Paper short abstract:

American conservatism has gone through profound changes in recent decades. This presentation explores some of the ways in which influential conservative themes put people into motion politically. It also deals with the problems these modes of motion pose for anthropological inquiry.

Paper long abstract:

Recent decades have seen substantial changes in the political landscape of the United States. Accelerating political polarization along social and demographic lines, sometimes popularized as "culture wars", has coincided with a general movement to the right of the preferences of the electorate. A partly novel ideological configuration, encompassing facets of evangelical Christianity, expansionist foreign policy and particular forms of neoliberalism, has proved especially powerful in animating these transformations. This presentation explores some of the ways in which such influential conservative themes put people into motion politically. Based on fieldwork among conservative voters, activists and representatives in a small town in northwestern Ohio, it also deals with the problems these modes of motion potentially pose for anthropological inquiry. More specifically, at a time and place where stereotypes and realities seem destined to blur, how might anthropology productively engage with these political forms without reproducing polarities that are partly constitutive of them? Highlighting some of the displacements and tensions in everyday "conservative talk" I suggest we read the political thrust of contemporary conservatism primarily from the perspective of the existential work it is employed to perform by specific people in specific circumstances. In relation to this work the positive content of ideology - be it faith in God, in the transformative power of the market, in the nation or in the President - thus retains something of a secondary status.

Paper short abstract:

Focusing on the diets of US 'drop outs' in Hawai'i, in this paper I explore their critique of over-processing food embodied through diet and from this identify over-processing as the centrally defining characteristic of what they see as mainstream American culture.

Paper long abstract:

The words 'mainstream American culture' (MAC) evoke images of shopping malls, cheerleaders and baseball, hotdogs, burgers and apple pie. In this paper I bring into view the culinary dimension of MAC through ethnography with white, middle-class Americans brought up in the West Coast suburbs. However, I explore not the practices of generating MAC through cuisine itself, but rather through its radical critique. For the people whose diets and culinary attitudes I discuss here 'dropped out' of what they saw as 'mainstream America[n culture]' to live its 'counterculture' in rural Hawai'i. It is through this digestive critique that that their particular vision of MAC comes into view.

The range of diets practiced by Hawai'i drop outs was wide, and I focus here on the two most common: raw foodism and food combining. Both utilised very different visions of human physiology, yet I argue that what united them was a shared emphasis on minimising processing. Practitioners of these diets undertook to eat only raw food or to separate out fruit, carbohydrate and protein foods in order to reduce the strain placed upon the digestive tract; in order to minimise, I argue, the processing of food not only in cultivation and meal preparation but also digestion. It is this which is the site of radical, embodied critique of MAC. Drawing on Levi-Strauss' culinary triangle I argue that these diets highlight what this group of 'drop outs' saw as the centrally defining characteristic of MAC: over-processed, over-cooked food for an over-processed, over-cooked culture.

Paper short abstract:

Based on the continuing attendance at services, the paper discusses the content and preaching style of sermons in four major gay and lesbian congregations in New York City. The paper also inquires into the congregants’ modes of interpretation, and their response to the agenda addressed by the clergy.

Paper long abstract:

For many years the study of culture and social relationships in churches, synagogues and mosques has remained a marginal field among anthropologists. Based on the continuing attendance at services, the paper discusses the content and preaching style of sermons in four major gay and lesbian congregations in New York—Dignity (Catholic), Unity (Afro-American), CBST (Jewish), and in particular, Metropolitan Community Church (Protestant).

Scripture is the typical starting point for sermons in all the congregations observed. Most, however, expand beyond that. But, the emphasis, and the mixture of religious, political, moral, and personal themes differ greatly between the four denominations and between individual preachers. The paper also inquires into the congregants' modes of interpretation, and their response to the agenda addressed by the clergy.

Listening to the sermons and observing the congregants' reaction shed light on the attraction that religious institutions continue to maintain among an urban population, many of whose members may have felt alienated from the religious experience of their upbringing.

Paper short abstract:

The results of the research presented in this paper elucidate the factors, which influence countries' global press coverage and promote an understanding of the creation of national images in American press coverage in the case of Russia, the UK and Iran.

Paper long abstract:

The study of the global press coverage organized by UNESCO in the 1980s and 1990s revealed the following trends in the global press coverage: a) the domination of the large and economically developed countries and the peripheralization of the smaller developing countries, especially of the African and the Pacific regions; b) the increasing dependence of the country images on the global press coverage.

This paper is primarily aimed at testing these hypotheses. The press coverage data for nine countries, including the US, China, Russia and Iraq from "News Factors in Global Press Coverage" project was compared to GDP per capita indicator. We observe a weak correlation between these two indicators. This analysis of the global press coverage reveals that the existing disparity between the countries on media coverage is not primarily associated with economic inequality, but it that the global media community is highly sensitive to authoritarian political regimes and crises or conflicts in political contexts.

The images of Russia, United Kingdom and Iran in the three influential US newspapers "The New York Times", "US Today", and "The Wall Street Journal" were explored with content-monitoring research techniques. We have found that the image of the Great Britain in the US newspapers was structurally different from both Russian and Iranian images, and it contains more terms on social and cultural life and less terms related to power and politics.