Back to America - (Anthropology of Contemporary North America) by William H Westermeyer (Paperback)

About the Book

Back to America is one of the few ethnographies of local activist groups within the Tea Party. Westermeyer explains the significance of grassroots groups in individual as well as collective political identity formation and how both contribute to the success of the wider movement.

Book Synopsis

Back to America is an ethnography of local activist groups within the Tea Party, one of the most important recent political movements to emerge in the United States and one that continues to influence American politics. Though often viewed as the brainchild of conservative billionaires and Fox News, the success of the Tea Party movement was as much, if not more, the result of everyday activists at the grassroots level. William H. Westermeyer traces how local Tea Party groups (LTPGs) create submerged spaces where participants fashion action-oriented collective and personal political identities forged in the context of cultural or figured worlds. These figured worlds allow people to establish meaningful links between their own lives and concerns, on the one hand, and the movement's goals and narratives, on the other. Collectively, the production and circulation of the figured worlds within LTPGs provide the basis for subjectivities that often nurture political activism.

Westermeyer reveals that LTPGs are vibrant and independent local organizations that, while constantly drawing on nationally disseminated cultural images and discourses, are far from simple agents of the larger organizations and the media. Back to America offers a welcome anthropological approach to this important social movement and to our understanding of grassroots political activism writ large.

Review Quotes

"An extraordinary, profound, enduringly important, and lucidly written anthropology that shows how people in the American South fashion identities as Tea Party activists out of an expedient and unmatched relationship to national conservative media."--Peter Hervik, associate professor of anthropology at Aalborg University

-- (2/23/2019 12:00:00 AM)

"Do you want to understand how the Tea Party movement works? Read Back to America. . . . Anthropologist William Westermeyer, drawing on his field-based research in the American South, shows us the interrelated grassroots, media, and elite nature of the Tea Party. Westermeyer analyzes how Tea Party members utilize various cultural resources to communicate their identity and their claims, and how their messages are amplified on the state and national level. Back to America will show you how the Tea Party works as a social movement."--Charles Price, associate professor of anthropology at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill

-- (2/23/2019 12:00:00 AM)

"Filled with fascinating examples of Tea Party members explaining the personal meanings of national conservative discourses. . . . There are important implications of this study for social movements across the political spectrum."--Claudia Strauss, professor of anthropology at Pitzer College

-- (2/23/2019 12:00:00 AM)

"The definitive ethnographic account of Tea Party activism, illuminating the links between the lived experiences of local Tea Party groups, conservative elites, and right-wing media. A must-read for anyone trying to understand right-wing populism today!"--Jeffrey S. Juris, associate professor of anthropology at Northeastern University
-- (2/23/2019 12:00:00 AM)

About the Author

William H. Westermeyer is an assistant professor of anthropology at the University of South Carolina, Aiken.