Class Unknown: Undercover Investigations of American Work and Poverty from the Progressive Era to the Present (Culture, Labor, History, 4)

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, a Class Unknowna offers a new perspective on contemporary debates over how we understand and represent our own society and its class divisions "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"--Provided by publisher Writing Class In A World Of Difference -- Vagabondage And Efficiency: The 1920s -- Finding Facts: The Great Depression, From The Bottom Up -- War And Peace, Class And Culture -- Crossing New Lines: From Gentleman's Agreement To Black Like Me -- Finding The Line In Postmodern America, 1960-2010. Mark Pittenger. Includes Bibliographical References And Index.