Epistemic stitching of race, power, and modernity in recent work on white supremacy.

This essay analyzes recent anthropological literature on white supremacy, emphasizing its role as a foundational logic of modern capitalist power rather than merely extremist ideology. It highlights how ethnographers engage in "epistemic stitching," integrating critical race theories with diverse anthropological frameworks—such as the ontological turn, racial capitalism, and critical anthrohistory—to reveal white supremacy's pervasive influence on social, economic, and temporal structures globally. The literature challenges narrow, "folk" understandings of white supremacy by examining its manifestations in language, science, moral economies, and historical narratives, thereby advancing a comprehensive theory that situates race, power, and capitalist modernity as mutually constitutive. This approach calls for expanded methodological and theoretical conversations in anthropology to address white supremacy's complex, structural, and shifting forms across varied contexts.