American Misfits and the Making of Middle-Class Respectability
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | 4.93 (752 Votes) |
| Asin | : | B06Y638R2Z |
| Format Type | : | |
| Number of Pages | : | 564 Pages |
| Publish Date | : | 2013-04-30 |
| Language | : | English |
DESCRIPTION:
One of America's leading sociologists, Robert Wuthnow shows that respectability is rarely about respecting others but rather about identifying others to malign for their deficiencies and offenses."--Leigh Eric Schmidt, Washington University in St. Louis"This is an outstanding bookimpressively researched, boldly argued with interdisciplinary breadth, and innovative in the way it depicts the middle-class American dream as perpetually fleeting and tenuous, marked off by day-to-day practices of the rank-and-file and prone to negotiation amo
But they played an important part in the cultural work that made America, and their story is essential for understanding the “othering” that remains so much a part of American culture and politics today.. We meet a disabled Civil War veteran who worked as a huckster on the edges of the frontier, the wife of a lunatic who raised her family while her husband was institutionalized, an immigrant religious community accused of sedition, and a wealthy scion charged with profiteering.Unlike respected Americans who marched confidently toward worldly and heavenly success, such misfits were usually ignored in paeans about the nation. But clergy, educators, and community leaders also defined respectability negatively, by maligning individuals and groups—“misfits”—who deviated from accepted norms.Robert Wuthnow argues that respectability is constructed by “othering” people who do not fit into easily recognizable, socially a
Andlinger ’52 Professor of Social Sciences at Princeton University. . Robert Wuthnow is the Gerhard R. He is the author of many works about American culture and society, including Red State Religion: Faith and Politics in America’s Heartland and Rough Country: How Texas Became America’s Most Powerful Bible-Belt State (both Princeton)