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Attempting to define the exotic, this text focuses on the shifting relations between popular portrayals of exotic "others" and the practice of anthropology, seeking to cast light on gender, race and the public sphere in America's history. It documents the ways in which constructions of "others", whether voiced by anthropologists, or merely attributed to them, have long been central to visions of modernity, of proper American lives and politics. The text examines the political and economic relations of inequality in cultural discourse - in advertisements, in cartoons, and in the representations of "dusky maidens"; in serious ethnography and New Age narratives; in the New Right's attack on cultural relativism and journalists' and scholars' accounts of American inner city "hearts of darkness"; and "tribal wars" in Africa and Europe.