How has a conservative-taxpayer identity come to shape the tea party’s anti-tax, small-government agenda? The tea party movement emerged in early 2009, decrying President Obama’s stimulus and health care plans. Its initial protests explicitly evoked the symbolism of the 1773 Boston Tea Party and the Revolutionary War, while drawing on the ideological, organizational, and financial resources of contemporary libertarian and conservative struggles. Sandra Morgen (Anthropology, University of Oregon) has completed over three years of ethnographic research on tax-related campaigns in Oregon. Her talk will serve as the keynote to a day-long workshop on the tea party movement held at the Graduate Center.

Co-sponsored by the PhD Program in Anthropology and the Center for the Humanities