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550 reviews for:
Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right
Arlie Russell Hochschild
4.09 AVERAGE
550 reviews for:
Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right
Arlie Russell Hochschild
4.09 AVERAGE
Really well-written and easy to read. I understand why the people of Louisiana are looking to the Tea Party to represent their interests, but I still want to scream, "OPEN YOUR EYES!" Those people (and corporations) don't actually represent you or your land or your economy!
challenging
informative
reflective
sad
So, I'm pretty liberal with my views and assume that many reading this book would be too. Leading up to the 2016 U.S. presidential election I found myself asking the same question touched on in this book. What are you voting for and why? I didn't want to focus on the who, because I knew one candidate would draw me into a deeper frustration. This book did a great job to answer my question at a more comprehensive level, no matter how much I did not want to hear it. I'm feeling even more concern for our environment after reading the book. I don't think I believe others for there beliefs, but I get very concerned when our collective human actions affect the entire planet. The book reiterated though that many being interviewed did not see that truth, regardless of research. I definitely support organized religions of others, as they generally have positive community intentions. I just would like some of that energy going toward a better future for the planet. The one thing still not answered in the book is how to show someone a reality that they don't want to believe. Overall though, this book highlights some significant statistics regarding economy and environmental regulation. I know she was on a research mission in her interview time in Louisiana, but I hope she shared this information with her new friends at some point.
informative
medium-paced
4.5 stars. This was a great book. I found myself wishing there was many many more pages and stories and insights because it was just so well researched and presented.
The author does exceptional field work but does a great job of using the stories of her research participants, the scientific data available, and an extremely empathetic approach to both sides of the argument. I really enjoyed the author’s admission of her bias and her structuring her research in a way that would try to eliminate any inherent bias. She did a great job of framing her ideas around one distinct paradox in a culture and geographic region where it would seem to be difficult if not impossible to believe a certain way.
She takes the small towns and pulls some really large principles and insights into the macro culture of conservatism and does a very fair job at representing both (at least that’s what she says her participants said). She also does a great job of presenting to the reader an empathetic and relatively understandable “deep story” that underlies why people on the far right may think what they think and, again, it does the ideology fair justice.
However, thankfully, rather than preach or allow for the promotion of the ideology, she simply explains it and uses the stories of people she interviewed to justify and support her conclusions. She doesn’t assign judgment or value to her ideas as a whole, despite her frequent admissions of confusion and back-and-forth challenges with her subjects. This makes for a readable and empathic prose and structure that just does an excellent job at providing insight without dictating judgment.
Most importantly, she waits until an appendix to explicitly challenges ideas and myths that were evangelized by her research participants. She does so ONLY with data and not with conjecture, leaving, again, no space for any explicit condemnation of judgment of conservative ideas (though those things are obvious and implicit to her conclusions). I just appreciated that she didn’t write a book to contest common conservative ideas (though her appendix alone does that swiftly and convincingly), she wrote a book to understand and present where those ideas could have come from and try to get everyone to empathize with them...without demanding that anyone agree with them or judge them as right or wrong.
In all, this was one of the most careful and insightful works on conservative ideology I’ve ever read and it deserves to be read by all who disagree with conservatism, especially, and all those who agree with the ideology as well.
The author does exceptional field work but does a great job of using the stories of her research participants, the scientific data available, and an extremely empathetic approach to both sides of the argument. I really enjoyed the author’s admission of her bias and her structuring her research in a way that would try to eliminate any inherent bias. She did a great job of framing her ideas around one distinct paradox in a culture and geographic region where it would seem to be difficult if not impossible to believe a certain way.
She takes the small towns and pulls some really large principles and insights into the macro culture of conservatism and does a very fair job at representing both (at least that’s what she says her participants said). She also does a great job of presenting to the reader an empathetic and relatively understandable “deep story” that underlies why people on the far right may think what they think and, again, it does the ideology fair justice.
However, thankfully, rather than preach or allow for the promotion of the ideology, she simply explains it and uses the stories of people she interviewed to justify and support her conclusions. She doesn’t assign judgment or value to her ideas as a whole, despite her frequent admissions of confusion and back-and-forth challenges with her subjects. This makes for a readable and empathic prose and structure that just does an excellent job at providing insight without dictating judgment.
Most importantly, she waits until an appendix to explicitly challenges ideas and myths that were evangelized by her research participants. She does so ONLY with data and not with conjecture, leaving, again, no space for any explicit condemnation of judgment of conservative ideas (though those things are obvious and implicit to her conclusions). I just appreciated that she didn’t write a book to contest common conservative ideas (though her appendix alone does that swiftly and convincingly), she wrote a book to understand and present where those ideas could have come from and try to get everyone to empathize with them...without demanding that anyone agree with them or judge them as right or wrong.
In all, this was one of the most careful and insightful works on conservative ideology I’ve ever read and it deserves to be read by all who disagree with conservatism, especially, and all those who agree with the ideology as well.
Methodic in research and gentle with attitude. I'd given it 6 stars if I could because we need more books and voices like this.
This was a solid 2 for the first 1/2 to 3/4, because it was just so meandering. She does find coherence near the end and the afterword and appendices provide a bunch of needed facts and background, which made it more worthwhile. 2.5 overall.
Unfortunately, this just.... Doesn't do enough? She keeps talking about an empathy wall that we need to climb in order to understand each other, find what we have in common, and work together to move forward...but every conversation she presents and all the opinions she reveals only help build that wall. Honestly, all this made me realize is that people are dumber than I realized.
Her writing style is also a bit grating. She has more questions than statements for the first half of the book. And it got a bit annoying. Her reveal of her deep story, the cutting in line analogy was also... Weak at best. For a group that hate being labeled victim, they sure seemed to grasp onto an analogy that is a half-step away from claiming victimhood.
I'm sorry this just only helped to raise the empathy wall and left me with no motivation to try climbing... I think that was the opposite of the intended effect of this book.
Also, she speaks as if there is merit in trying to reach out and change over people's deep-seeded views... I see why she advocates this (some people don't understand what the other side really wants in the first place, and sometimes everyone really wants the same thing), but I am more inclined to believe that a more effective strategy is to enable the people who already think like you to have their voice heard. See "Our Time is Now" by Stacey Abrams.
Unfortunately, this just.... Doesn't do enough? She keeps talking about an empathy wall that we need to climb in order to understand each other, find what we have in common, and work together to move forward...but every conversation she presents and all the opinions she reveals only help build that wall. Honestly, all this made me realize is that people are dumber than I realized.
Her writing style is also a bit grating. She has more questions than statements for the first half of the book. And it got a bit annoying. Her reveal of her deep story, the cutting in line analogy was also... Weak at best. For a group that hate being labeled victim, they sure seemed to grasp onto an analogy that is a half-step away from claiming victimhood.
I'm sorry this just only helped to raise the empathy wall and left me with no motivation to try climbing... I think that was the opposite of the intended effect of this book.
Also, she speaks as if there is merit in trying to reach out and change over people's deep-seeded views... I see why she advocates this (some people don't understand what the other side really wants in the first place, and sometimes everyone really wants the same thing), but I am more inclined to believe that a more effective strategy is to enable the people who already think like you to have their voice heard. See "Our Time is Now" by Stacey Abrams.
Listened to this on Audiobook and forgot to rate. Excellent read, but not for the reasons you might think.
While this might be billed as a book to explain the Tea Party or Trump, what I actually found most engaging was the exploration of the petrochemical industry and its effect on rural Louisiana. While I know that I should be interested in the environment, it’s not usually the issue that motivates me or gets me fired up. This broke open the issue for me, and showed how devastating environmental damage can be to a people and a culture.
The author has a lovely style, and her choice of interviewees was always enlightening and never cloying. I would have been interested to see more non-white people interviewed, although I understand that’s fairly difficult given the premise of the book.
While this might be billed as a book to explain the Tea Party or Trump, what I actually found most engaging was the exploration of the petrochemical industry and its effect on rural Louisiana. While I know that I should be interested in the environment, it’s not usually the issue that motivates me or gets me fired up. This broke open the issue for me, and showed how devastating environmental damage can be to a people and a culture.
The author has a lovely style, and her choice of interviewees was always enlightening and never cloying. I would have been interested to see more non-white people interviewed, although I understand that’s fairly difficult given the premise of the book.
informative
medium-paced
Well-written and very compassionate and while it did make me climb over that empathy wall a bit more, I felt like it fell a bit short of the “help someone understand the bizarre choices of the far right”.