Robert Wuthnow's American Misfits and the Making of Middle-Class Respectability

What does it mean to be respectable?This broad question, set in the American middle-class context during the 19th century and up to the Great Depression, is what Robert Wuthnow, Professor of Sociology at Princeton University, addresses in his book about "American Misfits."In order to illuminate the complexities and never-ending negotiations when drawing boundaries between "us," respectable insiders, and "them," less respectable outsiders, Wuthnow tells stories about hucksters, lunatics, fanatics, immigrant congregations, rich people, and naughty children.Each chapter __ rather essay -has its own character.The chapter on hucksters deals with people without fixed belonging, oscillating as buyers and sellers between rural farms and city markets.The chapter on lunacy digs, in great detail, into one case of mental illness.The chapter on fanaticism is about drawing "the delicate line between fanaticism and acceptable religious behavior" (119) in a time when fanaticism was, as it still is, defined as refusal to discuss arguments and as "shouting, dancing, ranting, hearing divine voices, and engaging in violence" (128).In the chapter on immigrant congregations an interesting analysis is conducted on how social and symbolic cohesion and boundaries shape ethnic identities.Two German Baptist immigrant families in Wisconsin and Illinois, respectively, serve as examples.The chapter on wealth displays the super-rich as a small minority separated from the "common people" or the "forgotten man."It shows that not only "reds" but also business people were under attack, not least after World War I.The chapter on naughty children, finally, cites moral-based children's books and reproduces stories about wicked boys telling lies and drowning kittens.The chapters thus offer variety at the same time as they all more or less display Wuthnow's exper

Class (philosophy · Epistemology · Middle class · Political science · History · Law · Philosophy · Race, History, and American Society