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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
While I am glad to have read this book and feel that I understand the right-wing a bit better, I'm still boggled by how irrationally these voters behave.
A very frustrating book. It's the story of a sociologist from Berkley, California who moves to the Redest of Red communities in the US to live among Tea Party Republicans. It goes beyond the typical, the Right Wing media uses fear to manipulate the ignorant with fear and exaggerations to influence their votes or how Big Oil and other environmentally unfriendly industries also take advantage of their ignorance and desperation for jobs to destroy their ecosystem. It finds that many of these folks actually share many ideologies of those on the left and would improve their station in lives if they supported liberal politicians. However the hold of their religious views, distrust of the federal government have on them keep slipping backwards instead of progressing forward in station. They feel angry and left behind, their pride and honor keep them voting for a GOP that ignores them for the rich corporate elite but their too blinded by the fear Fox News and Drudge Reports shoves down their throats. It's sad.
I made plans to read this book after the election, driven, similar to countless others, by the thought that our current circumstances came in part due to the gulf in understanding between those of us on the left and those on the right. Hochschild's book is a document of the lives of tea party loyalists on the gulf coast of Louisiana. She embedded herself in the area for a year getting to know her subjects, and most of the book are composed of the personal stories of select subjects. As a Berkeley anthropologist, she has the easy universal empathy one expects of a flower children Berkeley anthropologist type (I can imagine the African tribal masks and Indonesian pottery lining her house now, virtue signals of her boundless empathy). As a document to shed more light into the mindset of the tea party, and the conditions that created this movement, the book succeeds, although oftentimes with clumsy prose. However, there is an unstated implicit premise that once we on the left just UNDERSTAND more of the plight of these normal people of the tea party, we would not only be better informed, but we would sympathize with these different outlooks. On this count, I can't say the book succeeds in it's implicit goal.
There is one chapter that one can read from this book, and skip the rest, and get most of what it is trying to say. Chapter 9, "The Deep Story," distills all of the author's interviews, and careful study of this social terrain, into a well-articulated narrative that gets at how tea party supporters feel. As the author states, "[The deep story] is the story feelings tell, in the language of symbols. It removes judgment. It removes fact. It tells us how things feel. Such a story permits those on both sides of the political spectrum to stand back and explore the subjective prism through which the party on the other side sees the world."
The deep story of the far right of the working class today, as Hochschild relays, is that of working class white grievance at the loss of status to women and people of color. If you want the softer more nuanced version, read the chapter. There is great imagery about a figurative "line to the American dream," but too often I felt that the author's attempt at nuance or complexity covers up the undeniable ugliness of the premise of this deep story. I naturally sympathize with working class people in difficult circumstances, I am happy even to sympathize with these people when they have political views radically different from mine, but when those political views are deeply based on an indignation towards people of even more difficult circumstances finally getting to improve their lives a bit, I find that impossible to sympathize with.
The book is worth reading, but go in with eyes wide open, if you intend to discover the noble and reasonable intentions of people on the far right, it may be a misguided mission.
There is one chapter that one can read from this book, and skip the rest, and get most of what it is trying to say. Chapter 9, "The Deep Story," distills all of the author's interviews, and careful study of this social terrain, into a well-articulated narrative that gets at how tea party supporters feel. As the author states, "[The deep story] is the story feelings tell, in the language of symbols. It removes judgment. It removes fact. It tells us how things feel. Such a story permits those on both sides of the political spectrum to stand back and explore the subjective prism through which the party on the other side sees the world."
The deep story of the far right of the working class today, as Hochschild relays, is that of working class white grievance at the loss of status to women and people of color. If you want the softer more nuanced version, read the chapter. There is great imagery about a figurative "line to the American dream," but too often I felt that the author's attempt at nuance or complexity covers up the undeniable ugliness of the premise of this deep story. I naturally sympathize with working class people in difficult circumstances, I am happy even to sympathize with these people when they have political views radically different from mine, but when those political views are deeply based on an indignation towards people of even more difficult circumstances finally getting to improve their lives a bit, I find that impossible to sympathize with.
The book is worth reading, but go in with eyes wide open, if you intend to discover the noble and reasonable intentions of people on the far right, it may be a misguided mission.
Nothing new here if you've read a think piece or two after the most recent election. Found the first person narration cloying and condescending. The book would have been better without it but still probably not very elucidating.
This book offered a good perspective for a liberal trying to understand the tea party. I really enjoyed reading it and I felt the author did an excellent job profiling people that were different to herself, yet portraying them in an empathic and relatable way.
If the author used the phrase “Strangers in their own land” one more time, I was going to chuck my Kindle across the room. Seriously. I get it! It was a clever phrase the first time, but it lost its charm after the author used it 10,000 times.
The book is a psychological study of the Tea Party. That makes it sound boring. It’s not! It’s about coastal Louisiana and the people who live there. If you’re interested in environmental issues, then this is a must-read. I learned a lot about the impact that oil and chemical companies are having on the health of people and wildlife. I did not learn much about the American Right. Probably because I don’t live in a “Liberal bubble.” My Liberal beliefs are the minority here. But, I’d still highly recommend this book. It’s definitely thought-provoking and may end up on my “best books of 2020” list. I'm still thinking about it weeks after returning it to the library. I'll eventually buy my own copy.
Do you like opinions, giveaways, and bookish nonsense?
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The book is a psychological study of the Tea Party. That makes it sound boring. It’s not! It’s about coastal Louisiana and the people who live there. If you’re interested in environmental issues, then this is a must-read. I learned a lot about the impact that oil and chemical companies are having on the health of people and wildlife. I did not learn much about the American Right. Probably because I don’t live in a “Liberal bubble.” My Liberal beliefs are the minority here. But, I’d still highly recommend this book. It’s definitely thought-provoking and may end up on my “best books of 2020” list. I'm still thinking about it weeks after returning it to the library. I'll eventually buy my own copy.
Do you like opinions, giveaways, and bookish nonsense?
I have a blog for that.
challenging
emotional
informative
medium-paced
A liberal Berkeley sociologist goes to cancer alley in rural Louisiana to understand what leads people to support the Tea Party (most of the interviews were pre-Trump) and Trump. In doing so she uses the environment as a "keyhole issue" because many of the people are actively pushing for cleaner water and air but vote for Republicans who undermine the EPA. She attempts to scale the "empathy wall" in the search of better understanding. And all of this is to better understand the "Great Paradox": why is hatred of government so intense among the people who need government the most. All of this is explained by the "deep story" people tell themselves and use to organize their worldview. (All of the terms in quotes are effectively employed as terms of art and appear repeatedly in the book.)
The answer, by and large, is cultural--that the people feel like "strangers in their own land," with white males, heterosexual marriage and the like denigrated--in their perception--while they watch others cut the line. Trump's message is about restoring their dignity and that matters much more than any specific about government regulation or lack thereof.
The writing was very well done, the research very sympathetic (if at times a bit patronizing about her "new friends"), focusing on environmental issues was a novel perspective to me, and I agreed with the overall thesis.
But the book had some limitations. For one, it never really explained the Great Paradox. It explained the importance of cultural issues but not their correlation with economic/environmental ones.
For another, at times I was much less confident than Arlie Russell Hochschild was that polices were obviously bad for the state but supported anyway. It may make perfect sense for Louisianans to support the oil industry because of its jobs. It may be a net plus for state revenues, Hochschild asserts its a net negative. And it is not obvious that one oil spill, no matter how massive, should necessarily change these views.
Similarly, I'm a big believer the government can and should play a large role in innovation but this analysis went way too far: "The “high road” strategy, as the researchers describe it, is to stimulate new jobs by creating an attractive public sector, as California did in Silicon Valley and Washington State did in Seattle." It is almost like at times Hochschild is the opposite of the people she is profiling, which is to say someone repeating their cultural group's views with great confidence but little critical exploration of their underlying plausibility.
I learned from this book, but am not sure it fully answered all of the many questions that I--and many others--have. Will read [b:Janesville: An American Story|33665908|Janesville An American Story|Amy Goldstein|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1488714083s/33665908.jpg|54536482] soon.
The answer, by and large, is cultural--that the people feel like "strangers in their own land," with white males, heterosexual marriage and the like denigrated--in their perception--while they watch others cut the line. Trump's message is about restoring their dignity and that matters much more than any specific about government regulation or lack thereof.
The writing was very well done, the research very sympathetic (if at times a bit patronizing about her "new friends"), focusing on environmental issues was a novel perspective to me, and I agreed with the overall thesis.
But the book had some limitations. For one, it never really explained the Great Paradox. It explained the importance of cultural issues but not their correlation with economic/environmental ones.
For another, at times I was much less confident than Arlie Russell Hochschild was that polices were obviously bad for the state but supported anyway. It may make perfect sense for Louisianans to support the oil industry because of its jobs. It may be a net plus for state revenues, Hochschild asserts its a net negative. And it is not obvious that one oil spill, no matter how massive, should necessarily change these views.
Similarly, I'm a big believer the government can and should play a large role in innovation but this analysis went way too far: "The “high road” strategy, as the researchers describe it, is to stimulate new jobs by creating an attractive public sector, as California did in Silicon Valley and Washington State did in Seattle." It is almost like at times Hochschild is the opposite of the people she is profiling, which is to say someone repeating their cultural group's views with great confidence but little critical exploration of their underlying plausibility.
I learned from this book, but am not sure it fully answered all of the many questions that I--and many others--have. Will read [b:Janesville: An American Story|33665908|Janesville An American Story|Amy Goldstein|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1488714083s/33665908.jpg|54536482] soon.
okay I read this for a class and was hesitant because yknow entire book for one week of class BUT this was incredibly interesting! would definitely recommend for anyone interested in political psychology in the US