Description
Book SynopsisGuided by Gramsci's question of why so many victims support the labyrinth of their oppression, Robert A. Williams queries garrison state machinations in electioneering to promote hegemony. This pioneering ethnography explores the role and function of the U.S. garrison state in U.S. electioneering through participant observation of the United States's largest third partythe Libertarian Party (LP)as a window to wider sociocultural dynamics of covert power in U.S. politics. Some three decades of insider membership roles within Libertarian Party electioneering combined with two years of doctoral fieldwork provide an ethnographic window into cultural hegemony in U.S. electoral politics and sociological analysis of the information warfare that sustains it.
Anchored in original and extensive participant observation including interviews and surveys, this ethnography of United States's sociologically understudied Libertarian Party (LP) probes the power of cul
Trade Review
“As the Libertarian Party turns 50, Robert A. Williams provides a critical historical account and eye-opening ethnography of hegemonic cultural trends affecting all parties in the United States while tracing the role of the military/industrial complex in their generation. His book is an insightful contribution to anthropology, political science, sociology, and U.S. history.”—Kwaku Obosu-Mensah, Author of Ghana’s Volta Resettlement Scheme: The Long-Term Consequences of Post-Colonial State Planning and Food Production in Urban Areas: A Study of Urban Agriculture in Accra, Ghana
“Bringing a fresh ethnographic approach to the sociology of electioneering, Garrison State Hegemony in U.S. Politics critically illuminates how Libertarian party activists have had to adapt to scores of ever-changing manifestations of cultural hegemony, to nevertheless be swept away electorally.”—Alexander Smith, Associate Professor of Sociology, The University of Warwick
“Wide ranging and interdisciplinary, Garrison State Hegemony in U.S. Politics offers a unique granular view of the origins and directions of libertarian politics and its complex and fractious internal dynamics, focusing particularly on Ohio. Robert A. Williams’s estimable book offers a case study of electoral failure in third party American politics.”—Jack Glazier, Professor Emeritus of Anthropology, Oberlin College
Table of Contents
Preface – Acknowledgements – List of Abbreviations – Culture and Libertarian Politics – Organizing for Votes – Representations by the Local "New" and the Local "Old" – Fair Booths – Electoral Campaigns – Cultural Logics and Duopoly – Political Economy of "Third" Parties – Political Thought and [Re]Invention of Traditions – Ideology and Hegemony – Bibliography – Index.
