Odd tribes
Subtitle: toward a cultural analysis of white people
By: John Hartigan Jr.
Publisher: Duke University Press
Published: 2005
Place of publication: Durham
Language: eng
Number of pages: 359
Subjects: Whites -- Race identity -- United States.; Whites -- United States -- Social conditions.; Whites -- United States -- Economic conditions.; Whites in popular culture -- United States.; Working class whites -- United States.; Rednecks -- United States.; Poor -- United States.; Poverty -- Social aspects -- United States.; United States -- Race relations.; United States -- Social conditions -- 1980-
Description: "Odd Tribes" engages debates in history, anthropology, sociology, and cultural studies over how race matters. Hartigan tracks the spread of 'white trash' from an epithet used only in the South prior to the Civil War to one invoked throughout the country by the early twentieth century. He also recounts how the cultural figure of 'white trash' influenced academic and popular writings on the urban poor from the 1880s through the 1990s. Hartigan's critical reading of the historical uses of degrading images of poor whites to ratify lines of color in this country culminates in an analysis of how contemporary performers such as Eminem and Roseanne Barr challenge stereotypical representations of 'white trash' by claiming the identity as their own. Odd Tribes presents a compelling vision of what cultural studies can be when diverse research methodologies and conceptual frameworks are brought to bear on pressing social issues. Tribes challenges theories of whiteness and critical race studies by examining the tangles of privilege, debasement, power and stigma that constitute white identity. Considering the relation of phantasmatic cultural forms such as the racial stereotype "white trash" to the actual social conditions of poor whites, the author generates new insights into the ways that race, class, and gender are fundamentally interconnected. By tracing the historical interplay of stereotypes, popular cultural representations, and the social sciences' objectifications of poverty, the author demonstrates how constructions of whiteness continually depend on the vigilant maintenance of class and gender decorums.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: Picturing the underclass : myth making in the inner city; title: Blood will tell : the nationalization of white trash; title: Unpopular culture : the case of white trash; title: Reading trash : deliverance and the cultural poetics of white trash; title: Talking trash : white poverty and marked forms of whiteness; title: Green ghettos and the white underclass; title: Establishing the fact of whiteness; title: Locating white Detroit; title: Object lessons in whiteness : antiracism and the study of white folks; title: Cultural analysis : the case of race.