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sjgrodsky 's review for:
Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right
by Arlie Russell Hochschild
Arlie Russell Hochschild has done a massive amount of research. And I can only admire her open-mindedness and determination to climb what she evocatively terms "the empathy wall."
She's also brilliantly synthesized the "deep story": the way that her subjects' view recent social history and see their own lives as having been affected (most often negatively) by those trends.
So Arlie moved my needle. I saw these tea partiers as people and could admire their warmth, and hospitality, and neighborliness. It helps that I'd experienced some of that solid neighborliness myself. I lived down the hall from an ex-Marine for a few years. Bud may have been a tea partier (we never discussed politics) but I didn't care. He was very, very helpful to me on a few desperate occasions. Bud was a good guy.
And I agree with Arlie's tea party friends. There's a lot to be said for a culture that takes care of its own.
But Arlie doesn't, in the end, resolve the Great Paradox she articulates early: why do her subjects tolerate the destruction caused by the oil, gas, and chemical industries? She offers a few theses, describes the mental gymnastics her subjects engage in.
But here's a new thesis: her subjects know just what they've lost, but they are too discouraged to fight against their true enemies. So they express their sense of loss by blaming the cultural changes of the past 50 years. Easier to malign faraway "liberals" who would regulate firearms than to confront the signature on your paycheck.
She's also brilliantly synthesized the "deep story": the way that her subjects' view recent social history and see their own lives as having been affected (most often negatively) by those trends.
So Arlie moved my needle. I saw these tea partiers as people and could admire their warmth, and hospitality, and neighborliness. It helps that I'd experienced some of that solid neighborliness myself. I lived down the hall from an ex-Marine for a few years. Bud may have been a tea partier (we never discussed politics) but I didn't care. He was very, very helpful to me on a few desperate occasions. Bud was a good guy.
And I agree with Arlie's tea party friends. There's a lot to be said for a culture that takes care of its own.
But Arlie doesn't, in the end, resolve the Great Paradox she articulates early: why do her subjects tolerate the destruction caused by the oil, gas, and chemical industries? She offers a few theses, describes the mental gymnastics her subjects engage in.
But here's a new thesis: her subjects know just what they've lost, but they are too discouraged to fight against their true enemies. So they express their sense of loss by blaming the cultural changes of the past 50 years. Easier to malign faraway "liberals" who would regulate firearms than to confront the signature on your paycheck.