Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right

by Arlie Russell Hochschild

Overview

The National Book Award Finalist and New York Times bestseller that became a guide and balm for a country struggling to understand the election of Donald Trump

"A generous but disconcerting look at the Tea Party. . . . This is a smart, respectful and compelling book."
—Jason DeParle, The New York Times Book Review

When Donald Trump won the 2016 presidential election, a bewildered nation turned to Strangers in Their Own Land to understand what Trump voters were thinking when they cast their ballots. Arlie Hochschild, one of the most influential sociologists of her generation, had spent the preceding five years immersed in the community around Lake Charles, Louisiana, a Tea Party stronghold. As Jedediah Purdy put it in the New Republic, "Hochschild is fascinated by how people make sense of their lives. . . . [Her] attentive, detailed portraits . . . reveal a gulf between Hochchild's 'strangers in their own land' and a new elite." Already a favorite common read book in communities and on campuses across the country and called "humble and important" by David Brooks and "masterly" by Atul Gawande, Hochschild's book has been lauded by Noam Chomsky, New Orleans mayor Mitch Landrieu, and countless others.

The paperback edition features a new afterword by the author reflecting on the election of Donald Trump and the other events that have unfolded both in Louisiana and around the country since the hardcover edition was published, and also includes a readers' group guide at the back of the book.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781620972250
Publisher:	New Press, The
Publication date:	09/06/2016
Pages:	368
Sales rank:	1,160,336
Product dimensions:	6.40(w) x 8.90(h) x 1.30(d)

About the Author

Arlie Russell Hochschild is one of the most influential sociologists of her generation. She is the author of nine books, including The Second Shift, The Time Bind, The Managed Heart, and The Outsourced Self. Three of her books have been named as New York Times Notable Books of the Year and her work appears in sixteen languages. The winner of the Ulysses Medal as well as Guggenheim and Mellon grants, she lives in Berkeley, California.

Table of Contents

Preface xi

Part 1 The Great Paradox

1 Traveling to the Heart 3

2 "One Thing Good" 25

3 The Rememberers 39

4 The Candidates 55

5 The "Least Resistant Personality" 73

Part 2 The Social Terrain

6 Industry: "The Buckle in America's Energy Belt" 85

7 The State: Governing the Market 4,000 Feet Below 99

8 The Pulpit and the Press: "The Topic Doesn't Come Up" 117

Part 3 The Deep Story And The People In It

9 The Deep Story 135

10 The Team Player: Loyalty Above All 153

11 The Worshipper: Invisible Renunciation 169

12 The Cowboy: Stoicism 181

13 The Rebel: A Team Loyalist with a New Cause 193

Part 4 Going National

14 The Fires of History: The 1860s and the 1960s 207

15 Strangers No Longer: The Power of Promise 221

16 "They Say There Are Beautiful Trees" 231

Afterword 243

Acknowledgments 269

Appendix A The Research 273

Appendix B Politics and Pollution: National Discoveries from ToxMap 277

Appendix C Tact-Checking Common Impressions 281

Endnotes 289

Bibliography 347

Index 371

Reading Group Guide 385

Editorial Reviews

One of several central figures in sociologist Arlie Russell Hochschild's important and compelling book is Harold Areno, a retired pipefitter and Pentecostal deacon who, with his nine siblings, was born and raised on southern Louisiana’s Bayou d'Inde. He tells Hochschild about a childhood spent swimming and fishing and, flipping through a photo album, shows her pictures of the stately cypress trees that once lined the water's banks. Today, the author writes in Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right, the bayou, downstream from a number of petrochemical plants that have taken full advantage of Louisiana's lax environmental regulations, is a "tree graveyard," and only lifeless gray trunks remain. The animals Harold's family kept — cows, chickens, goats, hogs — died after drinking the toxic water; the fish are no longer safe to eat. Harold and his wife survived cancer, but he recites a long list of family members who did not.

Hochschild sees the Arenos, who are staunch Republicans, as part of what she calls "the Great Paradox": in Louisiana, as in other red states in the South, one finds "great pollution and great resistance to regulating polluters." Strangers in Their Own Land, nominated for a National Book Award, grew out of Hochschild's alarm over the country's deepening political divide and her heartfelt interest in understanding, in her words, "how life feels to people on the right." Over a period of five years, Hochschild traveled to Louisiana bayou country from her Berkeley home to get to know a group of men and women she comes to refer to as her "Tea Party friends" and to understand why, in an area that's suffered from calamitous industrial pollution, they put more faith in industry than in government.

The short answer is economic. The men and women she interviews believe they must choose between the environment and jobs; they also tend to overestimate the number of jobs the oil industry brings to the state (the highest estimate is that 15 percent of Louisiana's jobs are in oil). But Hochschild looks beyond economic explanations for what she calls her subjects' "deep story," one based not in fact but in how things feel. The story she comes up with is an extended metaphor that her interviewees agree captures their experience. Hochschild takes several pages to lay it out, but the abridged version is this: They've been waiting patiently in line, without complaint, but others — blacks, immigrants, refugees, even endangered animals — keep cutting in front of them. Adding insult to injury, Hochschild writes, they feel they've "been asked to extend [their] sympathy to all the people who have cut in front" of them. "People think we're not good people if we don't feel sorry for blacks and immigrants and Syrian refugees," one man tells the author. "But I am a good person and I don't feel sorry for them." Donald Trump hadn't clinched the Republican Party nomination for president as of the book's completion, but one reason Strangers in Their Own Land is so timely is that it explains the emotional release that Trump — who has disparaged Mexicans, Muslims, women, and the disabled and who had won the support of most of Hochschild's subjects during the primaries — provides.

Hochschild's Tea Partiers direct their resentment not up at the 1 percent or at the monopolistic corporations that pollute their air and waterways but downward at the perceived "takers." Indeed, just as they overestimate the number of jobs the oil industry provides in Louisiana, they vastly overestimate the proportion of the federal budget allocated to welfare (eight percent of the 2014 budget went to needs-based benefits, Hochschild reports); many complain that "the federal government [is] taking money from the workers and giving it to the idle." In the wake of revelations that Trump may have avoided paying federal income tax for 18 years, it is especially poignant how many interviewees express pride to Hochschild that they have never taken "a dime from the government."

Hochschild explains that her project was inspired by Thomas Frank's 2004 hot-button book What's the Matter with Kansas?, which questioned why working-class Kansans were increasingly voting Republican when doing so was not in their economic interest. But the tone of Strangers couldn't be more unlike that of Frank's biting polemic. Hochschild — best known for the 1989 book The Second Shift, which demonstrated that women's workdays were followed by another unpaid round of labor at home — has approached her subjects with an earnest eagerness to understand their lives, and they in turn are eager to be understood. "May I take you on an adventure?" a woman named Jackie asks Hochschild before driving her around the area, showing her the other homes where she and her husband had lived. Each house they moved to was bigger and nicer than the one before, each, Hochschild writes, "a step on a ladder to the American Dream." Jackie, who grew up poor, says simply, "Pollution is the sacrifice we make for capitalism."

Despite the fact that her own political leanings are, well, what you'd expect a Berkeley sociologist's to be, Hochschild treats her subjects with boundless compassion and affection. As a reader, I reacted differently. Harold Areno’s world was lost, but he and his wife vote strictly for pro-life candidates because "if we get our souls saved, we go to Heaven, and . . . [we'll] never have to worry about the environment from then on." Jackie's vote might match Harold's, but her concerns are more earthly. "I don't want a smaller house," she tells Hochschild. "I don't want to drive a smaller car." Unable to match Hochschild’s empathy, I often found myself, instead, wondering: What’s the matter with Louisiana?

Barbara Spindel has covered books for Time Out New York, Newsweek.com, Details, and Spin. She holds a Ph.D. in American Studies.

Reviewer: Barbara Spindel

The Barnes & Noble Review

…an energetic, open-minded quest to understand…[the] opposition to federal help from people and places that need it…Hochschild is a woman of the left, but her mission is empathy, not polemics. She takes seriously the Tea Partiers' complaints that they have become the "strangers" of the title—triply marginalized by flat or falling wages, rapid demographic change, and liberal culture that mocks their faith and patriotism…Whatever racial or class resentments she finds, Hochschild makes clear that she likes the people she meets. They aren't just soldiers in a class war but victims of one, too. She mourns their economic losses, praises their warmth and hospitality, and admires their "grit and resilience"…[Strangers in Their Own Land] is a smart, respectful and compelling book.

The New York Times Book Review - Jason DeParle

06/27/2016
Hochschild (The Outsourced Self), a sociologist and UC–Berkeley professor emerita, brings her expertise to American politics, addressing today’s conservative movement and the ever-widening gap between right and left. Hochschild contends that current thinking neglects the importance of emotion in politics. Though touching lightly on objective causes, she goes searching primarily for what she names the “deep story”—emotional truth. She focuses on a single group (the Tea Party), state (Louisiana), and issue (environmental pollution), opening her mind—and, crucially, her heart—to the way avowed conservatives tell their stories. Her deeply humble approach is refreshing and strengthens her research. Hochschild discovers attitudes and behaviors around key concepts such as work, honor, religion, welfare, and the environment that may surprise those with left-leaning politics. She intrigues, for example, by showing that what the left regards as prejudice, the right sees as release from imposed “feeling rules,” and the “sympathy fatigue” that results. She skillfully invites liberal readers into the lives of Americans whose views they may have never seriously considered. After evaluating her conclusions and meeting her informants in these pages, it’s hard to disagree that empathy is the best solution to stymied political and social discourse. Agent: Georges Borchardt, Georges Borchardt Inc. (Sept.)

Publishers Weekly

Praise for Arlie Hochschild's Strangers in Their Own Land:
“[Hochschild’s] deeply humble approach is refreshing and strengthens her research…. She skillfully invites liberal readers into the lives of Americans whose views they may have never seriously considered. After evaluating her conclusions and meeting her informants in these pages, it’s hard to disagree that empathy is the best solution to stymied political and social discourse."
—Publishers Weekly

“A well-told chronicle of an ambitious sociological project of significant current importance.”
—Kirkus Reviews

"In her attempt to climb over the ‘empathy wall’ and truly understand the emotional lives of her political adversaries, Arlie Hochschild gives us a vital roadmap to bridging the deep divides in our political landscape and renewing the promise of American democracy. A must-read for any political American who isn’t ready to give up just yet."
—Joan Blades, co-founder of LivingRoomConversations.org, MomsRising.org, and MoveOn.org

"If the great political question of our time can be summarized in the two words, ‘Donald Trump,’ the answer is to be found in Arlie Russell Hochschild’s brilliant new book, Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right. Hochschild, an eminent sociologist with a novelist’s storytelling skill, has crafted an absorbing tale full of richly drawn, complicated characters who come bearing their own fascinating histories. Together, in Hochschild’s authoritative hands, they offer a compelling and lucid portrait of what had seemed a bewildering political moment. A powerful, imaginative, necessary book, arriving not a moment too soon."
—Mark Danner, author of Spiral: Trapped in the Forever War

"Arlie Russell Hochschild’s work has never been more timely or more necessary, from the resurgence of interest in emotional labor to this deep, empathetic dive into the heart of the Right. Strangers in Their Own Land does what few dare to do—it takes seriously the role of feelings in politics."
—Sarah Jaffe, author of Necessary Trouble: Americans in Revolt

"The celebrated sociologist Arlie Hochschild left Berkeley and went far outside her comfort zone to live among and report on Tea Party members in Louisiana over five years. With the clear-headed empathy she is famous for, she explored the central paradox of these political activists in the heart of ‘cancer alley’: they understand that the chemical and oil companies have destroyed their environment and sometimes their lives, but they remain ardent defenders of free market capitalism. Hochschild spent many hours—at church services, picnics and kitchen tables—probing the ways they struggle to reconcile their conflicting interests and loyalties. There could not be a more important topic in current American politics, nor a better person to dissect it. Every page—every story and individual—is fascinating, and the emerging analysis is revelatory."
—Barbara Ehrenreich

"Arlie Hochschild journeys into a far different world than her liberal academic enclave of Berkeley, into the heartland of the nation’s political right, in order to understand how the conservative white working class sees America. With compassion and empathy, she discovers the narrative that gives meaning and expression to their lives–and which explains their political convictions, along with much else. Anyone who wants to understand modern America should read this captivating book."
—Robert B. Reich, Chancellor’s Professor of Public Policy, University of California, Berkeley

Praise for Arlie Hochschild's The Outsourced Self:
"Incisive, provocative, and often downright entertaining."
—Publishers Weekly

"A social thinker of great stature and scope to tackle this question, and a writer of immense charm…Arlie Hochschild is both, and this may be her best book ever."
—Barbara Ehrenreich

Praise for Arlie Hochschild's The Time Bind:
"Truly subversive."
—The New York Times Book Review

"Important, provocative, groundbreaking."
—Newsweek

"Beautifully written, poignant."
—The Wall Street Journal

From the Publisher

2016-06-01
An acclaimed liberal sociologist examines "the increasingly hostile split" between America's two major political parties and "how life feels to people on the right—that is…the emotion that underlies politics."Five years before Donald Trump's presidential bid caught fire, Hochschild (So How's the Family?: And Other Essays, 2013, etc.) decided she wanted to better understand the political and cultural divides in the United States by immersing herself in the anti-government tea party culture so foreign to her own beliefs. Traveling regularly from her Berkeley, California, home to Lake Charles, Louisiana, the author arranged to spend large amounts of time with tea party members and additional self-identified conservatives to figure out how they came to their beliefs. Hochschild felt especially puzzled by the paradox of Louisiana residents residing in dangerously polluted areas yet opposing environmental regulations proposed by both the state and federal governments. Though upset by seemingly racist, sexist, ageist, and economic class hatreds among the men and women she came to know, Hochschild says her determination to observe empathetically rarely flagged. She quickly realized that many of the stated views held of the tea party members were often not fact-based but rather grounded in what life feels like to them—e.g., government feels intrusive, liberals feel condescending, members of racial and ethnic minorities feel lazy and threatening. Trying to imagine herself as the Lake Charles residents viewed themselves, Hochschild vowed to immerse herself thoroughly enough to comprehend what she terms their "deep stories," and she felt grateful that the tea party members who found her views offensive nonetheless shared their time and thoughts generously. At times, Hochschild flirts with overgeneralizing and stereotyping, but for the most part, she conducts herself as a personable, nonjudgmental researcher. A well-told chronicle of an ambitious sociological project of significant current importance.

Kirkus Reviews