Waiting for José takes us through encounters both real and imagined. In Harel Shapira’s vivid ethnography of the Minutemen Civil Defense Corps, we spend overnights in the dark, cold, Arizona desert with characters like “Mussels,” “Blowfish,” and “Poker” each acting out masculinist fantasies as they patrol the U.S.-Mexico border. Most of these participants have “handles” or nicknames, carry weapons and night vision binoculars, and are there to do what they feel our federal government is failing to accomplish—keep Mexicans from illegally entering the United States. We learn that the actual number of times Minutemen encounter people seeking to cross the border in the United States is extremely rare and that, in Shapira’s words, the real motivation for Minutemen’s activism is not about immigration policy, but about engaging in “practices that allow them to reclaim a sense of purpose built into an earlier life of soldiering” (p. 22). As Shapria documents, the Minutemen seek to (re)create a world in which they can put back on their uniforms, gain respect, be patriots, and rescue America from foreign invasion.

After introducing his theoretical frameworks, Shapira sets the stage by taking us to the opening day of Operation Stand Your Ground—one of the volunteer “musters” whereby Minutemen hold round-the-clock patrols of the AZ-Mexico border. The day begins with speeches from Barry Goldwater’s nephew and a founder of the group, Mothers Against Illegal Aliens. This setting provides a visual and ideological entrée into the Minutemen’s culture and border practices. As Shapira details in subsequent chapters, volunteers spend their time during these musters taking shifts and waiting to see “José.” In the uncommon occurrence when they do, they report him to U.S. Border Patrol. It is notable that his interviewees are adamant that they do not “catch” Mexicans, but provide civilian support to the government agency. We learn that Shapira’s Israeli identity gave him the needed clout to secure the trust of the Minutemen; indeed one pointed to the border and told him that it was “our Gaza” (p. 12).

Shapira’s main argument, woven throughout accounts of his interviews and patrol stints, is that Minutemen’s activism “is not about “ideology,” it is about the practice of politics” (p. 151). In this case, he compellingly argues that the men who camp out waiting to spot “José” aim to recreate their heyday in the military. He further contends that “to study the Minutemen by focusing only their beliefs or attitudes … would be to reduce them to stereotypes: to conservative, anti-immigrant, antigovernment talking heads” (p. 4). With that, Shapira offers the promise of a more complicated understanding of the Minutemen, arguing that caricatures will be replaced with complex, and even implicitly, sympathetic characterizations. In some ways his book lives up to that promise, as Minutemen juxtapose their actions and racist commentary with acknowledgements that some Mexicans are hardworking and are just looking for a break. But ultimately, despite capturing these mostly older white men (and a few) women in their fullness, the book still leaves me believing they are racist, conservative and anti-immigrant.

Another important component of Shapira’s work is his attention to the gendered dynamics of the Minutemen. Here is where his work really shines. Demonstrated not only in what the Minutemen say, but also in the everyday practices of their activist work, traditional and socially conservative gendered beliefs undergird and are reinforced by this organization. For example, overnight shifts in the desert are deemed too dangerous for women, so instead women organize opening day, stock the pantry, and make coffee. But the Minutemen’s gendered politics go much deeper than that. First, men’s quests to relive their frontline solider status are imbued with an exaggerated, almost comical (if it was not so real), masculinity. For example, they carry military issue backpacks and weapons and speak of protecting women from the sexually violent “coyotes” who bring immigrants over the border. Second, the Minutemen’s analysis of Mexican culture is shaped by sexist accounts of women’s sexuality. They claim, for example, that Mexican women cross the border to have babies and “use those kids as ransom for citizenship” (p. 49) while ingesting birthing pills to quicken delivery on U.S. soil. One glaring omission from Shapira’s sharp attention to gender role norms are more interviews with the women involved in the organization. While men clearly outnumber women in the group, greater attention to women’s voices would have provided a compelling contrast to the men’s accounts.

Although gender is used as analytic category, consideration of the dynamics of racism is lacking. Certainly racism and xenophobia are made evident through the words of Shapira’s interviewees, but these are implicit accounts that beg for more attention. In calling for a focus on practice over ideology, Shapira distinguishes his study from those that rely on “tired accounts of racism” (p. 20). I am not sure exactly what this means, but when old white men claim that “today immigrants don’t want to become Americans” (p. 28), and argue that the border is where Mexican drug traffickers, rapists, and potential terrorists hide out, an account of racism is warranted. In part to justify this omission, Shapira does note that his goal is to write about the Minutemen in more nuanced ways than the media and pundits portray them, but he never actually documents these racist portrayals and thus uses straw figures to set up his analysis.

Waiting for José also contributes to civic engagement scholarship. Shapira convincingly argues that the quest for community among the Minutemen is akin to the need for civic association and its related attributes. Reinforcing his argument that practices matter as much as, if not more than ideology, Shapira asserts that Minutemen “are looking for male spaces, spaces where they can carry guns and be soldiers at war, spaces where the way they have learned to be in the world through previous life experiences makes sense” (p. 46). But Shapira also urges scholars to examine how such spaces are rooted in exclusion and can create communities that may ultimately defy the goals of creating a truly democratic citizenship.

The strength of Waiting for José lies in its thick description. What is missing from Shapira’s work is the context, both historically and in the present, that shapes the values and discourse of the Minutemen. Most problematic is that Shapira does not reference other studies of conservative organizations and movements which would position his work within a body of literature already attuned to how right-wing activism may spring from a longing for community (see e.g. Lisa McGirr’s Suburban Warriors or Kathleen Blee’s Women of the Klan). Locating his work within this tradition would provide the reader with a more comprehensive account of conservative movements in the United States and tie the Minutemen’s ideology and practices to other like-minded actors. Indeed, Shapira briefly recognizes that the Minutemen helped spur the Tea Party—this aside is critically important and welcomes more thorough evaluation in the conclusion.

The value of this book also lies in its interdisciplinarity. It manages to be both accessible and complex, and would fit well in undergraduate and graduate level courses on social movements, interest groups, gender and politics, and immigration. Indeed, I plan to use it in my gender and politics class. Ultimately, Shapira has written a fine book about identity construction and masculinity fueled by racism and a longing for community. Very few books on politics do that.