Description
Book SynopsisSet in a New Jersey suburb outside New York City, the author takes us into people's homes; their community meetings, where they debate security gates and school redistricting; and even their cars, to offer an intimate view of the tensions and uncertainties of being middle class at that time.
Trade Review"Rachel Heiman displays great talent for squeezing ingenious and often compelling meanings out of everyday events. This, of course, is precisely the stuff of anthropology, the study of the ordinary... Heiman has done signal service by showing us how neoliberal sensibilities are inculcated and enacted in the banalities of daily life, an analysis that can give us clues about where to work for change." American Ethnologist "There is much to like about this book. What Heiman does particularly well is write with compassion and respect while maintaining her critical voice... Heiman takes the worries of the people of Danboro seriously and shows us their world as they see it. The book is better for it." American Journal of Sociology "Historically informed and attentive to local specificity, Heiman's book stands as a valuable exemplar of what native ethnography can look like and illustrates the value of turning the anthropological lens on a population often regarded as normative or against which others are created." North American Dialogue "We want these voices to matter because Heiman has engaged the most recent iteration of a central debate in U.S. history" Journal of the American Ethnological Society "One of the strengths of Driving after Class is Heiman's development of the vivid term "rugged entitlement." In many ways, rugged entitlement is the classed extension of the "American spirit," a structure of feeling that is pervasive in middle-class suburbs like Danboro." Contemporary Sociology "Clearly written and argued, this ethnography explores what it was like to be a middle-class American in the 1990s." Anthropologica "Heiman adopts a unique approach: she seeks to unearth the middle-class subjectivities produced out of, and fueling, these competing trends." American Sociological Association
Table of ContentsList of Illustrations ix Preface xi Acknowledgments xv 1. Introduction: Common Sense in Anxious Times 1 2. Being Post-Brooklyn 33 3. Gate Expectations 70 4. Driving after Class 104 5. Vehicles for Rugged Entitlement 141 6. From White Flight to Community Might 171 7. A Conclusion, or Rather, a Commencement 219 Notes 233 References 233 Index 275
