Transatlantic Parallaxes: Toward Reciprocal Anthropology

Introduction : toward reciprocal anthropology / Anne Raulin and Susan Carol Rogers -- Homeless people (Paris, Los Angeles) : the principle of equality seen from below / Patrick Gaboriau -- The moral public sphere : integration and discrimination in a French new town / Beth Epstein -- Creolization, racial imagination and the music market in French Louisiana / Sara Le Menestrel -- Claiming culture, defending culture : perspectives on culture in France and the United States / David Beriss -- Gay activism and the question of community / William Poulin-Deltour -- Confronting "community": from social space in rural France to the Vietnamese diaspora / Deborah Reed-Danahay -- Healing the community : ethics and ancestry in Orisha religious practices in the United States / Stefania Capone -- Healing at the foot of the Twin Towers : beyond the trauma of 9/11 / Anne Raulin -- To live in a world of possibilities : a new age version of the American myth / Christian Ghasarian -- Faux amis in the countryside : deciphering the familiar / Susan Carol Rogers.

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.