The Problem People and the Hard Workers

Whiteness and Small Town Response to Economic Decline

Dados Bibliográficos

ID7802175
AutoresClaudine M Pied (0000-0002-9464-7424, Department of Social Sciences, University of Wisconsin-Platteville, Platteville, WI, USA, autor correspondente)
Ano2019
Volume26
Fascículo1
Páginas33-50
Data de publicação2019-01-02
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessNão
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoIdentities (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 1070-289X • E-ISSN: 1547-3384
EditoraInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/1070289x.2017.1349357
OpenAlexW2738244284
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas9
Referências citadas52

This paper explores the role of race and class in post-industrial economic decline and revitalization in a predominantly white town in the northeastern United States. Ethnographic research in this small town revealed that residents commonly identified lazy, welfare-dependent substance abusers as the source of local problems. At the same time, they lauded workers, drawing on a national white hard worker mythology. Poor and underemployed workers themselves thus negotiated between the problem people and white worker ideals. I argue that the white worker myth provides a symbolic escape hatch, which reinforces hegemonic whiteness and the US racial order despite the lack of material payoff for economically marginalised white workers. As such, I call for a shift away from measuring degrees of white privilege towards an analysis of how people in various classed and gendered positions mobilise or contribute to white power differently

Ethnography · Hegemony · Mythology · Political science · Politics · Power (physics · Privilege (computing · Race (biology · Sociology · Welfare · White (mutation · White privilege · White supremacy · Gender Studies · History · Law · Migration, Ethnicity, and Economy · Social and Cultural Dynamics · Urban, Neighborhood, and Segregation Studies