The concept of this book is exactly what I had been thinking about for the past two years. I am so grateful for Hochschild for structuring a study to investigate the political divide in the United States as evinced by Louisiana, a deeply conservative red state facing environmental degradation and wi ...more
I listened to the audio of Strangers In Their Own Land. Arlie Russell Hochschild is a self described liberal Democrat sociology professor at Berkeley. She set out to climb what she describes as the "empathy wall" for the purpose of understanding what has motivated the Republican base in the US in re ...more
Hochschild is a University of California Berkeley sociologist. She states she was attempting to understand the Great Paradox: the fact that people in the poorest states who most need federal programs consistently vote for candidates who oppose those programs. The author traveled to Louisiana one of ...more
“You are patiently standing in a long line leading up a hill, as in a pilgrimage. You are situated in the middle of this line, along with others who are also white, older, Christian, and predominantly male, some with college degrees, some not.
“Just over the brow of the hill is the American Dream, t ...more
I was attracted to this book because it promised to answer the question, "Why do the people who would seem to benefit most from "liberal" government intervention abhor the very idea?" I have puzzled with this question ever since I read Thomas Frank's What's the Matter with Kansas.
I learned a lot about pollution in Louisiana from this book, but I'm not sure I learned anything new about the "deep story" of the tea-party right. It could be that I have read enough about this phenomena, both past (it swept Europe between the two Great Wars) and present, that I already had a fairl ...more
A timely and relevant book in the era of Trump, it has gone further than any other source in helping me understand the motivations and the feelings of the conservative white working class. The author presents their viewpoint with empathy and kindness, and tries to work through the paradox of why it ...more