Draws on different facets of American life to map the impact of the new economy, the 'war on terror', the 'war on drugs', racial resentments, a fraying safety net, undocumented immigration, a health care system in crisis, and more.

Foreword by Barbara Ehrenreich Acknowledgments Introduction Catherine Besteman and Hugh Gusterson Part One Fortress America 1. A nation of Gated Communities Setha M. Low 2.Warmaking as the AmericanWay of life Catherine Lutz 3. Republic of fear: The rise of Punitive Governance in America Roger N. Lancaster Part Two The New Economy 4. Neoliberalism, or The Bureaucratization of the World David Graeber 5.The Age of Wal-Mart Jane L. Collins 6. Deindustrializing Chicago: A Daughter's story Christine J.Walley 7. Racism, risk, and the new Color of Dirty Jobs Lee D. Baker Part Three Insecurity as a Profit Center 8. Normal Insecurities, Healthy Insecurities Joseph Dumit 9. Cultivating Insecurity: How Marketers Are Commercializing Childhood Juliet B. Schor Part Four The Most Vulnerable 10. Uneasy street T.M. Luhrmann 11. Body and soul: Profits from Poverty BrettWilliams 12. Useless suffering: The War on Homeless Drug Addicts Philippe Bourgois 13.Walling out Immigrants Peter Kwong Part Five Insecurity and Terror 14. Compounding Insecurity:What the neocon Core reveals about America today Janine R.Wedel 15. Deploying law as aWeapon in America'sWar on terror Susan F. Hirsch Part Six Insecurities of Body and Spirit 16. Death and Dying in Anxious America Nancy Scheper-Hughes 17. Get religion Susan Harding Notes List of Contributors Index

"The Insecure American turned out to be a revelation—by turns alarming, depressing and laugh-out-loud amusing."—Eugene Robinson, Washington Post“During the last half century, America morphed almost seamlessly from 'the Age of Anxiety' into 'the Age of Insecurity'. The threat of nuclear annihilation hovered ominously as a Damoclean sword, and while there are residues—that anxiety has been substantially replaced by a gnawing sense of more local insecurity—from employment and healthcare uncertainty, to expanding gated communities and food-supply woes. This is as rich a collection as one can find that provides compelling accounts for how and why this has happened.”—Troy Duster, Director of the Institute for the History of the Production of Knowledge at NYU"If ever the United States was a country of shared prosperity, it no longer answers to that description. The consequences for American families, particularly those at the bottom of the social structure, but increasingly in the middle class as well, have been devastating to their pocketbooks, their confidence, and the hope that their children will be able to make it in the world they are inheriting. This distinguished group of anthropologists trains an ethnographic lens on the impact of growing insecurity on the social fabric of the nation. Concerned citizens, fellow social scientists, students, and policy makers should pay attention to their message."—Katherine Newman, Princeton University, co-author of The Missing Class: Portraits of the Near Poor in America