Catherine L. Besteman
Francis F. Bartlett and Ruth K. Bartlett Professor of Anthropology
4702 Mayflower Hill
Waterville, Maine 04901-8847
Education
M.A.; Ph.D. University of Arizona
Areas of Expertise
- Inequality and racism
- security, insecurity, violence, militarism
- Africa, South Africa, southern Somalia, US
- migration and mobility
- engaged anthropology
- visual anthropology
Courses Currently Teaching
Course | Course Title |
---|---|
AY112 C | Cultural Anthropology |
AY112 E | Cultural Anthropology |
AY229 A | Reading Ethnographies of Climate Change |
AY333 A | Contemporary Theory |
GS198 A | Incarceration and Human Rights: A Reading Group |
Professional Information
Current Research
Migration and Borders. The Somali civil war sent millions of Somalis across borders as refugees, precipitating one of the largest refugee movements at the time. For the past two decades I have studied how borders, nationalisms, statecraft, neoliberalism, and militarism shape mobilities and migratory routes. Some of this work has been ethnographic and focused on the trajectories and experiences of Somalis I have known since the late 1980s, as in Making Refuge: Somali Bantu Refugees and Lewiston, Maine. Other work analyzes structural and systemic dimensions at the global level, as in Militarized Global Apartheid, published in 2020.
Security, Militarism and Militarization. As discourses of security and risk continue to feed militarization, anthropologists need to be attentive to their effects. My edited series at Duke University Press, Global Insecurities, showcases ethnographic work on security and insecurity, and my 2020 book, Militarized Global Apartheid argues that a new form of security imperialism is producing a racialized global order maintained by interlinked militarized efforts by the global North to control mobility and labor. The Network of Concerned Anthropologists continues to critically analyze and challenge militarism and militarization in our 2020 book: Militarization: A Reader (Duke University Press). My co-edited volumes The Insecure American (University of California Press, 2009) and Life by Algorithms: How Roboprocesses are Reshaping our World (University of Chicago Press, 2019) analyze permutations of risk and insecurity across a range of domains in contemporary American life.
Visual Anthropology. In addition to teaching and writing op-eds, I’m acutely interested in exploring ways to bring anthropological critiques to broader audiences through visual registers, such as websites, films, and most especially art exhibitions, as in my fall 2018 project Making Migration Visible: Traces, Tracks, Pathways at Portland’s Institute of Contemporary Art, co-curated with artist Julie Poitras Santos and funded by the National Endowment for the Arts. The exhibition was accompanied by a wide range of events about migration, mobility, and border crossings hosted by partner organizations, such as performances, exhibitions, films, lectures, community conversations, and poetry readings. I am currently coordinating a coalition-based statewide public humanities initiative, Freedom and Captivity, on abolitionist visions for Maine.
Public Anthropology.
Anthropology is a discipline of profound importance in a globalized world. Demonstrating anthropology's critical insights on contemporary issues is the central project of several articles and Why America's Top Pundits are Wrong (University of California Press, 2005), co-edited with Hugh Gusterson.
Publications


Life by Algorithms: How Roboprocesses are Reshaping Our World
brings together leading ethnographers to produce a portrait of the impact of algorithmic automation across many domains of contemporary American life, from public education to pork production to ubiquitous surveillance.

How do people who have survived the ravages of war and displacement rebuild their lives in a new country when their world has totally changed? This book follows the trajectory of Somali Bantus from their homes in Somalia before the onset of Somalia’s civil war, to their displacement by violence to Kenyan refugee camps, to their resettlement in cities across the United States, to their settlement in Lewiston, Maine as “secondary migrants” grappling with the struggles of xenophobia, neoliberalism, and grief. Tracking their experiences over three decades of mobility from refugee camps to places of refuge in the US, the book asks what humanitarianism feels like to those who are its objects and what happens when refugees move in next door. The competing and contradictory responses by Lewiston’s residents to the unexpected arrival of thousands of refugees illuminates contemporary debates about economic responsibility, moral responsibility, security and community that immigration provokes.

The Insecure American, coedited with Hugh Gusterson, University of California Press, 2009, features essays by nineteen leading ethnographers who analyze why Americans are feeling insecure and how they are responding. The essays map the impact of a fraying safety net, the 'war on terror', the labor market's race to the bottom, the 'war on drugs', mass incarceration, and more.

Transforming Cape Town, University of California Press, 2008 (Leeds Honor Book Award, Society for Urban, National, and Transnational Anthropology, 2009) analyzes how and why apartheid-era inequalities continue to define social realities in Cape Town and discusses anti-racism and anti-poverty projects that seek to challenge the enduring inequalities left in place after the dismantlement of legal apartheid.


Violence: A Reader (Palgrave Press and New York University Press 2002) is a collection of significant theoretical and ethnographic studies of violence by social scientists.


Selected Recent Journal Articles
2019 "A New Manifesto?" American Ethnologist 46(3).
2019 "Refuge and Security Panics." Public Anthropologist 1(1): 41-61.
2019 "Militarized Global Apartheid." Current Anthropology 60(S19).
2019 "Hostile Charity: Somali Refugees and Risk in a New Security Age." In Erica Caple James, ed., Governing Gifts, Faith, Charity, and the Security State. Santa Fe, NM: School of Advanced Research Press.
2017 "Experimenting in Somalia: The New Security Empire." Anthropological Theory 17(3): 404-420. 2014 "On Ethnographic Love." In Roger Sanjek, ed., Mutuality. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
2014 "Refuge Fragments, Fragmentary Refuge." Ethnography 15(4).
2013 “Three Reflections on Public Anthropology.” Anthropology Today 29(6).
2013 “Somali Bantus in a State of Refuge.” Bildhaan: An International Journal of Somali Studies 12: 11-33.
2012 “Translating Race Across Time and Space: The Creation of Somali Bantu Ethnicity.” Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power 19(3): 1-18.
2010 "“In and Out of the Academy: The Case for a Strategic Anthropology.” Human Organization 69(4): 407-417.
2009 “A Refuge Odyssey: A Story of Globalization and Somali Bantu Refugees.” Anthropology Now 1(2): 96-108.
2009 “Counter Africom.” In The Counter-Counter Insurgency Manual, or Notes on Demilitarizing American Society. Network of Concerned Anthropologists Steering Committee. Chicago: Prickly Paradigm Press, p. 115-135.
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