What good are elections? An anthropological analysis of American elections

Journal article

Devised by anthropologists to look at non-Western societies, this paper uses anthropological ideas about rituals to analyze elections in United States culture. The argument is that elections are a ritual structure deeply embedded in the history and structure of the United States, and its place in the world-system. And, therefore, this is not a ritual practice that can be or should be considered necessarily appropriate for other places. In addition to its ethnographic and theoretical interests, then, the paper is a contribution to applied anthropology. Using data from the earliest years of the country's existence to the present, and focusing on presidential elections, it outlines four different but interrelated schemes. The first follows from the way a Nature/Culture contrast operates. The second employs standard ideas about rites of passage. An analysis of African joking relationships is used to delineate relationships internal to the rites of passage structure. The final model outlines how the entire ritual edifice accomplishes a temporary shift in United States consciousness into an image of mechanical solidarity.

Authors: Damon, FH

• Publication status: Published
• Peer review status: Peer reviewed
• Publisher: Anthropological Society of Oxford
• Journal: Journal of the Anthropological Society of Oxford Online
• Volume: 9
• Issue: 2
• Pages: 199-214
• Publication date: 2017-01-01
• DOI: 10.5287/ora-go7en9b9g
• ISSN: 2040-1876
• Language: English
• Keywords: JASO