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Subscribe to Working-Class Perspectives - Working-Class Perspectives offers weekly commentaries on current issues related to working-class people and communities. Contributors discuss a variety of issues, from what class means to how it intersects with race and gender to how class is shaping American politics. We welcome relevant comments of 500 words or less.
For questions or comments about this blog, e-mail Sherry Linkon. For assistance with news stories about working-class politics and culture, call or e-mail John Russo, 330-207-8085. Categories
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The State of the Working Class
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Tag Archives: Poverty
Fighting Poverty with Classism
I spent part of last week at the Chautauqua Institution, which a friend described as “summer camp for adults.” Its lovely Victorian summer homes, pricey food options, and demographics – skewing older and extremely white – make it feel like … Continue reading
More than Cash: What It Really Takes to Address Poverty
What will it take to address poverty? If you build a school for girls in northern Nigeria or give a girl in the Philippines $2000, it might seem like you’re providing her with the things she needs to improve her … Continue reading
Universal Basic Income: A “Social Vaccine” for Technological Displacement?
John Kenneth Galbraith once said that the beginnings of wisdom were to never trust an economist. Those of us that spent most of our adult lives in deindustrialized communities understood his point. As the mills and factories closed in working-class … Continue reading
Poverty and Precarious Work
Given that many working people are also poor, Labor Day is good time to talk about poverty in the United States. But in this election year, with so much with emphasis on jobs, we should look especially at the relationship … Continue reading
Posted in Contributors, Issues, John Russo, The Working Class and the Economy
Tagged Labor Day, Poverty, precarious work, working poor
7 Comments
The Limits to Entrepreneurship: Why Innovation Won’t Solve Poverty
“Entrepreneurship” generates big buzz and the cacophony is enormously positive. Legions of leaders, organizations, and politicians promote entrepreneurship as an alternative pathway to a better life for the poor, disconnected, and left behind. For example, Steve Case, who made a … Continue reading
Class, Cuteness, and Disgust in Here Comes Honey Boo Boo
It’s hard not to notice the way rural working-class female fatness in the “Redneck Reality TV” series Here Comes Honey Boo Boo comes across as a condition to be ridiculed. It is constantly associated with poor health, dirtiness, and … Continue reading
Posted in Class and the Media, Contributors, Guest Bloggers, Issues
Tagged fatness, Honey Boo Boo, Poverty, reality TV, working-class stereotypes
6 Comments
The Culture of Success
This semester I am teaching a freshman seminar on the college novel. We started with This Side of Paradise, Fitzgerald’s bizarre, Princeton-set contribution to the genre. The main character, Amory Blaine, starts life in Minneapolis with many material advantages. But … Continue reading
Posted in Class and Education, Contributors, Issues, Kathy M. Newman, Working-Class Culture
Tagged Education, middle-class culture, Poverty, stress, success
4 Comments
Benefits Street, or the Road to Poverty
I got wet last Thursday, very wet. I was standing on a picket line at my university outside the central administration protesting yet another below inflation wage offer. A one per cent pay raise will mean that my colleagues and … Continue reading
Jobs and Safety Nets
Teaching macroeconomics with a group of union stewards and local leaders last month, I had just finished explaining the enormous economic stimulus the combination of “food stamps” and unemployment compensation is providing to our struggling economy. When you include the … Continue reading
“Soiled by the mud of the street:” Pope Francis and the Working Class
A simple “letter” can cement a tradition, forge alliances, defend the voiceless. Indeed, Catholic Social Teaching began with one. James Gibbons, the Archbishop of Baltimore, hand-delivered a letter to Pope Leo XIII in 1887, protesting the Archbishop of Quebec’s earlier … Continue reading
Posted in Contributors, Guest Bloggers, Issues, Labor and Community Activism
Tagged Catholic social teaching, justice, Pope Francis, Poverty, workers
4 Comments
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