Editor’s Letter

Our issue opens somewhat unusually for Public Culture, with two Forum pieces that focus on the United States.Harel Shapira begins by bringing us up close with American gun culture.Drawing on his two-year ethnography of gun owners, Shapira introduces us to Calvin Mitchell.Calvin is a classic gun owner in many senses -he's conservative, he loves guns, he belongs to a range of gun organizations -but he also happens to be black.And through Calvin, Shapira shows us how gun politics isn't about the right to bear arms; it's about a political matrix that interweaves various kinds of political commitments, including a racial politics that generally excludes men like Calvin.When we seek to understand guns and gun violence we often look closer and closer at guns themselves.But Calvin's story suggests that this fetishization of the gun, at the expense of attention to the political matrix of gun culture, may well move us further away from understanding.Andrea M. Voyer has been similarly immersed, ethnographically, studying schools, churches, and neighborhood organizations throughout New York City to better understand how inequality works, not just in terms of wages but in our everyday lives.In this intimate portrait, she shows us how "inequality operates through slights and exclusions, rests on misunderstandings and prejudicial interpretations, and remains omnipresent" even in places that strive for egalitarianism.Voyer provides us with a poignant reminder of how, even when democratic civility prevails, background inequalities on the basis of race, gender, social class, and immigration status are often reproduced in mundane everyday interaction.Kaiama L. Glover's essay follows immediately from and builds nicely on Voyer's, outlining the everyday "benign denials" of race and poverty.Glover's site is Haiti, and she reveals how political and popular commentators curiously conflate it with Africa.The denials that catch her eye are everyday acts of dehumaniza

Political science · Gun Ownership and Violence Research · History · Social Movements and Cultural Identity · Sociology and Norbert Elias