New Jersey Dreaming: Capital, Culture, and the Class of '58

by Sherry B. Ortner

Pioneering anthropologist Sherry B. Ortner is renowned for her work on the Sherpas of Nepal. Now she turns her attention homeward to examine how social class is lived in the United States and, specifically, within her own peer group. In New Jersey Dreaming , Ortner returns to her Newark roots to present an in-depth look at Weequahic High School's Class of 1958, of which she was a member. She explores her classmates’ recollected experiences of the neighborhood and the high school, also written about in the novels of Philip Roth, Weequahic High School’s most famous alum. Ortner provides a chronicle of the journey of her classmates from the 1950s into the 1990s, following the movement of a striking number of them from modest working- and middle-class backgrounds into the wealthy upper-middle or professional/managerial class. Ortner tracked down nearly all 304 of her classmates. She interviewedabout 100 in person and spoke with most of the rest by phone, recording her classmates’ vivid memories of time, place, and identity. Ortner shows how social class affected people’s livesin many hidden and unexamined ways. She also demonstrates that the Class of ‘58’s extreme upward mobility must be understood in relation to the major identity movements of the twentieth century—the campaign against anti-Semitism, the Civil Rights movement, and feminism. A multisited study combining field research with an interdisciplinary analytical framework, New Jersey Dreaming is a masterly integration of developments at the vanguard of contemporary anthropology. Engaging excerpts from Ortner's field notes are interspersed throughout the book. Whether recording the difficulties and pleasures of studying one's own peer group, the cultures of driving in different parts of the country, or the contrasting experiences of appointment-making in Los Angeles and New York, they provide a rare glimpse into the actual doing of ethnographic research.

Genres: Anthropology, Nonfiction

360 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2003

Reviews

[DM · Rating 3 out of 5]

Enjoyed but wish she has explored more fully the role of race in terms of class mobility. Seemed to underplay the assimilation of Jewish Americans as "white" facilitated economic success. Did really enjoy the inter-splicing of field notes with her analysis.

[Diane C. · Rating 4 out of 5]

well written, very interesting, under theorized

[Jezz Brown · Rating 4 out of 5]

Started off thinking this was fire but ended up being less useful than I’d hoped

[Lindsay O'Keefe · Rating 3 out of 5]

When it comes to reading an ethnography this is a great book to pick up. Sherry Ortner does an amazing job talking about the process she went through to understand what her high school class was like 40 years later. She even puts in clippings from her field notes at the end of every chapter, allowing the reader to get more insight into who she really is and what she was struggling with while working on this enormous project.

[versarbre · Rating 3 out of 5]

Again, reading Ortner is a treat in learning about a theorist's craft in writing ethnography that makes up the art of anthropology! And she also explores different genres in writing ethnography. (This one contains much field notes which give out the voices of her classmates, as well as her reflection on the difficulty of doing native ethnography!) Look forward to her next ethnography!