ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to demonstrate that anthropological work on the United States has generated important theories, concepts, methodologies, and insights that have been instrumental in creating anthropology as we know it. It seeks to more contemporary work particularly that concerned with the US political economy, broadly conceived, which can be referred to as the critical tradition of US research. It presents this in terms of four ways of conceptualizing the United States: as a settler society, as a former slave-holding society, as an industrial society, and as an imperial nation-state. The emphasis on United States as settler society, former slave-holding society, industrial society, and imperial nation-state reflects ways of knowing the United States that critical Americanist scholars have, with varying degrees of explicitness. The chapter concludes by noting the challenges posed by theoretical and methodological developments in the discipline at large for sustained engagement with the United States.
