Book Review

The Social Science Journal 54 (2017) 106–107

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The Social Science Journal

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Book review

The New Minority: White Working Class Politics in an Age of Immigrants and Inequality By Justin Gest; Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2016, ISBN 9780190632557, 249 pp., Paperback

Strangers in their own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right By Arlie R. Hochschild; New York, NY: The New Press, 2016, ISBN 9781620972250, 351 pp., Hard cover

Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis By J.D. Vance, New York, NY: Harpers Collins Publishers, 2016, ISBN 9780062300546, Hard cover

Many scholars are shaken and puzzled by the results of the 2016 U.S. presidential election. These three books provide context and explanation for understanding the contemporary political climate. They all provide a differ- ent lens on the same phenomena, albeit in different places, describing both the U.S. and United Kingdom.

Hillbilly Elegy is the most accessible and least academic of the three. It is a memoir of Vance’s childhood and early adulthood in the Appalachian region with deep roots in Kentucky and an area of Ohio with many Appalachian migrants. He describes a strong working class culture based on honor and tradition but easily derailed into self- destruction by the loss of family wage jobs. Short on true explanation for larger phenomena, this book is a com- pelling, hard to put down read that might work particularly well with undergraduates impatient with more academic texts. It certainly does provide context for understanding what about the American political climate resonates with this proud, hair-trigger hillbilly culture as well as what the American white rural working class shares with members of the working class around the world.

Both Strangers in their Own Land and The New Minor- ity are clearly meant to make scholarly contributions. Hochschild relies on qualitative ethnographic data, while Gest uses both qualitative ethnographic and quantitative survey-based data. Both books make explicit mention and

explanation of the political emergence of Donald Trump and both provide deep explanation for the local and global rise of the anger and far right political ideals among mem- bers of the working class.

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.soscij.2017.01.002 0362-3319/

Hochschild uses the region of Louisiana’s “chemi- cal corridor” to understand and explain a conservative, church-bound culture battered by both economic and lit- eral storms and damaged by the loss of a treasured natural landscape of water and woods to pollution and geological subsidence that destroyed a community due to removal of underground minerals for industrial activities. Hochschild, experienced in developing deep cultural understandings through ethnographic research, dives into this world from her very different home base in Berkeley, California. She gathers data by attending church services, partaking of local food and hospitality, and becoming (as she describes their relationships) friends with people living very different lives from her own.

The conundrum she sets out to resolve is this: of all people, the folks she studies are the ones who “should” question allegiance to an anti-environmental protection state government and U.S. Republican platform. They can no longer safely swim in, fish from, or boat on trea- sured waterways. The fish are poisoned, the frogs gone, and the water badly polluted. Why, then, have most locals remained deeply wedded to the anti-environmental agenda of the Tea and Republican parties? Some have even become staunch environmental activists, while also remaining avid churchgoers and Tea Party members.

As Hochschild explains it, this dissonance results from culture, prioritization, and the underlying “deep stories” of the region that see others (immigrants, minorities, urban liberals, the underserving poor) as unfairly “cutting ahead” in the line to prosperity. This is a culture that prioritizes the church and views time on earth as a temporary step toward heaven. Thus, environmental contamination, while disappointing, has limited implications. In addition, in a region filled with poverty and grounded in a myth of free- dom from government dependence (in fact the state takes in far more money in federal payments than it pays out in federal taxes), a belief in the triumvirate of family, faith, and the market makes this a reasonable tradeoff. Pollu- tion is an expected and acceptable cost of family wage chemical plant jobs. The people who reject this argu- ment are seen as devoid of roots in all that this culture treasures: urban (to the region’s rurality), “unchurched”

(to a strong tradition of “being churched”), and lacking a strong connection to traditional family structure (in a region that holds family as one of the most important insti- tutions).

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Gest’s The New Minority focuses on explaining differ- nt political participation strategies by understanding the orking class cultures of the “rust belt” communities of oungstown, Ohio in the United States and specific East ondon neighborhoods. Both sets of communities are in evere economic decline due to decades of working class ob losses. The East London neighborhoods voted over-

helming for Brexit. However, it is interesting to note that n the 2016 U.S. presidential election, in Mahoning County, he county in which Youngstown sits, Hillary Clinton won 9.8% of the vote to Trump’s 46.8%, although Ohio went on o vote overwhelmingly for Trump resulting in his winning he state’s electoral votes.

Gest’s focus on political participation leads his atten- ion to understanding why residents of these communities

ake the choices they do. He differentiates between active, assive, pro-system, and anti-system stances and actions. est argues that an active pro-system stance leads to polit-

cal engagement while a passive pro-system one leads to itting out and not participating. On the other hand, an ctive anti-system stance causes individuals to rebel while

passive anti-system position leads them to withdraw. est contrasts withdrawal with sitting out because the for- er causes people to withdraw in disgust while sitting out

s more of a position of relative satisfaction and a feel- ng that things are running well enough not to need “my ote.” Further, Gest helps the reader to understand why oungstowners and East Londoners might choose to be ither passive or active. It is worth noting that rebelling s exactly what Trump voters did in the U.S., with many f them explicitly stating that their goal was to blow up a

olitical system that does not represent them.

In combination, the books provide a portrait of a slice f society for whom life is getting worse, generation after eneration. As Gest shows, individual responses to this

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situation vary; those who have faith in the political sys- tem representing them will either engage or sit things out, while those who do not will rebel or withdraw. Hochschild’s Louisiana friends can also be seen as rebelling, choosing the Tea Party and Donald Trump to foster radi- cal change in the hopes it will move them to their rightful place in line, a move the mainstream two party system fails to provide. Vance’s hillbillies, thought of in light of Gest’s argument, are more likely to sit it out, perhaps rebelling in their personal lives but politically inactive. While the liberal-conservative divide in the U.S. seems to elude understanding and continually expand, these books help readers better bridge the gap.

Dense with data, Gest’s book provides the most abstract, theoretically-grounded explanations. Hochschild’s work does the best job of making what may a fairly “strange” culture to many academic readers seem familiar, sympa- thetic, and, ultimately, understandable. Vance’s portrait is the most intimate, but least explanatory. The three might be an interesting combination for a graduate class in polit- ical sociology or other upper level courses in sociology or political science. While the Gest text might be a bit chal- lenging for undergraduates, both Hochschild’s and Vance’s work would likely work well in a wide variety of under- graduate social science classes. Hochschild’s book would also fit very well into more courses focused on environ- mental issues in policy, geography, or sociology.

Kathleen E. Halvorsen Department of Social Sciences and the School

of Forest Resources and Environmental

Science, Michigan Technological University,

USA E-mail address: [email protected]

Available online 2 February 2017