Synopses & Reviews
What accounts for the precarious state of liberalism in the mid 1980s? Why was the Republican Party able to steal away so many ethnic Democrats of modest means in recent presidential elections? Jonathan Rieder explores these questions in his powerful study of the Jews and Italians of Canarsie, a middle-income community that was once the scene of a wild insurgency against racial busing. Proud bootstrappers, the children of immigrants, Canarsians may speak with piquant New York accents, but their story has a more universal appeal. Canarsie is Middle America, Brooklyn-style.
Review
This is the best ethnography of a white community to appear in a decade, and should be read by every scholar in urban sociology, political sociology, and social movement...Rieder has crafted a finely detailed portrait. -- American Journal of Sociology
Review
A sparkling shower of insights...Intellectually exciting. -- Contemporary Psychology
Review
The rise of Ronald Reagan and the politics of the 1980s surprised many of the country's best-known analysts...Jonathan Rieder was in the right places at the right time--the streets and kitchens of Canarsie, Brooklyn--to understand what was actually happening (and going to happen next) in American politics. -- Contemporary Sociology
Review
A remarkable compelling portrait of the new ways of middle America, drawn with compassion, grace, and wisdom. -- Richard Reeves
Review
No scholarly book of recent memory better conveys the specific sense of outraged betrayal that swept through the urban precincts of the Democratic Party in the mid 1970s than does Jonathan Rieder's brilliant study Canarsie. -- Kai Erikson, President, American Sociological Association
Review
Yale anthropologist Jonathan Rieder spent two years living not in New Guinea or up the Amazon but in a place that his academic colleagues probably found even more exotic: the lower-middle-class neighborhood adjacent to New York's Kennedy Airport. There Rieder witnessed close-up the destruction of Roosevelt's coalition by voter revulsion against crime, welfare and casual disorder. -- Wilson Quarterly
Synopsis
immigrants, Canarsians may speak with piquant New York accents, but their story has a more universal appeal. Canarsie is Middle America, Brooklyn-style.
Synopsis
What accounts for the precarious state of liberalism in recent decades? Jonathan Rieder explores this question in his powerful study of the Jews and Italians of Canarsie, a middle-income community in New York that was once the scene of a wild insurgency against racial busing. This study of the discontent of average patriotic Americans provides great insight into the recent transformation of American politics
About the Author
Jonathan Rieder is Professor of Sociology at Barnard College, Columbia University.
Table of Contents
Introduction Danger and Dispossession
Part 1: History 1. The Fenced land
2. Ethnic Tradition
Part 2: TERRITORIAL, SOCIAL, AND CULTURAL THREATS 3. Vulnerable Places
4. The Lost People
5. The Reverence is Gone
Part 3: REACTIONS TO THREAT 6. Striking Back
7. Canarsie Schools for Canarsie Children
8. The Trials of Liberalism
Notes Index