Working with Class: Social Workers and the Politics of Middle-Class Identity

Polls tell us that most Americans — whether they earn $20,000 or $200,000 a year — think of themselves as middle class. As this phenomenon suggests, “middle class” is a category whose definition is not necessarily self-evident. In this book, historian Daniel Walkowitz approaches the question of what it means to be middle class from an innovative angle. Focusing on the history of social workers — who daily patrol the boundaries of class — he examines the changed and contested meaning of the ...