Description
Book Synopsis Anthropological inquiry developed around the study of the exotic. Now that we live in a world that seems increasingly familiar, putatively marked by a spreading sameness, anthropology must re-envision itself. The emergence of diverse national traditions in the discipline offers one intriguing path. This volume, the product of a novel encounter of American anthropologists of France and French anthropologists of the United States, explores the possibilities of that path through an experiment in the reciprocal production of knowledge. Simultaneously native subjects, foreign experts, and colleagues, these scholars offer novel insights into each other’s societies, juxtaposing glimpses of ourselves and a familiar “others” to productively unsettle and enrich our understanding of both.
Table of Contents Preface
List of Contributors
Introduction: Toward reciprocal anthropology
Anne Raulin and Susan Carol Rogers
PART I: DISTINCTIONS: CLASS, RACE, CULTURE
Chapter 1. Homeless People (Paris, Los Angeles): The principle of equality seen from below
Patrick Gaboriau
Chapter 2. The Moral Public Sphere: Integration and discrimination in a French New Town
Beth Epstein
Chapter 3. Creolization, Racial Imagination and the Music Market in French Louisiana
Sara Le Menestrel
Chapter 4. Claiming Culture, Defending Culture: Perspectives on culture in France and the United States
David Beriss
PART II: KEY WORDS: COMMUNITY, HEALING
Chapter 5. Gay Activism and the Question of Community
William Poulin-Deltour
Chapter 6. Confronting “Community”: From Rural France to the Vietnamese Diaspora
Deborah Reed-Danahay
Chapter 7. Healing the Community: Ethics and ancestry in Orisha religious practices in the United States
Stefania Capone
Chapter 8. Healing at the Foot of the Twin Towers: Beyond the trauma of 9/11
Anne Raulin
PART III: MYTHS: ENDLESS POSSIBILITY, COUNTRYSIDES
Chapter 9. To Live in a World of Possibilities: A New Age version of the American Myth
Christian Ghasarian
Chapter 10. Faux Amis in the Countryside: Deciphering the familiar
Susan Carol Rogers
Index
