Friday, July 20, 2018

Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right Paperback – February 20, 2018 by Arlie Russell Hochschild (The New Press)



Arlie R Hochschild is a sociology professor at UC Berkley. In this book she has compiled an interesting story of how people think on the right. She was concerned about the “increasingly hostile split in our nation between two political camps.” To do this, she spent about five years in Louisiana talking with people on the other side of her “empathy wall” as she calls it. The empathy wall is defined as an obstacle that prevents a deep understanding with another person. It can make us feel hostile or indifferent to the beliefs of others. The book is divided into four main parts: The Great Paradox, The Social Terrain, the Deep Story and the People in It, and, finally, Going Natural.

She picked Louisiana because it presented an extreme example of what she called the “great paradox.” Statistics show that this state ranks very low in “human development.” - it ranks 49th. In overall health, it ranked last, it ranked 48th in eight-grade reading, 49th out of 50 in eight-grade math, and 49th in child well-being. Yet these same people will spurn most federal help. Even so, 44 percent of the state’s budget comes from the federal government. As Alec MacGillis of the NY Times stated, “People in red states who need Medicaid and food stamps welcome them but don’t vote…while those a little higher on the class ladder, white conservatives, don’t need them and do vote – against public dollars for the poor.” When it comes to the significant pollution from the petrochemical industry, the logic is “the more oil, the more jobs. The more jobs, the more prosperity, and the less need for government … the better off they will be.”

In the subsequent chapters of Part II, the author enters the “social terrain” of the people to investigate how the basic institutions of industry, state government, church, and the press influenced their feelings about life. The author has many conversations with the people living there and relates the narratives for us. We get a firsthand look at just how the people think, and what influences their opinions.

In Part III, the author discuss the “deep story” of the people. She defines this as the story feelings tell in the language of symbols, removing judgement and fact. It allows both sides to “explore the subjective prism through which the party on the other side sees the world.” It represents, in metaphorical form, “the hopes, fears, pride, shame, resentment, and anxiety in the lives” of those she talked to. We see how racism, discrimination, sexism, oppression, gender issues, class, and immigration play into their sympathies.

In the final section, the author provides a contrast between the 1860s and the 1960s before delving into something called “collective effervescence,” referring to the “state of emotional excitation felt by those who join with others they take to be fellow members of a moral biological tribe.” In her travels, Hochschild was humbled by the complexity and height of the empathy wall, but felt that the people she met in Louisiana showed that the wall could easily come down, and that there is a possibility for practical cooperation.

The book concludes with three appendixes. Appendix A describes the research, Appendix B talks about the relationship of politics and pollution, and Appendix C covers fact-checking.

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