Title: Odd tribes
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.
Subjects: Poor, Race relations, Race identity, Whites in popular culture, Whites, Rednecks, Working class whites, Economic conditions, Social conditions, Poverty, Unterprivilegierter, Arbeitsmarkt, Ethnische Beziehungen, Pauvres Blancs, Conditions économiques, Aspect social, Blancs, Unterschicht, Wirtschaftliche Lage, Social aspects, Blancs dans la culture populaire, Weiße, Ethnizität, Conditions sociales, Relations raciales, Identité ethnique, Soziale Situation, Pauvres, Pauvreté, Ethnische Identität, Blancs de la classe ouvrière, Poor, united states, United states, race relations, United states, social conditions, 1980-, White people, White people in popular culture, Working class white people