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Patrolling the Homeland explores the tension surrounding the militarization of national borders through the perspective of US militia volunteers. Amidst a humanitarian crisis in which more than 7,800 people have lost their lives attempting to cross the border, US militias patrol the deserts along the Mexican border in camouflage, armed with assault rifles and night-vision goggles to "protect" the US. How and why US border militias conduct their activities is paramount to understanding similar movements, ideologies, and rhetoric around the world that oppose the movement of refugees and support the closing or restriction of international and regional borders.
Based on extensive and engaging ethnography, Patrolling the Homeland explores not how people strive to be moral but how they maintain their self-perception as already and always moral individuals in spite of evidence to the contrary. This book signifies a creative and unique addition to morality and ethics through an honest and critical examination of a unique social movement indicative of contemporary society. A valuable read for anthropologists, sociologists, criminologists, and individuals interested in morality and ethics, militias, border studies, and policing.
List of contents
Patrolling the Homeland - Volunteer Border Militias and the Power of Moral Assemblages 1. Border Watch 2. Morality 3. Ethnicity at the Nation's Frontier 4. Experience, Narrative, and the Moral Imperative to Act 5. Embodied Narrative on the Border 6. The Moral Citizen, Virtue Ethics, and the Internal Ought 7. The Comfort to Act A World Without Self-Reflection
About the author
John R. Parsons holds a PhD in anthropology from the University of Queensland. His research concentrates on the intersection of morality, narrative, and violence.
Summary
Patrolling the Homeland explores the tension surrounding the militarization of national borders through the perspective of US militia volunteers. A valuable read for anthropologists, sociologists, criminologists, and individuals with an interest in morality and ethics, militias and border studies.
Report
"This book is a unique study based upon ethnography in a very difficult area to secure access. It would not only be of interest to sociology/social studies related to immigration and border related studies but also criminology courses looking at policing in the broadest way." - Mark Button, University of Portsmouth
"If one wants to understand the complexity of living in our contemporary world, then look no further than this book. John Parsons study of border militias in the United States offers a unique entree into the larger issues we all confront today. This is one of the most ethnographically and theoretically significant works in the anthropology of ethics that I have read in a long time." - Jarrett Zigon, University of Virginia.
