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jasonfurman 's review for:
Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right
by Arlie Russell Hochschild
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.