Stolen Pride: Loss, Shame, and the Rise of the Right

by Arlie Russell Hochschild

Overview

Notes From Your Bookseller

The American ideological divide may feel impassable these days, but digging into the core of Appalachia, Arlie Russell Hochschild offers new, critical perspectives on how poverty and alienation play out on the national political stage.

In her first book since the widely acclaimed Strangers in Their Own Land, National Book Award finalist and bestselling author Arlie Russell Hochschild now ventures to Appalachia, uncovering the "pride paradox" that has given the right's appeals such resonance.

For all the attempts to understand the state of American politics and the blue/red divide, we've ignored what economic and cultural loss can do to pride. What happens, Arlie Russell Hochschild asks, when a proud people in a hard-hit region suffer the deep loss of pride and are confronted with a powerful political appeal that makes it feel "stolen"?

Hochschild's research drew her to Pikeville, Kentucky, in the heart of Appalachia, within the whitest and second-poorest congressional district in the nation, where the city was reeling: coal jobs had left, crushing poverty persisted, and a deadly drug crisis struck the region. Although Pikeville was in the political center thirty years ago, by 2016, 80 percent of the district's population voted for Donald Trump. Her brilliant exploration of the town's response to a white nationalist march in 2017 — a rehearsal for the deadly Unite the Right march that would soon take place in Charlottesville, Virginia — takes us deep inside a torn and suffering community.

Hochschild focuses on a group swept up in the shifting political landscape: blue-collar men. In small churches, hillside hollers, roadside diners, trailer parks, and Narcotics Anonymous meetings, Hochschild introduces us to unforgettable people, and offers an original lens through which to see them and the wider world. In Stolen Pride, Hochschild incisively explores our dangerous times, even as she also points a way forward.

"A piercing . . . impressive and nuanced assessment of a critical factor in American politics." — Publishers Weekly (starred review)

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781620976463
Publisher:	New Press, The
Publication date:	09/10/2024
Pages:	400
Sales rank:	12,622
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.60(d)

About the Author

Arlie Russell Hochschild is the author of many groundbreaking books, including The Second Shift, The Managed Heart, and The Time Bind as well as Strangers in Their Own Land, which became an instant bestseller and was a finalist for a National Book Award, and Stolen Pride: Loss, Shame, and the Rise of the Right (both from The New Press). Hochschild is professor emerita of sociology at the University of California, Berkeley. She lives in Berkeley with her husband, the writer Adam Hochschild.

Editorial Reviews

★ 06/24/2024

Shame is driving the rightward turn in economically depressed rural areas, according to this piercing analysis. Hochschild, a sociologist at UC Berkeley, revisits the themes of Strangers in Their Own Land, this time interviewing the residents of Pikeville, Ky.—located in one of the whitest, poorest, and most conservative counties in the country—to understand how the once purple coal town turned deep red. She finds that many in Pikeville are entangled in what she calls “the pride paradox,” or the tension between dwindling economic opportunities and the belief that one’s successes or failures in life reflect one’s abilities. Residents consequently blame themselves and feel ashamed when their lives don’t turn out how they’d hoped, which, Hochschild argues, drives them to support Donald Trump, whose shamelessness provides a “cathartic release” for his followers. Hochschild’s empathetic profiles suggest a sinister side to American individualism as ordinary people hold themselves responsible for problems that arise from systemic wrongdoing, like opioid addiction brought on by Purdue Pharma’s pill pushing. She also debunks common misconceptions about Trump’s base, revealing that “those most enthralled with Donald Trump were not at the very bottom” but instead were those “who aspired to do well” or “who were doing well within a region that was not.” It’s an impressive and nuanced assessment of a critical factor in American politics. (Sept.)

Publishers Weekly

Praise for Stolen Pride:

"A deeply researched account of the rightward turn in Appalachia."—The New Yorker

"Stolen Pride has an authority earned through seven years of research. . . . [achieving] a kaleidoscopic effect. . . . Her compassion is tangible. The most effective of her myriad tools is simply listening to those whose life stories don’t often get heard in the national conversation."—The New York Times Book Review

"Stolen Pride is, at its core, a book about the right-wing turn of the nation. . . . [Hochschild] takes us into a community under intense pressure and reveals the story of that community in a nuanced and graceful way, avoiding heated rhetoric and allowing her subjects to reveal their world with sympathy and understanding."—The Boston Globe

"In Stolen Pride, Hochschild locates the heart of Trump’s appeal to rural voters in emotions of pride and shame—including pride in their region’s traditions and shame in what it’s become in an era of declining coal jobs and rising drug addiction."—Vox

"Hochschild’s emphasis on unrecognized grief is a necessary corrective."—Boston Review

"Reflecting on pride and how communities misconstrue or misdirect blame, Hochschild seeks to explain the growth of Trumpism and white nationalism while also opening a window on a brokenhearted community."—Alta Journal

"An insightful, troubling look at political resentments in the forgotten heartland." —Kirkus Reviews

"A piercing . . . impressive and nuanced assessment of a critical factor in American politics." —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"What a superb book! If progressives are ever to regain the trust of downwardly mobile white voters powerfully drawn to Trump and the far right, we need to listen deeply to Arlie Hochschild." —Robert Kuttner, co-editor of the American Prospect and author of Going Big

"Arlie Russell Hochschild’s Stolen Pride is a masterpiece of epic proportions. Her account of a small, struggling Appalachian community’s response to a parade of out-of-state white nationalists provides a glimmer of hope for our fragile democracy, even in the face of political polarization, economic inequality, racism, and the nonrational, emotional dimensions of political identity and mobilization. My advice to everyone is: read this book." —Shaunna L. Scott, associate professor emerita of sociology, University of Kentucky, and former president of the Appalachian Studies Association

"In Stolen Pride, Arlie Russell Hochschild continues her cutting-edge research into forgotten Americans, people who desperately need help but cling to the myth that anyone can make it in America through hard work. Hochschild’s insights are compassionate, illuminating, and deeply moving." —Robert B. Reich, former secretary of labor and professor emeritus, University of California, Berkeley

"In Stolen Pride, the inimitable Arlie Russell Hochschild once again sheds light on an often-overlooked segment of Americans, providing a deeply human exploration of the rituals and emotions that sustain a proud region in precarious times." —Jennifer Silva, author of We’re Still Here: Pain and Politics in the Heart of America

"As with Hochschild’s classic Strangers in Their Own Land, Stolen Pride has a truth and intimacy that delivers to the grateful reader what is rare in today’s political studies: true human understanding. Stolen Pride is a superb book, and in these times, an essential read." —Mark Danner, author of Stripping Bare the Body and Spiral: Trapped in the Forever War

"Arlie Hochschild reveals what liberals miss—that the moral emotions of pride and shame animate the resentment that roils our politics. This is the best book yet on the moral and political psychology of the new right, a masterclass in the art of listening across our cultural and political divides." —Michael J. Sandel, author of The Tyranny of Merit: Can We Find the Common Good?

From the Publisher

2024-07-10
Wounded feelings give way to nationalist, supremacist politics in Hochschild’s “what went wrong with Appalachia” autopsy.

Appalachia was once a region of union labor activism, progressive social programs, and an openness to working with people from other countries. Most of the region went for Roosevelt—and Carter, and Clinton. But then, sociologist Hochschild writes, something changed: the mines closed down, the small towns died, many of the remaining residents turned to self-medication, and suddenly Appalachia was Trump country. Hochschild traces this turn in part to what she calls the “pride paradox,” by which the satisfaction in hard work well done is replaced by existential despair over losing usefulness and meaning. “People devised various ways to respond: turn shame inward, project shame outward, or find a creative solution to the paradox,” she writes. The middle proposition turns out to have been the most widespread: people in the region, and by extension people in overlooked rural enclaves across the country, now blame others—immigrants, liberals, urban elites—for their woes. This manifests in racism and fascist displays: Hochschild’s opening set piece is a pre-Charlottesville march of white supremacist radicals in a little Kentucky town seething with resentment at being seen by the world as disposable yokels. The real perpetrators, the extractivist multinationals and big pharma moguls, go unquestioned, while Trumpism triumphs because in a psychologically wounded community such as Pikeville, Kentucky, as one counselor notes, “That guy’s selling white nationalism as a quick fix to make a guy who’s down on himself feel like he’s strong and going places.” Hochschild counsels a wide-ranging solution that could use more specific grounding, but that points to a useful direction, involving rebuilding rural America “both by revising the American Dream and by equalizing access to it.”

An insightful, troubling look at political resentments in the forgotten heartland.

Kirkus Reviews