{"id":179,"date":"2011-03-29T09:27:16","date_gmt":"2011-03-29T14:27:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/editors\/?p=179"},"modified":"2011-03-29T21:33:26","modified_gmt":"2011-03-30T02:33:26","slug":"american-dream","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/editors\/2011\/03\/29\/american-dream\/","title":{"rendered":"populist outrage, the american dream, and sociology"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>
Photo by Diane Gregg via Flickr<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Last weekend, I read a very interesting column about populist outrage and the American dream<\/a>. Written by Steven Thomma, White House correspondent of the McClatchy newspaper group, the piece got me thinking once again about the value of sociological research and thought.<\/p>\n

Thomma’s article, which appeared in our local paper under the\u00a0headline “Fading American Dream Promotes New Political Rage,” begins by detailing some of the basic social changes fueling unrest among protestors Left and Right: stagnant and declining wages, increasing health care costs, job loss, and income gaps, as well as ongoing (and ineffective) wars, corporate bailouts, and skyrocketing debt. Very empirical,\u00a0sociological stuff. Indeed,\u00a0Thomma drew on research and\u00a0findings\u00a0from our field implicitly and\u00a0quoted\u00a0Harvard’s Bruce Western directly (on union declines and increasing\u00a0income gaps in America).<\/p>\n

Where the piece really caught my eye–and where Thomma took it up a notch, sociologically speaking–was\u00a0in situating\u00a0these structural and demographic shifts in the context of “something deeper” going on in American culture.\u00a0 Mobility–or the relative lack thereof–and rights were important touchstones for this discussion.\u00a0However,\u00a0it wasn’t just the actual facts about mobility (or rights)\u00a0in\u00a0the U.S.\u00a0that\u00a0are striking, but\u00a0the American\u00a0expectation and hope that both should be available and possible. For Thomma, this is where the American dream and the perceived loss of it come in. “The rules,”\u00a0Thomma\u00a0writes,\u00a0“seem to be changing.” With these insights about cultural norms and expectations,\u00a0we see that our politics, lives, and communities\u00a0are shaped not only by how things are but how we want and expect them to be–and there is no greater cultural force in America than that crazy, inspiring dream so many of us\u00a0share.\u00a0The fact that Thomma quoted a political scientist to set up these points doesn’t make them any less sociological (or useful).<\/p>\n

When I finished reading, I was left wondering what sociologists like me might contribute to public understanding on these themes. One contribution I can imagine centers on leadership and the American\u00a0political structure. An\u00a0orienting point for Thomma is that populists of both Left and Right are frustrated political leaders who have promised, but failed to deliver, change. Engaged citizens of all stripes, he believes, feel disheartened and betrayed. Clearly our political leaders have often failed us. They haven’t always done as well as they could have. But I think a more sociological orientation to the problem would situate leaders’ shortcomings in the context of our archaic and dysfunctional political institutions–two-party paralysis, decentralization, and so on–and, even more importantly, in the context of a culture that lacks a rich conception of and commitment to the public good and<\/em>is fundamentally cynical about government itself.<\/p>\n

A more sociological orientation\u00a0would also, I believe, be a\u00a0bit more critical and forward-thinking about the American dream itself. It wouldn’t just bemoan the loss of the dream as we have known it, but also consider how that dream–and the culture itself–is being (or perhaps\u00a0 should be) reshaped and tranformed, recast to fit the contemporary moment. It’s possible that\u00a0new dreams and visions of America could emerge out of this angst–conceptions that would be less driven by utopian visions of limitless mobility and unabated freedom\u00a0for all and more rooted in a more humble and informed\u00a0(and yes, sociological) sense of ourselves, our relations to others, and our place in the world. I offer this possibility only hesitantly because it\u00a0doesn’t sound as uplifting, inspiring,\u00a0and patriotic as one might like. Nevertheless, I can’t help thinking that such a vision\u00a0may\u00a0not only be more realistic and sustainable at this point in our history, it would also be truer to another set of values, ideals, and imaginings\u00a0that have helped to make America not only a great<\/em> nation but also a fundamentally good<\/em> one.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last weekend, I read a very interesting column about populist outrage and the American dream. Written by Steven Thomma, White House correspondent of the McClatchy newspaper group, the piece got me thinking once again about the value of sociological research and thought. Thomma’s article, which appeared in our local paper under the\u00a0headline “Fading American Dream […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":192,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-179","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/editors\/files\/2011\/03\/4310981300_99af4bbd59_b.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/editors\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/editors\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/editors\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/editors\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/editors\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=179"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/editors\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":203,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/editors\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179\/revisions\/203"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/editors\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/192"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/editors\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=179"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/editors\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=179"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/editors\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=179"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}