On Tuesday, Nov. 4, the Hopkins SNF Agora Institute and Hopkins at Home co-hosted an author talk. The guest author was Anand Pandian, a Krieger-Eisenhower Professor of Anthropology at Hopkins, president of the Society for Cultural Anthropology, curator of the Ecological Design Collective and author. His newest book, Something Between Us: The Everyday Walls of American Life and How to Take Them Down, explores the polarization of American politics through the examination of the barriers that exist throughout people’s daily lives.
In an email to The News-Letter, Hopkins at Home explained why they chose Pandian to speak.
“The goal of our programming is to spotlight the research and expertise of Hopkins faculty, alumni, and staff in a way that is accessible to all,” they wrote. “For this event, we wanted to host Prof. Pandian because the themes in his book [...] resonated with goals of the SNF Agora's new building."
Mary Bruce, the assistant director of public programs at the SNF Agora Institute, began the event by explaining that the SNF Agora’s name comes from the gathering place in ancient Athens. The agora was where people had genuine conversations about politics, trade, policies and new ideas. Hopkins’ Agora is meant to replicate that space and strives to strengthen democracy.
Pandian started by explaining his journey creating Something Between Us. His research began in the fall of 2016 after the presidential election.
“This book grew out of a deep sense of unease,” Pandian said.
After President Donald Trump’s election, Pandian explained that he felt uneasy as an anthropologist, citizen and parent. He described how he began to question the direction the country was headed and whether the United States would continue to be a place that celebrated its diversity.
Pandian then read a passage from the introduction of his book. The introduction explained how his experience as the child of immigrants affected his reaction to the election.
“My own parents immigrated to the United States from India in 1972, and my siblings and I were born and raised in this country,” he read. “We spent a lot of time in India as children, but the United States was home even if there was somewhere in the world where we also belonged.”
The introduction went on to explain how that feeling of belonging was challenged by Trump’s election in 2016. Pandian was particularly fascinated not just by Trump’s promise to build a wall along the American-Mexican border but by the passion and joy it inspired in Americans. He was interested in how this joy existed in relation to the indifference citizens must have felt at the prospect of the suffering that motivates people to immigrate to the United States illegally. Pandian tasked himself with understanding this phenomenon in his writing.
“If one wants to make sense of phenomena like border walls, one has to pay attention to the cultural life of everyday walls,” Pandian realized.
Pandian explained that in order to better understand the election results, he made an effort to go out and talk to people with whom he wouldn’t normally interact. A few weeks after the election results came out, Pandian went to a Trump victory rally in Hershey, Pennsylvania. Sitting at a bar one day, he overheard a man respond to a news segment announcing another researcher studying the mystery of Trump’s election.
“There ain’t no mystery to Trump voters. Just getting tired of being pushed around and shit on,” the man said, according to Pandian.
With that, Pandian began to see the diversity of motivation people had for their political changes. The introduction concluded with Pandian explaining how he challenged himself to exercise sympathy toward people with whom he might deeply disagree. The introduction included the quote that gave Pandian his title, Something Between Us. This quote is from the 1965 debate between James Baldwin and William Buckley and emphasizes the importance of finding connections to people, no matter how much you might disagree with them.
“These are my countrymen and I do care about them,” Baldwin said. “Even if I didn’t, there is something between us.”
Pandian explained that getting to know people through his research has allowed him to recognize how surprisingly complicated people are.
The next chapter from which Pandian read was about patterns of suburbanization in Fargo, North Dakota. Pandian referenced Andrea Vesentini’s book Indoor America and his idea that suburbanization involves people purposely withdrawing from the shared spaces of urban communities. Throughout time, space has become less focused on the street and community. Interiors are being created as independent places of escape. Pausing from his reading, Pandian explained how this relates to the conversation about democracy.
“The everyday scale of relatedness has a great deal to do with either the vitality or the difficulty of our democratic culture,” he claimed.
Pandian then read from a chapter about the life of the American porch. The 20th century saw the presence of porches dwindle as interior living spaces became bigger. This was a result of technological innovations like air conditioning, television and the mass production of houses.
The development of automobiles also led to a restructuring of roads and shifted the architectural focus of the home from the front porch to the garage. Pandian spoke to property developers who explained that, increasingly, people want houses with their own space isolated from others. Pandian paused his reading to connect his study of porches to the theme of democracy; in a way, American porches were mini agoras.
Pandian’s next chapter was about public spaces. He wrote about Denton, North Texas, a town in which a dominant white majority led to the expulsion of the Black community to the outskirts. There was, and still is, a strong anti-racist movement in Denton. In particular, activists focused on removing a statue of a Confederate soldier erected in 1918 in the center of the town square.
The Confederate monument gave ownership and power to its white inhabitants. Katina Stone-Butler, a singer and activist, explained that she felt there were spiritual barriers created by the monument. Although everyone had physical access to the neighborhood, white members were supported by their history of power commemorated by the statue.
“This place was public, yet segregated,” Pandian explained. “Public, yet open only to some. Public and yet welcome to certain members of that public and absolutely not to others.”
The monument was finally taken down without warning in June 2020. This was in response to the Black Lives Matter protests of the summer and years of dedicated work by Willie Hudspeth, a Denton activist. Hudspeth held a weekly vigil at the monument for 21 years before it was taken down. Additionally, he testified to the Denton County commissioners court, arguing not that the statue should be taken down but that the two water fountains at the base of the statue should be restored so that anyone could drink from them.
The last section of Pandian’s book that he shared with the audience was from the conclusion. The conclusion referenced the community that came out of COVID-19 pandemic. Pandian wrote about daily walkers, block parties, collaborative parenting and one-way Halloween trick-or-treating routes in Baltimore. Other city initiatives, like the B-More Community Fridge, shows the way people still value resources that exist in the public space. These examples show that there are still ways for people to take care of each other through shared spaces.
The talk then moved into a panel discussion. One of the questions Bruce asked Pandian was what his experience talking to people with such diverse opinions was like. Pandian explained that small gestures, like greeting someone on a hike, can help normalize socializing with people you might not otherwise meet. He also explained that it is the role of institutions to make these connections possible; people can’t meet each other on walks if their sidewalks aren’t well maintained.
Pandian ended the talk by reminding everyone that thinking about the division of people requires more analysis than individual thought processes. It is about understanding the infrastructure that creates those gaps.
“We need to understand polarization not simply as a matter of identity or ideology,” Pandian explained. “But instead as a kind of feature of what our lives have become.”
