In a time of great U.S. and global social unrest and unravelling, Systemic Collapse and Renewal presents a blueprint for how Americans can respond to that unrest by reclaiming and rebuilding our democracy. Part I of the book traces the deep, underlying sources of the disintegration and collapse. Through storytelling, case history, and ethnography, it examines how a small group of "elites" used ethnic diversity resulting from global migration to the U.S. as a distraction while they implemented a planned, behind-closed-doors strategy to seize the democracy and ruin the middle class. With the former representative democracy hijacked by these moneyed interests, this book demonstrates that it remains quintessentially American to believe that there is always a way out, and that the encroaching acts of fascism by "elites" can be pushed back and defeated. Tapping into this optimism, Part II of Systemic Collapse and Renewal sets forth a path for democratic rebirth. That path begins byexamining that which was taken away: the shared meanings (cultural norms, beliefs, and behaviors) that are deeply American and can be re-taught, celebrated, and once again used by Americans to build social cohesion as a country. Part II also urges a new U.S. educational and social movement based on mutual reliance-and on the healing of wounds-for an increasingly diverse country. Democratic renewal begins with the simple step of sharing our stories and our dreams about how to make a better world.
"Gregory Tanaka's moving and illuminative text is equal parts memoir and analysis of the ethnocultural predicament as it has evolved from his 1950s childhood to the present. It covers a wide range of experiences and tropes, yet all of them significantly American-business competition, baseball, public education, participatory democracy, the immigrant experience, and so on. In its most concerning moments, the book is, as Tanaka would say, 'an anthropology of collapse.' But then again, as it moves forward, it is also 'an anthropology of renewal.' I read in it promise. I read in it disappointment. I read in it possibility. This book feels like America. And I loved it." Kevin Michael Foster, President of the Council on Anthropology and Education, Founder of «Blackademics Television» on PBS TV, and Associate Professor, The University of Texas at Austin