Politics and the Class Divide
David R. Croteau
ISBN: | 9781566392556 |
Publisher: | Temple University Press,U.S. |
Published: | 28 December, 1994 |
Format: | Paperback |
Language: | English |
Links | Australian Libraries (Trove) |
Politics and the Class Divide
David R. Croteau
People don't believe they have a say anymore, so they've given up." That's the cynical conclusion of one worker in this study of the relationships between working people and the middle-class left. This rare accessible book on class differences in American life examines the impact of class status on an individual's participation or non-participation in the political process. Focusing on the relative absence of white working-class involvement in many contemporary U.S. liberal and left social movements, David Croteau goes straight to the source: members of the working class and activists in the environmental, peace, women's, and other social movements. Croteau rejects standard assumptions that apathy or simple conservatism explain working-class nonparticipation. Instead, he highlights the role of class-based resources and explores how varying cultural "tools" developed in different classes are more or less helpful in navigating and influencing the existing political environment.Commonly, he finds, the result is a middle-class sense of power and entitlement and a working-class sense of powerlessness and fatalism. Contemplating the future of social movements, he explores how lack of diversity hurts the effectiveness of what have become isolated middle-class movements, and proposes solutions that would increase the future political participation of working people in social movements. David Croteau, Assistant Professor of Sociology at Virginia Commonwealth University, is co-author
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