Something Between Us

Anand Pandian is Krieger-Eisenhower Professor of Anthropology at Johns Hopkins University. His books include A Possible Anthropology: Methods for Uneasy Times (2019) and Ayyas Accounts: A Ledger of Hope in Modern India (2014). He has served as President of the Society for Cultural Anthropology, and as a curator of the Ecological Design Collective. He lives with his family in Baltimore, Maryland.

"[A] solemn and extraordinary glimpse of a splintering America."

—Publishers Weekly starred review



"A beautifully written antidoteto help us examine and overcome the many real and imagined walls in America that only seem to foster anger, ignorance, and the misunderstandings that prevent us from seeing our shared humanity. Pandian writes about a country in turmoil with grace and kindness using insight that can only come from a keen ethnographic eye."

—Jason De León, author of Soldiers and Kings: Survival and Hope in the World of Human Smuggling, winner of the National Book Award



"Applying his anthropology of the open mind to the concrete ways we separate ourselves from each other, Pandian explores how our collective material culture generates and sustains social, political, and ontological division. This is a remarkable book, notable for its tough questions, even-handed rigor, and indefatigable compassion. It offers a piercing, necessary, and humane look deep into contemporary American culture."

—Roy Scranton, author of Learning to Die in the Anthropocene: Reflections on the End of a Civilization



"A brilliant and vivid application of cultural theory, ethnography, and material culture that helps us see our world in a new way. It shows how and why we choose to segregate ourselves from those who challenge or discomfort us by using barriers that are cultural, legal, and physical. It explains the current United States better than almost any book I have read in the past decade."

—Siva Vaidhyanathan, author of Antisocial Media: How Facebook Disconnects Us and Undermines Democracy



"Something Between Us provides a beautifully rendered account of the walls, made of either mortar or mistrust, that shape our lives. In a moment of deep divisiveness in America, it offers an urgently needed account of how we might reimagine our communities in ways that anchor us to each other and our own humanity."

—Hahrie Han, author of Undivided: The Quest for Racial Solidarity in an American Church and co-author of Prisms of the People: Power & Organizing in Twenty-First-Century America



"A piercing account of the fortress mindset that has gripped American culture, hardening not only our politics but also our homes, roads, bodies, and minds. Pandian pulls off the great anthropological trick of making the familiar seem strange and disturbing. An important book."

—Eric Klinenberg, author of Palaces for the People: How Social Infrastructure Can Help Fight Inequality, Polarization, and the Decline of Civic Life and 2020: One City, Seven People, and the Year Everything Changed



"A brave book tackling some of our most contentious political issues through, at times, harrowing fieldwork. It accomplishes the rare feat of balancing the intellectual acuity of ethnographic study with the wit and urgency of journalism. I was left both unnerved and inspired to action."

—Bradley Garrett, author of Bunker: What It Takes to Survive the Apocalypse



"In Something Between Us, Anand Pandian offers a profound interrogation of the walls—literal and figurative—that divide American life. Through sharp and considerate ethnography, Pandian reveals the insidious ways fear and exclusion shape the divisions of our daily interactions. This essential work invites readers to dismantle these barriers, envisioning new structures for humanity built on mutuality, openness, and repair."

—Jovan Scott Lewis, author of Violent Utopia: Dispossession and Black Restoration in Tulsa



"This is not a book, to start with, but an experience. I would rank it as some of the best writing by just about anyone lately about the ways our environments, our infrastructure, and our politics keep us divided, topics that are not easy to write about well or at all. I am glad he did that work; he created something truly wonderful as a result."

—Joshua Reno, co-author of Imagining the Heartland: White Supremacy and the American Midwest



"Something Between Us is a profound and fascinating exploration of the fortresses weve built around ourselves in America—in our communities and in our minds—and a rousing call to a more hopeful vision of collective life."

—Eli Pariser, author of The Filter Bubble: What the Internet Is Hiding from You