American Misfits And The Making Of Middle Class Respectability

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American Misfits and the Making of Middle-Class Respectability

Robert Wuthnow
American Misfits and the Making of Middle Class Respectability Book PDF

Author : Robert Wuthnow
Publisher : Princeton University Press
Page : 352 pages
File Size : 40,9 Mb
Release : 2020-08-04
Category : History
ISBN : 9780691210711

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American Misfits and the Making of Middle-Class Respectability by Robert Wuthnow Pdf

How American respectability has been built by maligning those who don't make the grade How did Americans come to think of themselves as respectable members of the middle class? Was it just by earning a decent living? Or did it require something more? And if it did, what can we learn that may still apply? The quest for middle-class respectability in nineteenth-century America is usually described as a process of inculcating positive values such as honesty, hard work, independence, and cultural refinement. 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 approved categories. He demonstrates this through an in-depth examination of a wide variety of individuals and groups that became objects of derision. 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 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.

American Literary Misfits

D. Berton Emerson
American Literary Misfits Book PDF

Author : D. Berton Emerson
Publisher : UNC Press Books
Page : 171 pages
File Size : 54,7 Mb
Release : 2024-03-25
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9781469678412

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American Literary Misfits by D. Berton Emerson Pdf

The study of nineteenth-century American literature has long been tied up with the study of American democracy. Just as some regions in the United States are elevated to stand in for the whole nation—New England is a good example—D. Berton Emerson argues the same is true for American literature of the nineteenth century; a few canonical texts overrepresent the more motley history of American letters. Emerson examines an eclectic group of literary texts that have rarely, if ever, been considered representative of "the nation" because of their unseemly characters or plots, divergence from dominant literary trends of the era, or local particularity. These are his "literary misfits," authors and texts that show different forms of egalitarianism in action that existed outside and even against the dominant liberal narratives of American democracy. Emerson's unique contribution is revealing these texts and the people they represent as rich with political knowledge. This knowledge, he argues, finds its most potent expression in the local. Such texts show us a different kind of democratic politics: one that is egalitarian, disorderly, and radical rather than homogeneous.

Soaking the Middle Class

Anna Rhodes,Max Besbris
Soaking the Middle Class Book PDF

Author : Anna Rhodes,Max Besbris
Publisher : Russell Sage Foundation
Page : 244 pages
File Size : 55,8 Mb
Release : 2022-07-15
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9781610449168

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Soaking the Middle Class by Anna Rhodes,Max Besbris Pdf

Extreme weather is increasing in scale and severity as global warming worsens. While poorer communities are typically most vulnerable to the negative effects of climate change, even well-resourced communities are increasingly vulnerable as climate-related storms intensify. Yet little is known about how middle-class communities are responding to these storms and the resulting damage. In Soaking the Middle Class, sociologists Anna Rhodes and Max Besbris examine how a middle-class community recovers from a climate-related disaster and how this process fosters inequality within these kinds of places. In 2017, Hurricane Harvey dropped record-breaking rainfall in Southeast Texas resulting in more than $125 billion in direct damages. Rhodes and Besbris followed 59 flooded households in Friendswood, Texas, for two years after the storm to better understand the recovery process in a well-resourced, majority-White, middle-class suburban community. As such, Friendswood should have been highly resilient to storms like Harvey, yet Rhodes and Besbris find that the recovery process exacerbated often-invisible economic inequality between neighbors. Two years after Harvey, some households were in better financial positions than they were before the storm, while others still had incomplete repairs, were burdened with large new debts, and possessed few resources to draw on should another disaster occur. Rhodes and Besbris find that recovery policies were significant drivers of inequality, with flood insurance playing a key role in the divergent recovery outcomes within Friendswood. Households with flood insurance prior to Harvey tended to have higher incomes than those that did not. These households received high insurance payouts, enabling them to replace belongings, hire contractors, and purchase supplies. Households without coverage could apply for FEMA assistance, which offered considerably lower payouts, and for government loans, which would put them into debt. Households without coverage found themselves exhausting their financial resources, including retirement savings, to cover repairs, which put them in even more financially precarious positions than they were before the flood. The vast majority of Friendswood residents chose to repair and return to their homes after Hurricane Harvey. Even this devastating flood did not alter their plans for long-term residential stability, and the structure of recovery policies only further oriented homeowners towards returning to their homes. Prior to Harvey, many Friendswood households relied on flood damage from previous storms to judge their vulnerability and considered themselves at low risk. After Harvey, many found it difficult to assess their level of risk for future flooding. Without strong guidance from federal agencies or the local government on how to best evaluate risk, many residents ended up returning to potentially unsafe places. As climate-related disasters become more severe, Soaking the Middle Class illustrates how inequality in the United States will continue to grow if recovery policies are not fundamentally changed.

Staged Readings

Michael D'Alessandro
Staged Readings Book PDF

Author : Michael D'Alessandro
Publisher : University of Michigan Press
Page : 331 pages
File Size : 54,6 Mb
Release : 2022-09-26
Category : Performing Arts
ISBN : 9780472220588

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Staged Readings by Michael D'Alessandro Pdf

Staged Readings studies the social consequences of 19th-century America’s two most prevalent leisure forms: theater and popular literature. In the midst of watershed historical developments—including numerous waves of immigration, two financial Panics, increasing wealth disparities, and the Civil War—American theater and literature were developing at unprecedented rates. Playhouses became crowded with new spectators, best-selling novels flew off the shelves, and, all the while, distinct social classes began to emerge. While the middle and upper classes were espousing conservative literary tastes and attending family matinees and operas, laborers were reading dime novels and watching downtown spectacle melodramas like Nymphs of the Red Sea and The Pirate’s Signal or, The Bridge of Death!!! As audiences traveled from the reading parlor to the playhouse (and back again), they accumulated a vital sense of social place in the new nation. In other words, culture made class in 19th-century America. Based in the historical archive, Staged Readings presents a panoramic display of mid-century leisure and entertainment. It examines best-selling novels, such as Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin and George Lippard’s The Quaker City. But it also analyzes a series of sensational melodramas, parlor theatricals, doomsday speeches, tableaux vivant displays, curiosity museum exhibits, and fake volcano explosions. These oft-overlooked spectacles capitalized on consumers’ previous cultural encounters and directed their social identifications. The book will be particularly appealing to those interested in histories of popular theater, literature and reading, social class, and mass culture.

Corruption Plots

Malini Ranganathan,David L. Pike,Sapana Doshi
Corruption Plots Book PDF

Author : Malini Ranganathan,David L. Pike,Sapana Doshi
Publisher : Cornell University Press
Page : 293 pages
File Size : 50,5 Mb
Release : 2023-04-15
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9781501768767

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Corruption Plots by Malini Ranganathan,David L. Pike,Sapana Doshi Pdf

Corruption Plots illuminates how corruption is fundamental to global storytelling about how states and elites abuse entrusted power in late capitalism. The millennial city of the global South is a charged setting for allegations of corruption, with skyscrapers, land grabs, and slum evictions invoking outrage at deepening economic polarization. Drawing on ethnography in Bengaluru and Mumbai and a cross-section of literary and cinematic stories from cities around the world, Malini Ranganathan, David L. Pike, and Sapana Doshi pay close attention to the racial, caste, class, and gender locations of the narrators, spaces, and publics imagined to be harmed by corruption. Corruption Plots demonstrates how corruption talk is leveraged to make sense of unequal spatial change and used opportunistically by those who are themselves implicated in wrongdoing. Offering a wide-ranging analysis of urban worlds, the authors reveal the ethical, spatial, and political stakes of storytelling and how vital it is to examine the corruption plot in all its contradictions.

Radical Sufficiency

Christine Firer Hinze
Radical Sufficiency Book PDF

Author : Christine Firer Hinze
Publisher : Georgetown University Press
Page : 360 pages
File Size : 44,7 Mb
Release : 2021-02-01
Category : Religion
ISBN : 9781647120269

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Radical Sufficiency by Christine Firer Hinze Pdf

Rethinking the means through which we can achieve economic well-being for all. In this timely book, Christine Firer Hinze looks back at the influential teachings of priest-economist Monsignor John A. Ryan (1869-1945), who supported worker justice and defended a living wage for all Americans in the first half of the twentieth century. Advancing Ryan’s efforts to articulate a persuasive plan for social reform, Hinze advocates for an action-oriented livelihood agenda that situates US working families’ economic pursuits within a comprehensive commitment to sustainable “radical sufficiency” for all. Documenting the daily lives and economic struggles of past and present US Catholic working-class families, Hinze explores the larger impulses and patterns—economic, cultural, political, moral, and spiritual—that affect the work these people perform in homes, in communities, and at paid jobs. Their story entwines with the larger history of the American dream and working people's pursuit of a dignified livelihood. Surveying this history with an eye to the dynamics of power and difference, Hinze rethinks Ryan’s ethics and Catholic social teaching to develop a new conception of a decent livelihood and its implications for contemporary policy and practice. The result is a critical Catholic economic ethic capable of addressing the situations of workers and families in the interdependent global economy of the twenty-first century. Radical Sufficiency offers transformative strategies and strategic policy directions for achieving the radical Christian goal of dignified work and a good livelihood for all.

Community as Church, Church as Community

Michael Plekon
Community as Church Church as Community Book PDF

Author : Michael Plekon
Publisher : Wipf and Stock Publishers
Page : 272 pages
File Size : 49,6 Mb
Release : 2021-07-22
Category : Religion
ISBN : 9781725287532

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Community as Church, Church as Community by Michael Plekon Pdf

Parishes of all denominations are in decline, shrinking, closing, dying. We know that there are increasing numbers, young and older, who are religious “nones” and “dones.” This book explores why the decline is taking place, why the distancing is going on. But it goes on to examine parishes from all over the country and from various church bodies that are resurrecting. The central theme of death and resurrection shapes the analysis of parishes covered. Parishes are resurrecting by reinventing their ministries, by repurposing their building to better serve their neighborhoods, thus replanting and reconnecting with them. All of this is the Spirit’s doing but through the community of sisters and brothers who make up each congregation of faith. Community as the core of church is the other reality shaping the book’s reflection. And community, a parish being with those around, living for more than its own survival are visions for going forward. Other aspects of congregational life are also examined, most importantly the pastors—how they serve when budgets shrink, how they are trained, how pastors act with the community not above it. No recipes are suggested for parish resurrection, but the stories of the parishes that have revived bear within numerous lessons for us in the future.

Pacific Automobilism

Gijs Mom
Pacific Automobilism Book PDF

Author : Gijs Mom
Publisher : Berghahn Books
Page : 1002 pages
File Size : 47,8 Mb
Release : 2022-09-13
Category : Transportation
ISBN : 9781800735644

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Pacific Automobilism by Gijs Mom Pdf

The beginning of the 21st century has seen important shifts in mobility cultures around the world, as the West’s media-driven car culture has contrasted with existing local mobilities, from rickshaws in India and minibuses in Africa to cycling in China. In this expansive volume, historian Gijs Mom explores how contemporary mobility has been impacted by social, political, and economic forces on a global scale, as in light of local mobility cultures, the car as an ‘adventure machine’ seems to lose cultural influence in favor of the car’s status character.

What Happens When We Practice Religion?

Robert Wuthnow
What Happens When We Practice Religion Book PDF

Author : Robert Wuthnow
Publisher : Princeton University Press
Page : 256 pages
File Size : 52,8 Mb
Release : 2020-05-19
Category : Religion
ISBN : 9780691198583

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What Happens When We Practice Religion? by Robert Wuthnow Pdf

He favors the use of a broad range of analytic tools drawn from multiple disciplines and approaches to the study of religion.) The five chapters of this book describe the central concepts and arguments now advancing the study of religious practice. Chapter 1, entitled "Theories", discusses the theoretical contributions associated with the aforementioned shift in religious studies to the investigation of religious practice. Chapter 2, "Situations", discusses how religious activities and experiences are shaped by the physical and temporal spaces in which social action occurs. Chapter 3, "Intentions", takes on an important topic that has proven difficult to study from a social science perspective. "Feelings" are the focus of Chapter 4, and the role of "Bodies" is addressed in Chapter 5. .

Images of Childhood

Paul Duncum
Images of Childhood Book PDF

Author : Paul Duncum
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
Page : 281 pages
File Size : 46,5 Mb
Release : 2023-07-13
Category : Art
ISBN : 9781350299955

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Images of Childhood by Paul Duncum Pdf

Drawing on a rich legacy of pictorial evidence, Images of Childhood examines historical constructions of childhood and how they reinforce or challenge the prevailing view of childhood as a state of innocence. Each chapter explores how visual elements such as framing, points-of view, and lighting, as well as clothes, accessories, and body language, help to construct our many different conceptions of children: from members of the family unit and assumed gender roles; to schooling and aesthetic objects; through to their economic value and use in political propaganda. Skillfully navigating a multitude of perspectives on this topic, Paul Duncum considers both how our ideas, beliefs and values have changed throughout history and how some have remained unchanged. He also explores the cultural notion of “the child within” and how this has contributed to the way adults perceive children. The result is a text far broader in scope than any other in its field, as art history is interweaved with contemporary popular culture to explore how we visually represent childhood. In doing so, the book highlights the real-life implications that these representations have on children's rights.

The Left Behind

Robert Wuthnow
The Left Behind Book PDF

Author : Robert Wuthnow
Publisher : Princeton University Press
Page : 208 pages
File Size : 48,9 Mb
Release : 2019-04-30
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9780691195155

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The Left Behind by Robert Wuthnow Pdf

How a fraying social fabric is fueling the outrage of rural Americans What is fueling rural America’s outrage toward the federal government? Why did rural Americans vote overwhelmingly for Donald Trump? And is there a more nuanced explanation for the growing rural-urban divide? Drawing on more than a decade of research and hundreds of interviews, Robert Wuthnow brings us into America’s small towns, farms, and rural communities to paint a rich portrait of the moral order—the interactions, loyalties, obligations, and identities—underpinning this critical segment of the nation. Wuthnow demonstrates that to truly understand rural Americans’ anger, their culture must be explored more fully, and he shows that rural America’s fury stems less from economic concerns than from the perception that Washington is distant from and yet threatening to the social fabric of small towns. Moving beyond simplistic depictions of America’s heartland, The Left Behind offers a clearer picture of how this important population will influence the nation’s political future.

The Iranian Metaphysicals

Alireza Doostdar
The Iranian Metaphysicals Book PDF

Author : Alireza Doostdar
Publisher : Princeton University Press
Page : 312 pages
File Size : 54,9 Mb
Release : 2018-03-13
Category : Religion
ISBN : 9780691163789

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The Iranian Metaphysicals by Alireza Doostdar Pdf

What do the occult sciences, séances with the souls of the dead, and appeals to saintly powers have to do with rationality? Since the late nineteenth century, modernizing intellectuals, religious leaders, and statesmen in Iran have attempted to curtail many such practices as "superstitious," instead encouraging the development of rational religious sensibilities and dispositions. However, far from diminishing the diverse methods through which Iranians engage with the immaterial realm, these rationalizing processes have multiplied the possibilities for metaphysical experimentation. The Iranian Metaphysicals examines these experiments and their transformations over the past century. Drawing on years of ethnographic and archival research, Alireza Doostdar shows that metaphysical experimentation lies at the center of some of the most influential intellectual and religious movements in modern Iran. These forms of exploration have not only produced a plurality of rational orientations toward metaphysical phenomena but have also fundamentally shaped what is understood as orthodox Shi‘i Islam, including the forms of Islamic rationality at the heart of projects for building and sustaining an Islamic Republic. Delving into frequently neglected aspects of Iranian spirituality, politics, and intellectual inquiry, The Iranian Metaphysicals challenges widely held assumptions about Islam, rationality, and the relationship between science and religion.

Politics as Religion

Emilio Gentile
Politics as Religion Book PDF

Author : Emilio Gentile
Publisher : Princeton University Press
Page : 262 pages
File Size : 51,8 Mb
Release : 2020-09-01
Category : Religion
ISBN : 9781400827213

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Politics as Religion by Emilio Gentile Pdf

Emilio Gentile, an internationally renowned authority on fascism and totalitarianism, argues that politics over the past two centuries has often taken on the features of religion, claiming as its own the prerogative of defining the fundamental purpose and meaning of human life. Secular political entities such as the nation, the state, race, class, and the party became the focus of myths, rituals, and commandments and gradually became objects of faith, loyalty, and reverence. Gentile examines this "sacralization of politics," as he defines it, both historically and theoretically, seeking to identify the different ways in which political regimes as diverse as fascism, communism, and liberal democracy have ultimately depended, like religions, on faith, myths, rites, and symbols. Gentile maintains that the sacralization of politics as a modern phenomenon is distinct from the politicization of religion that has arisen from militant religious fundamentalism. Sacralized politics may be democratic, in the form of a civil religion, or it may be totalitarian, in the form of a political religion. Using this conceptual distinction, and moving from America to Europe, and from Africa to Asia, Gentile presents a unique comparative history of civil and political religions from the American and French Revolutions, through nationalism and socialism, democracy and totalitarianism, fascism and communism, up to the present day. It is also a fascinating book for understanding the sacralization of politics after 9/11.

The Church in the Shadow of the Mosque

Sidney H. Griffith
The Church in the Shadow of the Mosque Book PDF

Author : Sidney H. Griffith
Publisher : Princeton University Press
Page : 237 pages
File Size : 41,9 Mb
Release : 2012-01-09
Category : Religion
ISBN : 9781400834020

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The Church in the Shadow of the Mosque by Sidney H. Griffith Pdf

Amid so much twenty-first-century talk of a "Christian-Muslim divide"--and the attendant controversy in some Western countries over policies toward minority Muslim communities--a historical fact has gone unnoticed: for more than four hundred years beginning in the mid-seventh century, some 50 percent of the world's Christians lived and worshipped under Muslim rule. Just who were the Christians in the Arabic-speaking milieu of Mohammed and the Qur'an? The Church in the Shadow of the Mosque is the first book-length discussion in English of the cultural and intellectual life of such Christians indigenous to the Islamic world. Sidney Griffith offers an engaging overview of their initial reactions to the religious challenges they faced, the development of a new mode of presenting Christian doctrine as liturgical texts in their own languages gave way to Arabic, the Christian role in the philosophical life of early Baghdad, and the maturing of distinctive Oriental Christian denominations in this context. Offering a fuller understanding of the rise of Islam in its early years from the perspective of contemporary non-Muslims, this book reminds us that there is much to learn from the works of people who seriously engaged Muslims in their own world so long ago. Some images inside the book are unavailable due to digital copyright restrictions.

Religion and Politics in Burma

Donald Eugene Smith
Religion and Politics in Burma Book PDF

Author : Donald Eugene Smith
Publisher : Princeton University Press
Page : 365 pages
File Size : 43,9 Mb
Release : 2015-12-08
Category : Religion
ISBN : 9781400878796

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Religion and Politics in Burma by Donald Eugene Smith Pdf

The interaction of Buddhism and politics in the Theravada Buddhist countries since their independence is considered. Burmese attempts to relate Buddhism to the ideologies of nationalism, democracy, and socialism are analyzed. Originally published in 1965. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.