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Ten absorbing studies present activist groups across the country -- from transgender activists in New York City, to South Asian teenagers in Silicon Valley, to evangelical Christians and Palestinian Americans -- and examines a social change effort as it unfolds on the ground. Through their anthropological approach these portraits of American society suggest the inherent possibilities in identity-based organizing and offer crucial in-depth perspectives on such hotly debated topics as multiculturalism and the culture wars, the environment, racism, public education, Native American rights, and the Christian right.
List of contents
Foreword, by Faye Ginsburg Acknowledgments Introduction, by Melissa Checker and Maggie Fishman Treading Murky Waters: Day-To-Day Dilemmas in the Construction of a Pluralistic U.S. Environmental Movement, by Melissa Checker Creating Art, Creating Citizens: Arts Education as Cultural Activism, by Maggie Fishman Creating a Political Space for American Indian Economic Development: Indian Gaming and American Indian Activism, by Kate Spilde "The Calculus of Pain": Violence, Anthropological Ethics, and the Category Transgender, by David Valentine We Shall Overcome? Changing Politics and Changing Sexuality in the Ex-Gay Movement, by Tanya Erzen Sins of Our Soccer Moms: Servant Evangelism and the Spiritual Injuries of Class, by Omri Elisha Food Fights: Contesting "Cultural Diversity" in Crown Heights, by Henry Goldschmidt FOBby or Tight? "Multicultural Day" and Other Struggles in Two Silicon Valley High Schools, by Shalini Shankar Gathering "Roots" and Making History in the Korean Adoptee Community, by Eleana Kim Activism and Exile: Palestinianness and the Politics of Solidarity, by Rabab Abdulhadi
About the author
Melissa Checker is assistant professor of applied anthropology at the University of Memphis. Her research on environmental justice activism is the subject of an upcoming ethnography and several articles. She has been involved as an activist in the environmental justice movement. In her own discipline she endeavors to bring anthropological voices into public policy.Maggie Fishman is completing her doctoral dissertation on the contemporary arts education movement in New York City in the department of anthropology at New York University. She works evaluating arts-in-education programs in New York City public schools and has been active there in various causes, including the creation of a neighborhood school whose curriculum incorporates the tools of ethnography.
