Ebook: Ethnographies of U.S. Empire

How do we live in and with empire? The contributors to Ethnographies of U.S. Empire pursue this question by examining empire as an unequally shared present. Here empire stands as an entrenched, if often invisible, part of everyday life central to making and remaking a world in which it is too often presented as an aberration rather than as a structuring condition. This volume presents scholarship from across U.S. imperial formations: settler colonialism, overseas territories, communities impacted by U.S. military action or political intervention, Cold War alliances and fissures, and, most recently, new forms of U.S. empire after 9/11. From the Mohawk Nation, Korea, and the Philippines to Iraq and the hills of New Jersey, the contributors show how a methodological and theoretical commitment to ethnography sharpens all of our understandings of the novel and timeworn ways people live, thrive, and resist in the imperial present.

Contributors: Kevin K. Birth, Joe Bryan, John F. Collins, Jean Dennison, Erin Fitz-Henry, Adriana María Garriga-López, Olívia Maria Gomes da Cunha, Matthew Gutmann, Ju Hui Judy Han, J. Kehaulani Kauanui, Eleana Kim, Heonik Kwon, Soo Ah Kwon, Darryl Li, Catherine Lutz, Sunaina Maira, Carole McGranahan, Sean T. Mitchell, Jan M. Padios, Melissa Rosario, Audra Simpson, Ann Laura Stoler, Fa’anofo Lisaclaire Uperesa, David Vine

Carole McGranahan is Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of Colorado and the author of Arrested Histories: Tibet, the CIA, and Memories of a Forgotten War, also published by Duke University Press.

John F. Collins is Associate Professor of Anthropology at Queens College and The Graduate Center, City University of New York, and the author of Revolt of the Saints: Memory and Redemption in the Twilight of Brazilian Racial Democracy, also published by Duke University Press.

“Ethnographies of U.S. Empire is an exceptionally rich collection of articles on the variety of forms American imperialism takes, both internally (starting with the dispossession of Native peoples from their lands) and globally. And unlike some of the grander and less grounded takes on empire as an almost abstract phenomenon, these authors approach the problem ethnographically, through closely observed case studies that powerfully capture the texture of experience of real people in real places in a world of colonial, post-colonial, and imperial power.” — Sherry B. Ortner, Distinguished Professor of Anthropology, University of California, Los Angeles

“Bringing together some of the most compelling and innovative ethnographers working today on U.S. empire, this volume makes a substantial and influential contribution to the critical study of U.S. imperial formations. It will be an indispensable touchstone for the discipline of anthropology and essential reading for anyone seeking to understand the complex dynamics of U.S. global power.” — Alyosha Goldstein, editor of, Formations of United States Colonialism