Class Isolation and Affluent Americans’ Perception of Social Conditions

Thal, Adam

doi:10.1007/s11109-016-9361-9

Cited by 33 publications

(21 citation statements)

References 31 publications

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“…Scholars offer a range of evidence for the "community lost" thesis and the negative psychosocial consequences that come with it (Popenoe 2001). Like a large segment of the US population, tiny housers are increasingly living in neighborhoods highly segregated by race, income, and social class (Thal 2017). Trust in communities and neighborly relations, especially in urban and suburban settings, has declined (Garoon et al 2016;Yeo and Green 2017), and average network sizes, while remaining stable across different age groups (Smith et al 2018), have also shrunk over the past few decades.…”

Section: Desire For More Cohesive or Collaborative Community Structuresmentioning

confidence: 99%

Small Houses, Big Community: Tiny Housers’ Desire for More Cohesive and Collaborative Communities

2020

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Past research on the tiny house movement has primarily focused on understanding the individual motivations behind adopting the tiny house lifestyle. While some studies have suggested that tiny housers do entertain an interest in community, no systematic research exists that examines the actual complexities of this phenomenon. To make first inroads into this body of literature, twenty-four community-oriented tiny housers were interviewed about their ideal community. Interview questions ranged from definitions of community to specific ideas of the nature of community characteristics. Interviews were recorded, transcribed, and then coded in NVivo 12.0. Four main themes and eleven subthemes emerged from the qualitative content analysis. Select themes were then subjected to a subsequent quantification analysis in order to refine and deepen the theoretical understanding. The findings of this exploratory study suggest that a majority of tiny housers desire to be part of more cohesive and collaborative communities. While stressing the importance of community, tiny housers also expressed concerns over privacy. To explain the findings, the paper offers a set of arguments situated in the broader socio-cultural texture of our time.

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Section: Desire For More Cohesive or Collaborative Community Structuresmentioning

confidence: 99%

Small Houses, Big Community: Tiny Housers’ Desire for More Cohesive and Collaborative Communities

2020

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“… Thal () finds that geographic separation of the affluent leads to perceptions of the entire community based on their own neighborhood. Their perceptions differ from those of the rest of their community, skewing more positive.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

From ‘having’ to ‘being’: self‐worth and the current crisis of American society

Lamont

2019

British Journal of Sociology

150

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With growing inequality, the American dream is becoming less effective as a collective myth. With its focus on material success, competition and self‐reliance, the intensified diffusion of neoliberal scripts of the self is leading the upper‐middle class toward a mental health crisis while the working class and low‐income groups do not have the resources needed to live the dream. African Americans, Latinos and undocumented immigrants, who are presumed to lack self‐reliance, face more rigid boundaries. One possible way forward is broadening cultural membership by promoting new narratives of hope centered on a plurality of criteria of worth, ‘ordinary universalism’ and destigmatizing stigmatized groups.

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“…There is some existing evidence supporting this idea: individuals whose family and friends experience unemployment become more supportive of unemployment benefits and more likely to believe that individuals are not at fault (Danckert, 2017;Hedegaard, 2014;Newman and Vickrey, 2017). Furthermore, affluent people who are more segregated from the poor believe that social conditions are better than affluent individuals in more economically diverse communities (Thal, 2017). These findings suggest that individuals living in areas with higher unemployment will be more aware of structural causes of job loss, and barriers to regaining work and hence less likely to believe that unemployed people in general are at fault for their situation.…”

Section: Spatial Segregation and Beliefs About Job Lossmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Hence interpersonal interaction in the local area is arguably a key venue for individuals from affluent and deprived backgrounds to interact and learn about one another. Drawing on this insight and recent findings that rising income inequality is associated with increased income segregation (Reardon and Bischoff, 2011), a number of scholars argue that greater spatial segregation by income is likely to lead to a decline in solidarity with the less well off on the part of the affluent (Bailey et al, 2013;Mijs, 2019;Thal, 2017). As a result they are committed to a well-known idea from contact theory that proximity to the less well-off increases sympathetic attitudes by debunking negative stereotypes and building empathy (Pettigrew, 1998).…”

Section: Spatial Segregation and Beliefs About Job Lossmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Such views are also reported in qualitative work with people who are in poverty (see the second quote above), many of whom justify stigmatising views about others in poverty based on first-hand personal observation in their neighbourhood or town (Chase and Walker, 2012;Golding and Middleton, 1984;Shildrick and MacDonald, 2013). A very different view is found among researchers who are concerned that increasing socio-economic segregation by income has the potential to undermine the solidarity of the affluent with the disadvantaged (Bailey et al, 2013;Mijs, 2019;Thal, 2017). From their perspective, proximity to the unemployed leads advantaged people with little personal experience of poverty to increased knowledge of their living conditions and empathy with them.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 97%

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Hidden figures: A longitudinal analysis of the relationship between local context and beliefs about the causes of unemployment

McArthur¹

2020

Preprint

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Public support for the welfare state is shaped by beliefs about whether recipients are deserving or not. In the case of unemployed people, beliefs about whether they are at fault for their situation or not play a central role in shaping deservingness perceptions. Political actors and lay accounts suggest that living in disadvantaged places can shape attitudes towards welfare recipients. Existing research disagrees on whether higher local unemployment improves attitudes by providing information about the labour market, or worsens them by priming fears of welfare dependency. Thus, this study investigates whether individuals living in areas with higher unemployment benefit claims are more or less likely to believe that the unemployed are responsible for their situation. I innovate using a large sample of longitudinal data from the British Election Study to investigate the role of measuring unemployment benefit claims at multiple spatial scales, and over time. The results provide little evidence of a relationship between local unemployment and beliefs about the causes of unemployment, especially among affluent people. These findings challenge claims that antipathy towards unemployment benefits is shaped by exposure to unemployed people and undermine arguments that spatial segregation by income leads to decreased solidarity with the unemployed.

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Class Isolation and Affluent Americans’ Perception of Social Conditions

Cited by 33 publications

References 31 publications

Small Houses, Big Community: Tiny Housers’ Desire for More Cohesive and Collaborative Communities

Small Houses, Big Community: Tiny Housers’ Desire for More Cohesive and Collaborative Communities

From ‘having’ to ‘being’: self‐worth and the current crisis of American society

Hidden figures: A longitudinal analysis of the relationship between local context and beliefs about the causes of unemployment

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