Falling from Grace: Downward Mobility in the Age of Affluence / Edition 1

by Katherine S. Newman

Overview

Over the last three decades, millions of people have slipped through a loophole in the American dream and become downwardly mobile as a result of downsizing, plant closings, mergers, and divorce: the middle-aged computer executive laid off during an industry crisis, blue-collar workers phased out of the post-industrial economy, middle managers whose positions have been phased out, and once-affluent housewives stranded with children and a huge mortgage as the result of divorce. Anthropologist Katherine S. Newman interviewed a wide range of men, women, and children who experienced a precipitous fall from middle-class status, and her book documents their stories. For the 1999 edition, Newman has provided a new preface and updated the extensive data on job loss and downward mobility in the American middle class, documenting its persistence, even in times of prosperity.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780520218420
Publisher:	University of California Press
Publication date:	02/26/1999
Edition description:	First Edition
Pages:	342
Sales rank:	928,098
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.25(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Katherine S. Newman is Ford Foundation Professor of Urban Studies, Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, and the author of No Shame in My Game: The Working Poor in the Inner City (1999), Declining Fortunes: The Withering of the American Dream (1994), and Law and Economic Organization (1983).

Table of Contents

Preface

1 American Nightmares
2 Downward Mobility in the Age of Affluence
3 Rejected Managers and the Culture of Meritocracy
4 The Downwardly Mobile Family
5 Brotherhoods of the Downwardly Mobile
6 Blue-Collar Workers and the Abandonment of Tradition
7 Middle-Class Women in Trouble
8 Falling from Grace
9 Afterword

Appendix
Notes
References
Index