Something Between Us: The Everyday Walls of American Life, and How to Take Them Down

Whether the plight of refugees or the recent pandemic, the climate crisis or systemic racism, so much turns on the care and concern we can muster for lives and circumstances beyond our own. And yet, the deep divides of national life in the United States have made effective action on such matters a serious and sometimes intractable challenge. Why is it so difficult to acknowledge and address the intertwining of our lives with others?

Over the last eight years, anthropologist Anand Pandian has crisscrossed the United States talking with Americans of all kinds, seeking to make sense of the ruptures that plague our physical and psychological social fabric. Insider versus outsider, familiar versus stranger, safety versus threat: these stark distinctions are anchored and sustained by the makeup of so much of contemporary American life, from fortified neighborhoods to bulked-up cars, from visions of the body as an armored fortress, to media that shut out contrary perspectives. These interlocking divides make it difficult to take unfamiliar people and perspectives seriously; harder to acknowledge the needs of strangers, to trust their motives and empathize with their struggles.

Using the tools of an anthropologist, Pandian interweaves vivid and challenging encounters-with salesmen and truck drivers, police officers and urban planners, activists for racial and environmental justice and many others-with fascinating historical and cultural analysis that challenges us to think beyond the twists and turns of our immediate present. While our impasses draw from deep American histories of segregation and suspicion, Pandian shows us how the work of mutual aid and communal caretaking can help us surface more radical visions for a life in common with others, and teach us how to meet strangers in this land as potential kin.