Class Unknown

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

Mark Pittenger

• Publisher: NYU Press
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN: 9780814767412
• eBook ISBN: 9780814724309
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

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.

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Part I. A World of Difference: Constructing the Underclass in Progressive America, 1890–1920
• Part II. Between the Wars, 1920–1941
• Part III. The Declining Significance of Class, 1941–1961
• Part IV. Conclusion
• Notes
• Index
• About the Author