Reconsidering American Power: Pax Americana and the Social Sciences

John D. Kelly is Christian W. Mackauer Professor of Anthropology and Social Sciences at the University of Chicago and is the author of coeditor of eight books.. He does research in Fiji and in India, on topics including ritual in history, knowledge and power, semiotic and military technologies, colonialism and capitalism, decolonization and diasporas. His most recent book, Represented Communities: Fiji and World Decolonization, co-written with Martha Kaplan, concernsthe constituting of nation-states out of empires. He is currently working on two other books. Laws Like Bullets, also co-authored with Martha Kaplan, concerns colonial lawgiving. Technography: Sciences in the History of Cultures, raises questions for anthropology of knowledge with a focus on thegrammarians of ancient India and the engineering of Sanskrit.Kurt Jacobsen has been a research associate (lately, Associate) in Political Science at the University of Chicago since the mid-1980s. He has taught at the Center for the Study of Science, Technology and Medicine at Imperial College London, Duke University, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Rutgers University, University of Chicago and been a visiting scholar many times at the London School of Economics. He is the author or editor of ten other books, including Chasing Progress in theIrish Republic, Technical Fouls: Democratic Dilemmas and Technological Change, Experiencing The State (co-edited with Lloyd Rudolph), Freud's Foes, Pacification and Its Discontents, and International Politics and Inner Worlds. He is book review editor at Logos: A Journal of Modern Society & Culture,coeditor of Free Associations: Psychoanalysis, Groups, Media and Politics (UK), a contributor to many periodicals and newspapers, and an award-winning documentary filmmaker.Marston H. Morgan is a member of the United States Foreign Service. He earned a doctorate in cultural anthropology from the University of Chicago and taught at the University of Oregon and the University of Guam. His academic research focuses on the French South Pacific, while an applied interest in historic preservation includes work at domestic US locations such as the César E. Chávez National Monument, Timberline Lodge National Landmark, and the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge.His perspective on American power is founded on a childhood spent in Saudi Arabia and Egypt. The views expressed here are the author's own expressed in his personal capacity, and should not be mistaken for those of the U.S. Government.