Ross Reynolds interviews Arlie Hochschild, professor of sociology at the University of California Berkeley, about her new book, “Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right", which has just been listed as a finalist for a 2016 National Book Award in Non-Fiction.
Hochschild spent five years among low income people in rural Louisiana in order to understand the conservative movement.
The sociologist says the conservative white people of the Louisiana Bayou country understand the world through a deep story which portrays Americans in a race to get ahead. They see themselves far behind in that race and they believe minorities and immigrants have been allowed to cut ahead, leaving them behind.
