Harel Shapira

Harel Shapira is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Texas at Austin. Shapira is an ethnographer who uses long-term participant observation in order to study political life in contemporary America, with an emphasis on right-wing politics. He is the author of Waiting for José: The Minutemen’s Pursuit of America (Princeton: Princeton University Press), which explores the civilians who patrol the United States–Mexico border. He is currently writing a book on gun owners that explores how the notion of self-defense is deeply connected to group identity.