Class Unknown

Undercover Investigations of American Work and Poverty from the Progressive Era to the Present

• Author(s): Mark Pittenger,
• Publisher: NYU Press
• Pages: 277
• ISBN_10: 0814767419
  ISBN_13: 9780814767412
  
• Language: en
• Categories: History / General , History / United States / General , History / Americas (North, Central, South, West Indies) , History / Social History , Language Arts & Disciplines / Journalism , Social Science / Research , Social Science / Sociology / General , Social Science / Poverty & Homelessness , Social Science / Social Classes & Economic Disparity ,

Description:...

How well-meaning intellectuals helped develop our understanding of the American underclass

Since the Gilded Age, social scientists, middle-class reformers, and writers have left the comforts of their offices to "pass" as steel workers, coal miners, assembly-line laborers, waitresses, hoboes, and other working and poor people in an attempt to gain a fuller and more authentic understanding of the lives of the working class and the poor. In this first, sweeping study of undercover investigations of work and poverty in America, award-winning historian Mark Pittenger examines how intellectuals were shaped by their experiences with the poor, and how despite their sympathy toward working-class people, they unintentionally helped to develop the contemporary concept of a degraded and "other" American underclass.

While contributing to our understanding of the history of American social thought, Class Unknown offers a new perspective on contemporary debates over how we understand and represent our own society and its class divisions.