Hello, my name is Matt and I would like to welcome you to my blog which I am using as part of my Cultural Anthropology class. The purpose of this blog is for me to tell the story of someone that is either politically or ideologically different from myself. As I go along on this journey I will provide you “the reader” my findings and insights into this subject. In order to do that I will be using, referencing, and applying research already performed by Arlie Russell Hochschild, who in her book “Strangers In Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning On The American Right” set out to do the very same thing.
For my first discussion I will choose five things from the first chapter of Hochschild book which is titled “Traveling to The Heart”. In this chapter Hochschild describes her initial journey into the topic of the political divide in our country that has become worse in the past decade and what type of people might be at the heart of The American Right. The first topic I am choosing is empathy walls, which are the walls people put in place mentally to block out the ability to deeply understand another person often creating hostility to those that are of different beliefs, or social standing than ourselves according to Hochschild. Is it possible to see things through the eyes of someone else so to speak? Is it possible to put oneself in someone else’s shoes and experience the world as they do? Behind their wall and outside of ones own wall? I feel the same as Hochschild, because even though its comfortable to be around those that have the same mindset as yourself, we learn so much more about each other when we put ourselves with people that challenge our mindset, not only do we learn more but so does that other person if they are also willing to come out from their wall. Secondly she meets a man by the name of Mike Schaff, a tall 64 year old Cajun farmer who in the first chapter of Hochschild book recounts the tragic tale of how a sinkhole swallowed his home and community whole. Ironically, Mr. Schaff is a member of the Tea Party movement which in his area had pushed for lighter regulation on drilling companies and also less environmental protection. Fighting for the very thing that caused him to lose the things he loved is paradoxically saddening. Thirdly, one question that Hochschild came to from this interaction was how can a system create pain and deflect the blame for that very same pain? This question is interesting because it is a very valid one yet it is also hard to answer and is itself a paradox question which relates itself to Mr. Schaff’s situation and his beliefs. Could the very thing that he wants, less government interference, lead to what happened to his community? I’ll come back to that once I’ve done more research because answering that question before would be done so in error. My fourth topic of discussion was most interesting to me because it truly resonated with me, which was Hochschild discussion about Sally, a mother of a former graduate student of Hochschild, and Sally’s friend Shirley. These two women couldn’t be more different, Sally an artist and a Democrat who favored Bernie Sanders during the 2016 election, and Shirley who’s a flight attendant and Tea Party enthusiast and supporter of Donald Trump. Opposite ends of the literal spectrum and yet they were good friends, throwing parties at each others houses, have spare keys to each others houses and yet they believe differently as night and day. My fifth and final discussion topic is the power to mislead. Since the 2016 election there has been a huge amount of misinformation, whether on major news channels, Facebook and other resources that contribute to the way people receive their news. There is no doubt that the media and information around us is designed to control the way we think and live.
Thank you for reading this first blog and I look forward to expanding on some of the topics and questions that I’ve learned of in the future.
Hochschild, Arlie Russell. 2016. “Traveling to the Heart”. Strangers in Their Own Land. The New Press, New York.
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