Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right by Arlie Russell Hochschild

[gilda_elise]

In Strangers in Their Own Land, the renowned sociologist Arlie Russell Hochschild embarks on a thought-provoking journey from her liberal hometown of Berkeley, California, deep into Louisiana bayou country – a stronghold of the conservative right. As she gets to know people who strongly oppose many of the ideas she famously champions, Russell Hochschild nevertheless finds common ground and quickly warms to the people she meets – among them a Tea Party activist whose town has been swallowed by a sinkhole caused by a drilling accident – people whose concerns are actually ones that all Americans share: the desire for community, the embrace of family, and hopes for their children.

Strangers in Their Own Land goes beyond the commonplace liberal idea that these are people who have been duped into voting against their own interests. Instead, Russell Hochschild finds lives ripped apart by stagnant wages, a loss of home, an elusive American dream – and political choices and views that make sense in the context of their lives. Russell Hochschild draws on her expert knowledge of the sociology of emotion to help us understand what it feels like to live in "red" America. Along the way she finds answers to one of the crucial questions of contemporary American politics: why do the people who would seem to benefit most from "liberal" government intervention abhor the very idea?

What will people give up, clean air, clean water, a livable environment, in order to have a job? A job with an employer who isn’t held accountable for the damage its done? But what if it turned out that oil or chemical companies don’t bring an exceptional number of jobs? What then is the reason that these people vote against their own self interest?

And why would people rail against the government while living in a state that gets a disproportionate amount of government largess? Those are the questions Hochschild is trying to finds the answers to.

It takes about half the book before some answers are forthcoming. A big reason for their discontent seems to be the idea that people of color are “cutting in line,” in front of white workers, keeping them from reaching the “American dream.” No thought is ever given to the fact that for generations people of color weren’t even allowed in line. And now for most, white, black or brown, the line doesn’t even exist anymore.

What it seemed to all come down to was what the author calls “emotional self-interest.” Many of the people she interviewed believe the story of their being pushed aside, of the other “taking over their country,” and they’ll do anything to hold onto that story, even if it means overlooking facts that don’t fit into their narrative.

I suppose that’s the closest will get to an answer. I’m not 100% satisfied with it, but I think it’s definitely a start.







Links are to more information regarding each book or author, not to the review.


1. The Outsider
2. War on Peace: The End of Diplomacy and the Decline of American Influence
3. Lost Dogs and Lonely Hearts
4. The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America
5. Frozen in Time: The Fate of the Franklin Expedition
6. From Baghdad to America: Life after War for a Marine and His Rescued Dog (Lava #2)
7. The Gap Into Vision: Forbidden Knowledge (Gap #2)
8. The Family That Couldn't Sleep: A Medical Mystery
9. First King of Shannara (Original Shannara Trilogy 0)
10. Legends of the Fall
11. Moon of the Crusted Snow
12. Mio, My Son
13. Circe
14. Al Franken: Giant of the Senate
15. Memoirs of a Polar Bear
16. Of Mice and Men
17. A Dog's Purpose
18. A Quiet Victory for Latino Rights: FDR and the Controversy Over "Whiteness"
19. The Gap Into Power: A Dark and Hungry God Arises (Gap #3)
20. The Face of Apollo (Book of the Gods #1)
21. The Talisman
22. The Sword of Shannara
23. The Scarlet Lion
24. 999
25. The Sugar Solution
26. The Court of the Midnight King
27. Children Of the Sun
28. Stranger: The Challenge of a Latino Immigrant in the Trump Era
29. The God Gene (The ICE Sequence #2)
30. The Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant: The Complete Annotated Edition by Ulysses S. Grant
31. Duel: Terror Stories
32. The Roanoke Girls
33. Colour Bar: The Triumph of Seretse Khama and His Nation
34. Wormwood Forest: A Natural History of Chernobyl
35. Beyond Fundamentalism: Confronting Religious Extremism in the Age of Globalization
36. The Ice
37. Nature's New Deal:The Civilian Conservation Corps & the Roots of the American Environmental Movement
38. Gates of Fire: An Epic Novel of the Battle of Thermopylae
39. The Eden Legacy
40. Charnel House
41. In Search of Dark Matter
42. General James Longstreet: The Confederacy's Most Controversial Soldier
43. Carrion Comfort
44. I Travel by Night (I Travel by Night #1)
45. Midnight Sun
46. Wolf Willow: A History, a Story & a Memory of the Last Plains Frontier
47. Doom City (Greystone Bay #2)
48. Through Blood & Fire
49. A Blaze of Glory (Civil War: 1861-1865, Western Theater #1)
50. Recursion
51. Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith
52. Thomas Paine and the Promise of America
53. The Gap Into Madness: Chaos and Order (Gap #4)
54. Inspection
55. The Editor
56. The Void Protocol (The ICE Sequence #3)
57. Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right

Comments

[chienne-folle.livejournal.com]

The story they come up with sounds a lot easier to swallow, emotionally, than "I am a failure," or "Conditions in my local community are such that we'll never have good lives." If only "they" can be shoved aside, good times will come again. I can see why people might want to believe that, even as I deplore it.

[gilda-elise.livejournal.com]

It's apparently a powerful message, one that people seem to latch onto in order to excuse what they're espousing. But reading the history of this country, it's an old message that's been used more than once to do real damage to non-whites.

[shooting2kill.livejournal.com]

Strangers in Their Own Land goes beyond the commonplace liberal idea that these are people who have been duped into voting against their own interests

I hope the narrator does go beyond that concept as I'm really tired of the sneery, middle class view that if you don't agree with them 100% then you're a fascist. It's not so different from a Marxist claiming a non-Marxist is suffering from false consciousness. How can progress ever be made when both sides of the political spectrum are equally blinded by their own, opposing bigotries and totally unwilling to listen to each other? Bah! (Sounds a fascinating book, though!)

[shooting2kill.livejournal.com]

...should have said sneery, middle class, liberal view.

[leethet.livejournal.com]

Poor and uneducated white people who support Trump did vote against their own interest. They believed in him because "white male." Because he had money and they liked that. They did, in fact, vote against their own interest as his presidency has proved. What jobs, what training, what health care has he improved for these people?

[shooting2kill.livejournal.com]

I know little about Trump and wouldn't presume to know anything about the motives of people who voted for him. I was speaking from my own perspective here in the UK where London has effectively become a city-state, far removed from the concerns of people who live elsewhere. I think a lot of the disdain and scepticism (can't spell that) which England has for the metropolitan London elite is rooted less in the ideas and values of this elite but more in the way the elite presents itself (without meaning to or realising) as being pretty obnoxious: intellectually snobby, very hypocritical, materialistic and with very little understanding of the problems of the average, low paid worker, for whom worries about popular social concerns are a luxury and irrelevant. Maybe in the US Trump gets this?

[leethet.livejournal.com]

People in Britain do sometimes (I say sometimes because I know a few who do - I can't speak to what the majority think!) try to compare Britain to the U.S. in this particular regard, and you really can't. It isn't that there aren't some general similarities - there certainly are. One of the key differences, culturally, is that Britain always respected education and the bettering of one's self intellectually. America has always been anti-intellectual, proud to be rough and tough and adventurous and always contemptuous of "those faggy intellectuals in their ivory towers."

That's one of many differences, so I don't think a straight comparison is valid without a lot of caveats. That said, yes, the low-paid, poorly educated people do feel threatened and excluded by intellectual elites (not so much, I think, by the rich, who show clearly, quite often, that they are not intellectually superior to anyone). The U.S. has a lot of citizens who are high school dropouts, under or unemployed, avowed Christians (though you wouldn't know it from their behavior) who do actually believe that only white Christians like themselves should be in the U.S., should have jobs, should have rights - that treating those different from themselves as citizens with equal rights somehow is taking away their birthright - they long for an imaginary era where white high school drop outs had good paying jobs. Those days are long gone. Trump was never going to bring them back, and it isn't the fault of brown people or uppity women. That's an ignorant and bigoted position, one that it is very difficult to warm to or sympathize with. These are people who blatantly dismiss facts (such as that men like Trump are PRECISELY the problem) because they don't align with their personal preferences as victims of "diversity."

I understand that many Brits feel uncomfortable in a similar way with the waves of immigrants (hence Brexit, etc) and it's true that this fear of "other" is fueled by intolerance and ignorance (and fear).

But there are too many cultural differences to really equate the two populations, I think.

[leethet.livejournal.com]

London has effectively become a city-state, far removed from the concerns of people who live elsewhere

I feel the same is true here. A friend and I were just discussing this, in fact. Newspapers tend to cover what's happening in big cities - L.A., New York City, Washington D.C. - as if the opinions expressed there and the desires and beliefs of the residents there are somehow nationwide. But they certainly are not. People out in what the sneerers like to call "flyover country" are not ultra-chic urbanites. They have very different ways of living and thinking about the world. I think the news business in the U.S. sometimes gets lazy - the big city papers don't get out of the big city often enough because they think if they know what the urbanites think and want, they know all that matters.

[gilda-elise.livejournal.com]

Though there are similarities, the two countries aren't as alike as the media tries to maintain. For one, are "elites" are spread throughout the country. LA, Chicago, New York. Even the South has its mega-cities and centers of liberal thought, like Austin. And more people live in those cities than not.

While certainly not an elite, I'm not a low paid worker, either, but my father was. Yet he was still able to feel for those who had less. Maybe not give, but certainly understand. One would think that those who do have less would understand more what those at the bottom are going through.

And, no, Trump doesn't think that deeply. He understood that he could con those people into thinking that he was on their side. Oh, and that the Electoral College is rigged.

[shooting2kill.livejournal.com]

While certainly not an elite, I'm not a low paid worker, either, but my father was. Yet he was still able to feel for those who had less. Maybe not give, but certainly understand.

He was able to do that because he was a thinking, feeling human being and not someone who could be generalised about, unimaginatively, and lumped into some huge group.

One would think that those who do have less would understand more what those at the bottom are going through.

There does seem to be something which happens in society where each class strives to move away from the class which is closest behind them i.e. middle class from working class and working class from classes below them such as poor whites and poor non-whites. But I don't think it means that they don't understand the class below them, just that they want to move on from them! People talk a lot about the desire for 'equality' (another secular religion) but when the views of people are analysed being equal to others is often the last thing they want because they're striving to be better than the next guy! That's partly what the exam system is about, to filter out which student is better than the other - students don't want to be equally at the bottom but at the top and ahead of their peers.

[gilda-elise.livejournal.com]

There does seem to be something which happens in society where each class strives to move away from the class which is closest behind them i.e. middle class from working class and working class from classes below them such as poor whites and poor non-whites. But I don't think it means that they don't understand the class below them, just that they want to move on from them! People talk a lot about the desire for 'equality' (another secular religion) but when the views of people are analysed being equal to others is often the last thing they want because they're striving to be better than the next guy! That's partly what the exam system is about, to filter out which student is better than the other - students don't want to be equally at the bottom but at the top and ahead of their peers.

Considering how some over here talk, "They need to pull themselves up by their bootstraps," forgetting that those are many of the people whose bootstraps have been cut, "They're all cheating the government out of money so they don't have to work," even though many people on Welfare have jobs, you wouldn't know it. Some people have two or three jobs, but the jobs don't pay well enough for someone to live on. Yes, there are cheaters in all systems; the only way we could do away with that is to not let humans participate.

[shooting2kill.livejournal.com]

Yes, there are cheaters in all systems; the only way we could do away with that is to not let humans participate.

I might have misunderstood this but I really don't understand how we got to this point as I *never* once mentioned people cheating on the system and would never do so.

[gilda-elise.livejournal.com]

No, I know you didn't, but it's part of the narrative over here. They assume that most of the people on Welfare shouldn't be. That's the part I don't understand, how someone so close to that situation would belittle those who are. I think most people want to work.

[gilda-elise.livejournal.com]

She certainly tries, though with not complete success. And, I have to say, at least there are those on the left, at least in this country, who are trying to understand the right. I've yet to see a book by a conservative who is trying to understand the left, though I suppose it would be hard to pretend that you don't understand why people want to help those in need.

But you're right, it's a huge problem, how polarized our politics are, though, as I mentioned to chienne_folle, it isn't exactly a new one in this country.

[shooting2kill.livejournal.com]

We do have conservatives in this country who write/analyse and critique the left. People such as Ian Gilmour and Shirley Letwin from the past and more recent commentators such as the conservative philosopher Roger Scruton and Douglas Murray.

[livejournal.livejournal.com]

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[leethet.livejournal.com]

I hope people who don't get it read her book or books like it so that at least they understand where these people are coming from. For me and my friends (newspeople and liberals all) we get what Trumpers are looking for. Yes, they're looking for peace and security and all that - but whereas we look for it through treating EVERYONE with respect, they look for it through "Me first, no non-white people need apply, no gays, no uppity women. Only when we silence all of those voices will we have peace and security."

I will NEVER respect that viewpoint. I get that jobs have been lost. I get that people are scared, I even sort of get that to the uneducated eye it might look like "liberals" and brown people and anyone who isn't a white uneducated god-fearin' Murkin is the bad guy. But I'm not going to defend or coddle that point of view. It's willful ignorance and bigotry by choice. There is a world of information out here available to anyone who wants to understand who the real bad guys are. People who huddle in the middle of their imaginary "golden age" (where white people were on top as God intended and women and brown people knew their place) and refuse to allow facts, or decency, to intrude will not get my respect or tolerance.


Grrrrr... don't get me star-- oh, wait. I started myself.

[shooting2kill.livejournal.com]

but whereas we look for it through treating EVERYONE with respect,

I think you're very lucky if that's how opponents of Trump behave in the States. Here in London, at least, Momentum supporters of Corbyn i.e. the newer, wider membership, have behaved very badly and are destroying what was once a great center-Left party.

it's willful ignorance and bigotry by choice.

I agree with you but isn't that just another kind of bigotry? To have that sweeping, neat opinion of large sections of society (poor white people?) who at least in the UK are the ones who actually mix with non-white sections of society far more than their middle-class liberal counterparts, i.e. they go to inter-racial schools, inter-faith schools, work alongside, live alongside, and marry their non-white neighbours far more than middle-class liberals. It's the elephant in the room and so obvious it hardly needs stating. I think this is what the Engligh are pissed off about, the hypocrisy of the middle classes and maybe that's also the case in the States?

[leethet.livejournal.com]

If you're asking me to meet on middle ground with people who believe only white male Christian Americans should have any rights, I have to ask you ... what is the middle ground between my position (all American citizens should be treated with equal respect) and that position? Women get their rights taken away every other day? How do you compromise with, or respect, such a hate-filled, fact-free, extreme position?


Yes. I'm intolerant of willful ignorance and bigotry. I'm intolerant of racism and sexism. I'm not going to start tolerating it in order to meet horrible people on some imaginary "middle ground." I won't physically attack, or even attack with words, a Trump supporter. That is the extent of the respect I show to anyone - I'd extend a avowed Nazi the same basic courtesy (you may rest assured many Trump supporters wouldn't show me that respect - I'm one of those commie weirdo liberals who hate America). But if such a person starts spouting off, I will exercise my right to disagree.

As for my viewpoint, it is indeed a generalization. I would never claim otherwise. But I've more than once heard certain Brits proclaim that they have some special comprehension of America based on British culture that places them in a position of understanding, and in each case I can only say there isn't room or time on LJ to explain all the ways in which such Brits are quite mistaken. We are quite different nations in countless ways, and you can't generalize from one to the other, or suppose because you understand the one you grew up in, you fathom the other.

[shooting2kill.livejournal.com]

London has effectively become a city-state, far removed from the concerns of people who live elsewhere
I feel the same is true here. A friend and I were just discussing this, in fact. Newspapers tend to cover what's happening in big cities - L.A., New York City, Washington D.C. - as if the opinions expressed there and the desires and beliefs of the residents there are somehow nationwide.

That’s interesting. In terms of power I thought we were pretty top heavy in this country and that power was more devolved in the States (aided by the presence of more major cities?) and then with this devolution in power would come a kind of devolution or filtering of attitudes? Maybe it doesn’t work like that. Also, I’ve heard Americans themselves saying America is really a combination of several different countries and I thought that might have helped promote a multiplicity of opinions etc.

the news business in the U.S. sometimes gets lazy - the big city papers don't get out of the big city often enough because they think if they know what the urbanites think and want, they know all that matters.

That’s definitely happened here and is manifested in things like one form of media copying what other forms have said but not actually getting out there to verify things. Or one day something will appear on the web and then a couple of days later it appears on TV with TV claiming it’s news.

If you're asking me to meet on middle ground with people who believe only white male Christian Americans should have any rights, I have to ask you ... what is the middle ground between my position (all American citizens should be treated with equal respect) and that position? Women get their rights taken away every other day? How do you compromise with, or respect, such a hate-filled, fact-free, extreme position?

No, I’m not asking you to do that, I’m just concerned and fed up with liberal hypocrisy which, apart from being irritating, camouflages many important issues and places a lid on discussion which leads to more problems at a later stage such as voting in a Trump figure. Something’s gone badly wrong, hasn’t it? (Apart from the fact that it’s the much loved secular religion of 'democracy' which has brought about this situation.) But if I was forced to answer your question on what is the middle ground I’d probably start by saying God, I don’t know, if I knew that then I’d be earning lots of money elsewhere! Seriously, things like both sides being less tribal, less dogmatic, more open-minded, more tentative? Less convinced of their own ‘rightness’? (And let’s not forget we’re talking about society here - social science - as opposed to physical science, where there are few absolutes or hard and fast theories), More respectful of the views of others. e.g. instead of the left claiming that the poor are so stupid they don’t recognise what their own interests are, give them the benefit of the doubt and salute their cynicism which the gullible liberal left needs a good dose of! Better informed perhaps? e.g. you made the statement:

Part 2

[shooting2kill.livejournal.com]

Women get their rights taken away every other day? How do you compromise with, or respect, such a hate-filled, fact-free, extreme position?

Sorry, you’ve lost me now (and by the way, while I remember, what’s wrong with being a Christian?) but I suspect that’s an unhelpful, over-simplified take on reality. Again, I can’t comment on the US but if people took this on board they’d have images of women being dragged away in chains! Isn’t that slightly inaccurate and misleading? In the UK there have been injustices for both sexes e.g. men historically having to work until they’re 65 and women retiring at 60 and yet statistics show that women live longer. Where’s the fairness in that? Five years is a helluva long time especially if you’re working in a factory or driving a London bus. Men, historically, being the ones with the responsibility of providing a home and putting food on the table and yet hardly ever seeing, let alone, enjoying their families. Until recently I would hate to have been born a man.

As for my viewpoint, it is indeed a generalization. I would never claim otherwise. But I've more than once heard certain Brits proclaim that they have some special comprehension of America

Not from me! I hardly understand the UK let alone the US. As that Greek bloke once said ‘ all I know is that I know nothing’ and it would help if more people realised that about themselves.

I hope people who don't get it read her book or books like it so that at least they understand where these people are coming from. For me and my friends (newspeople and liberals all) we get what Trumpers are looking for. Yes, they're looking for peace and security and all that - but whereas we look for it through treating EVERYONE with respect,

Well it sounds as though your left wing are better behaved than ours! But are you certain that there’s no dissension/violence between the two sides when they meet? That’s not what certain news programmes over here reflect. The reason I ask is because that’s certainly not the case here in the UK with the extreme left behaving every bit as badly as the right, if not worse. They meet in the middle with their fascist, intolerance and their contempt for anyone who doesn’t agree with them. And for the Left, the sceptical working class is a big, big disappointment.

Phew! I think I'm just about done here...

Re: Part 2

[gilda-elise.livejournal.com]

Sorry, you’ve lost me now (and by the way, while I remember, what’s wrong with being a Christian?) but I suspect that’s an unhelpful, over-simplified take on reality. Again, I can’t comment on the US but if people took this on board they’d have images of women being dragged away in chains! Isn’t that slightly inaccurate and misleading? In the UK there have been injustices for both sexes e.g. men historically having to work until they’re 65 and women retiring at 60 and yet statistics show that women live longer. Where’s the fairness in that? Five years is a helluva long time especially if you’re working in a factory or driving a London bus. Men, historically, being the ones with the responsibility of providing a home and putting food on the table and yet hardly ever seeing, let alone, enjoying their families. Until recently I would hate to have been born a man.

Is it the law or only preference that men work longer? Our retirement age is sort of set at 65 (about the time one goes on Social Security and starts Medicare,) but it's not set in stone for either sex. If a man wants to work longer, that's his problem. I don't see how fairness, or unfairness, comes into it. And, at least over here, about a quarter of households have women as their major breadwinners, and that's with women making historically less. Plus, there's the recent gutting of women's reproductive rights. If women are doing better over there, just one more reason I want to move over there! *g*

Re: Part 2

[shooting2kill.livejournal.com]

I did say 'historically' i.e. that it's no longer the case and governments have gradually been trying to create equality between the sexes over retirement age.

Is it the law or only preference that men work longer?

It was the law that men only received the state pension at 65, that's where the unfairness lay, but yes, in the unlikely event they were well enough off they could retire earlier but not receive any pension.

I'm sure today many women in the UK are the main breadwinners in the household, and many times the only breadwinner.

[shooting2kill.livejournal.com]

Sorry! Just thought of another serious iniquity recently inflicted upon men in the UK by the legal system, where the Director of Public Prosecutions (Alison Saunders) ruled that several men were to be jailed for rape without disclosing important information held by the police and relating to their innocence. In these cases the usual presumption of innocence until proved guilty was non-existent and their lives ruined.

[gilda-elise.livejournal.com]

No, it's not that way here. I was born and lived most of my life in a large city (Phoenix.) I worked alongside, lived alongside non-whites...being one, myself. *g* But there were lots of white people who did, too. Now I live in the small town of Kentwood, Michigan, right outside of Grand Rapids, a sort of small city. I rarely see other people of color. I know they're here, but they were redlined into certain neighborhoods decades ago. In fact, it was quite a shock when we first moved here, the difference in the way the people of the Midwest think, as opposed to those in the West.

[shooting2kill.livejournal.com]

I can see that, yes. Even in a tiny country such as the UK the regional differences can be very pronounced. I really feel that I don't know most of the country.

[gilda-elise.livejournal.com]

The thing that gets me is that they are on top! But this country was founded on genocide, slavery and the theft of another country's land. But many of those people don't know that. Instead, they continue to believe the story that all of us were fed as children, that the Founding Fathers were only in it for freedom. that Manifest Destiny was real.

And, yeah, it's hard not to get started.