policy at school level is not only bound up with the number of languages used for learning and the number of hours devoted to teaching those languages, but also with the fact that language becomes specialised in relation to the subject, which impacts on the methodology used. These are the reasons for both language teachers and subject teachers to work together in design and implementation; and for the teachers’ use of a translanguaging-based approach to language learning (San Isidro, 2018). Previous research has dealt with teachers’ opinions (Calvo & San Isidro, 2012; Coonan, 2007; Infante et al., 2009; Pladevall-Ballester, 2015) on the difficulties of curriculum integration and its effects on both the different languages of instruction and the learning of content; or on the difficulties of language and content integration. However, methodology-oriented research on teachers’ views and work...

This article begins with Dr. Darby Stapp's Editorial about a recent national award for Ed Carriere, Suquamish Elder and Master Basketmaker, as well as the contents of Journal 56(1).  He gives a current state of JONA summary too. Following is the abstract for the WARC article:

The Washington Archaeological Research Center (WARC)
was established in 1972 at Washington State University (WSU) to
serve the six four-year universities and colleges, the State, and thus
the public. WARC served as a clearinghouse for government contracts,
and project assignments were made through a Scientific Committee
of archaeology faculty. Dr. Richard D. Daugherty directed WARC until
1980, when the Administrative Board, and the Scientific Committee,
redirected WARC away from contract coordination. Dr. Dale R. Croes
was appointed Director, and WARC was tasked with maintaining the
State’s site records and contract/research reports library. WARC was
also directed to create the first computer database for survey projects
and site records. WARC goals grew to include: facilitating research,
training students, and conducting public outreach. WARC soon created
an Advisory Council representing a broad collation of private contract
archaeologists; professional archaeologists from Oregon, Idaho, and
British Columbia, Canada; Native American Representatives; Federal/
State agencies; and Archaeological/Historical Societies. In many ways
it was an effort to work together, using our limited resources, to promote
archaeological interests (especially beginning to digitize, standardize,
and update our paper-based archaeological site forms)—a coordinating
of our discipline, in a form of communitarianism, based on the idea
that those involved in archaeology were essentially cooperative (“good”)
people who wanted to work together for our common goals. The WARC
newsletter, The Thunderbird with the distribution of 68 issues, serves as
the basis for outlining a chronology of our history between 1980 and 1988.

Developing a Role for Men in Preventing Human Trafficking into the Sex Industry in Madrid Stephen B. Morse Doctor of Ministry School of Theology, Fuller Theological Seminary 2016 This ministry project aims to counter the masculine-related cultural dynamics that lead to human trafficking into the sex industry in Madrid, by developing a discipleship program that helps men to understand biblical masculine identity and their role in the Missio Dei, reducing demand through their approach to cultural and socio-economic structures. Although Madrid is a main center for sex trafficking, the evangelical churches often lack the ability to respond effectively. Government efforts to combat trafficking largely focus on prosecution and protection. Meanwhile, the issue of prevention and the development of a positive role for men have received less attention. However, efforts to reduce the demand globally address masculine sexual identity and behavior. The paper contains three parts. Part One examin...

The recent outburst of anti-racist protests shows how deeply the American society’s present-day problems are rooted in its past. Therefore, a study of cultural memory of the time of the Civil War, the key moment in the American nation formation, is especially important. The memory of slavery and its abolishing in the US North and South is discussed in this paper as a manifestation of the postcolonial discourse in the present-day globalized world, as a proof of validity of applying the postcolonial approach to the study of not only former colonial societies. The cultural frontier between the US North and South that had appeared as an outcome of differences in their history, first of all with respect to slavery, has not vanished but remains a cultural and sociopolitical factor in public life. By the example of complexity and inconsistency of cultural memory of the Civil War, slavery, and its abolition in the North and the South manifested in their visual representations (monuments, museum expositions, etc.), the paper documents how through the collective memory, history does not just invade modernity but is present in it and determines it to a large degree. The recent events may be significant for cultural anthropology, as they show that bringing a historical perspective back to anthropo-logical research is necessary for a successful study of contemporary societies. For anthropol-ogy of the USA in particular, an academic study of these events opens prospects for reassessment of the very foundations of the American culture and society.

The paper is based on field evidence collected in more than fifteen towns and cities in ten states analyzed upon the background of the author’s vast experience of doing fieldwork in many African countries in which the memory of slave trade is alive and heated by the post-colonial state. The paper shows how differences in the historical memory of African migrants and African Americans influence their mutual perceptions and relationship. The reflection in the both groups’ collective memory and mass consciousness of the transatlantic slave trade is most important in this respect. It is argued in the paper that the historical memory of the slave trade, slavery, and fight against it is of key importance for the African Americans’ consciousness. As for the Africans, this memory is also important but, firstly, not to that degree and, secondly, they see slave trade differently: as history not of one blacks’ betrayal by other blacks (as the former were sold into slavery to the whites by the latter), but of exploitation of the blacks by the whites. Significant differences in the perception, estimation, and attaching importance to the slave trade, slavery and anti-slavery struggle separate the groups of black population, rather than unite them in the face of “white” America. The lack of the sense of historical unity alienates African Americans and African migrants from each other spiritually and mentally, thus contributing to the establishment of ambiguous and complicated relationship between them.

The cultural frontier between the US North and the South that had appeared as an outcome of differences in their history, first of all with respect to slavery, has not disappeared up to now. It remains an important cultural and socio-political factor in public life, and “Northern”
and “Southern” character types are still recognizable. By the example of complexity and inconsistency of the historical memory of the Civil War, slavery, and its abolition in the USA, the paper documents how through the collective memory, history does not just invade modernity but is present in it, particularly in the form of memorials, monuments, museum expositions, and therefore determines modernity to a large degree.

Культурная граница между Севером и Югом США, образовавшаяся в результате различий в их истории, в первую очередь в связи с рабством черных, не исчезла и по сей день. Она остается значимым культурным и социально-политическим фактором
общественной жизни страны, а «северянин» и «южанин» – узнаваемыми типажами. В статье показано на примере сложности и конфликтности исторической памяти о Гражданской войне, рабстве и его отмене в США, как через коллективную память
история не просто вторгается в современность, а присутствует в ней, в т.ч. в виде мемориалов, памятников, музейных экспозиций, и в огромной степени определяет ее.

This paper explores the definition, impact and legacy of modernity on the life and ministry of the church as expounded upon in Lesslie Newbigin's Foolishness to Greeks. The Bishop defines his task in the very first sentence of his work, My purpose in these chapters is to consider what would be involved in a genuinely missionary encounter between the gospel and the culture that is shared by the peoples of Europe and North America, their colonial and cultural off-shoots, and the growing company of educated leaders in the cities of the world-the culture which those of us who share it usually describe as "modern". 1

This down-to-earth examination of a few crucial moments in the formation of Triceratops skull fossils exposes the more-than-human process through which stones come into being. Anthropological/paleontological fieldwork at a quarry in the Dakota Badlands and a laboratory in Denver, Colorado reveal how fossil stones emerge through a complex and unpredictable process that involves much more than human acts of discovering and reconstructing prehistoric nature, or ascribing meaning and value to inert matter. Fossil-making involves acts of creation that are thoroughly physical and conceptual, human and nonhuman. Fossils come into being through the mixing of biological and geological forces, tools and glues, and people’s somatic and intellectual labors. This article fuses insights from the anthropology of resource extraction and a post-humanist analytic of material vibrancy in order to rethink making in more-than-human terms. Yet it also draws attention to the neglected political economy of more-than-human making by demonstrating both the asymmetric collaborations among the human and nonhuman forces, and the importance of upper-class philanthropists’ capital and middle-class volunteers’ labor, in the coming-into-being of fossils.

The purpose of this quantitative survey research study was to explore educational preferences among individuals of conservative and liberal political orientation and of both genders in the United States of America with a 13-questionnaire survey that includes questions relating to different educational preferences. The literature review has revealed previously conducted research study that suggest that individuals of conservative and liberal political orientation may have psychological differences in the domain of emotions, attention, self-control, and cognition. However, the literature review did not reveal research studies that explored educational preferences between individuals with conservative and liberal political orientation in the United States. The results suggest that statistically significant difference exists in the preference to study abroad (χ ² (1, N = 200) = 3.739, p = 0.05). Additional differences, but without a statistically significant differences, were found in the preferences to read fiction and non-fiction genre, perform physically and non-physically challenging activities, perform reading and written assignments, and study in instructional settings where ration between the teachers and technology is uneven.

Anna Jabloner is an anthropologist and feminist science studies scholar, and visiting faculty in the Department of Anthropology at Harvard University. Her current book project, Future Pending: Californian Genomics and the Politics of Biology, is an ethnography of California through the lens of future-oriented genomic technology development. The book tracks genomics as an emerging data infrastructure that implicates Californians in a range of social engineering projects. Jabloner holds a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago (2015) and Mag.Phil. from the University of Vienna (2004).

Alors que la majorité des recherches s'intéressant au concept de la « convivialité » ont mis l'accent sur les dimensions pragmatiques de la civilité interculturelle, nous proposons ici une exploration de ses dimensions éthico-morales, surtout son lien avec les discours cosmopolites. Cet article repose sur une étude ethnographique menée auprès des membres d'une église évangélique de Nashville, au Tennessee, qui tente de réimaginer son rayonnement social auprès des non-chrétiens (religious others). S'interrogeant sur leur éthique traditionnelle du prosélytisme, ces membres mobilisent le principe de mutualité interpersonnelle et cherchent à développer des objectifs civiques communs avec les non-chrétiens.

Nous observons que les visions sur l'idée de vivre avec la différence, soit avec les non-chrétiens, s’expriment comme une tension fragile entre les valeurs concurrentielles de leur vision de l’hospitalité, qui est à la fois évangélique et pluraliste. Plutôt que d’identifier les changements entrepris par les membres comme étant l’émergence d’une disposition cosmopolite, nous soutenons que cette ambivalence morale est un aspect constitutif d’un savoir distinct sur l’éthique des relations sociales en contexte pluriel. En ce sens, cet article propose une remise en question du caractère normatif du cosmopolitisme en tant que barème moral de la pensée pluraliste dans les conceptualisations anthropologiques de la cohabitation interculturelle.

En conclusion, nous proposons qu’afin de mieux comprendre les discours religieux sur l’éthique des relations sociales en contexte pluriel, les chercheurs se questionnent sur l’influence de la pensée cosmopolite sur le cadre conceptuel de la convivialité et envisagent un engagement plus profond avec le travail intellectuel et éthique de nos interlocuteurs, qui va au-delà de la notion d’incommensurabilité des valeurs.

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In America today, two communities with sub-Saharan African genetic origins exist side by side, though they have differing histories and positions within society. This book explores the relationship between African Americans, descendants of those Africans brought to America as slaves, and migrants from sub-Saharan Africa, who have come to the United States of America voluntarily, mainly since the 1990s. Members of these groups have both a great deal in common and much that separates them, largely hidden in their assumptions about, and attitudes towards, each other. In a work grounded in extensive fieldwork Bondarenko and his research team interviewed African Americans, and migrants from twenty-three African States and five Caribbean nations, as well as non-black Americans involved with African Americans and African migrants. Seeking a wide range of perspectives, from different ages, classes and levels of education, they explored the historically rooted mutual images of African Americans and contemporary African migrants, so as to understand how these images influence the relationship between them. In particular, they examined conceptions of ‘black history’ as a common history of all people and nations with roots in Africa. What emerges is a complex picture. While collective historical memory of oppression forges solidarity, lack of knowledge of each other’s history can create distance between communities. African migrants tend to define their identities not by race, but on the basis of multiple layers of national, ethnic, religious and linguistic affinities (of which African Americans are often unaware). For African Americans, however, although national and regional identities are important, it is above all race that is the defining factor. While drawing on wider themes from anthropology and African studies, this in-depth study on a little-researched subject allows valuable new understandings of contemporary American society.

In 1883 or 1884, Joseph Westenhaver conducted partial excavation of an Adena mound on his property in Pickaway County, Ohio.  Among the material excavated by Westenhaver was a large fossil shark tooth (Figures 1 and 2).  In addition to the other interesting and rare objects, the mound yielded an usually large amount of woven fabric, ideal for radiocarbon dating.  Fabric from the mound is housed in both public and private collections.  Despite this, an absolute date has not been obtained for the mound. The purpose of this article is to document the presence of a shark tooth from an Adena mound in Ohio and to request from those with access to the fabric, the opportunity to obtain a sample for radiocarbon dating.

Astrology is a feature of everyday conversation and the local spiritual scene in Sedona, Arizona, a small town renowned for its " vortexes ". As part of a variegated new age spirituality, astrology " works " in three main ways that are examined in this article. It is an explanatory model for misfortune; a symbolic system; and a source of epistemic capital. A series of well-known ethnographic studies of African divination are used to contextualise astrology as an American form of divination. Based on almost two years of participant observation fieldwork in Northern Arizona, the ethnographic material presented in this article illuminates the question of why astrology continues to be a relevant and useful practice for Americans, despite its widespread rejection by political and scientific authorities.

Neo-monasticism, including the desire to live in Christian intentional
community, is increasingly popular in the United States.
Communities are structured around a rule or shared covenant that
outlines the parameters of living in community. Daily prayer is
often a central feature to neo-monastic life as is an emphasis on
socio-ecological justice. Drawing on recent Christian theology
about gardens, a popular neo-monastic book of common prayer,
interviews with practitioners of neo-monasticism, and fieldwork
conducted with a nascent neo-monastic community in the
southeastern United States, this article argues that prayer acts as a
religious technology of the self for socio-ecological change.
Through prayer, participants of intentional communities change,
and this in turn leads to acts that alter the socio-ecological worlds
around them.

In January 2018, in his first State of the Union address, President Trump defended the “American way” and offered a four-point plan on immigration. Trump’s proposal “offers a path to citizenship for 1.8 million illegal immigrants who were brought here by their parents at a young age,” known as DREAMers; includes implementing his signature campaign promise to build a wall on America’s southern border, ending the visa lottery, and ending chain migration.  Trump unequivocally extended a hand of bipartisanship. But Democrats were furious over the president’s words, saying he has only made a bipartisan deal harder to reach.