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This unique volume is about how ordinary people construct political meanings, form political emotions and identities, and become involved in or disengaged from political contests. Drawing on psychological anthropology, it illustrates the complexities of political subjectivities through engaging personal stories that complicate our understanding of the relationship between culture and politics. Chapters examine the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street in the United States, third gender activism in India, Rastafari in Jamaica, Courage to Refuse in Israel, the environmental movement in the U.S., Salafi movements in northern Nigeria, post-socialist labor politics in Romania, and anti-immigrant activism in Denmark.
List of contents
1. Introduction: The Person in Politics and Culture.- 2. The Meanings of Social Movements for Bystanders: The Case of Occupy Wall Street.- 3. Progressives' Plantation: The Tea Party's Complex Relationship with Race.- 4. Re-Figuring the Public, Political, and Personal in Current Danish Exclusionary Reasoning.- 5. Feeling Populist: Navigating Political Subjectivity in Post-Socialist Romania.- 6. Sensory Politics and War: Affective Anchoring and Vitality in Nigeria and Kuwait.- 7. The Ungendered Self: Sex Reassignment, The Third Gender, and Gender Fluidity in India.- 8. Mediating Moralities: Inter-subjectivities in Israeli Soldiers' Narratives of the Occupation.- 9. An Ethnographic Life Narrative Strategy for Studying Race, Identity, and Acts of Political Significance: Black Racial Identity Theory and the Rastafari of Jamaica.- 10. Political Becoming in Practice: Lessons from the Environmental, Tea Party, and Rastafari Movements.
About the author
Claudia Strauss is Professor of Anthropology at Pitzer College, USA. Her publications include Making Sense of Public Opinion: American Discourses about Immigration and Social Programs (2012) and A Cognitive Theory of Cultural Meaning (with Naomi Quinn, 1997).
Jack R. Friedman is Research Scientist at the Center for Applied Social Research at the University of Oklahoma, USA. His research focuses on unemployment and political consciousness in Romania, mental health care, and socio-ecological responses to and stressors associated with climate change.
Summary
This unique volume is about how ordinary people construct political meanings, form political emotions and identities, and become involved in or disengaged from political contests. Drawing on psychological anthropology, it illustrates the complexities of political subjectivities through engaging personal stories that complicate our understanding of the relationship between culture and politics. Chapters examine the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street in the United States, third gender activism in India, Rastafari in Jamaica, Courage to Refuse in Israel, the environmental movement in the U.S., Salafi movements in northern Nigeria, post-socialist labor politics in Romania, and anti-immigrant activism in Denmark.
