The Stranger Next Door by Arlene Stein - ISBN: 9780807007181
Paperback
Small town’s culture war reveals right-wing tactics, echoing today’s battles.

The Stranger Next Door

The Story of a Small Community's Battle over Sex, Faith, and Civil Rights; Or, How the Right Divides Us

$26.57

  • Paperback

    288 pages

  • Release Date

    27 December 2022

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Summary

The story of a small town’s fight over LGBTQ+ rights that reveals how the far right weaponizes social issues to declare whose lives are valuable-and whose are expendable.

Winner of the Ruth Benedict Prize.

A new preface bridges the past and the present in Arlene Stein’s award-winning work of narrative sociology, The Stranger Next Door, contextualizing the so-called “culture wars” as they have evolved since the post-Reagan years. With deep on-the-ground research and vi…

Book Details

ISBN-13:9780807007181
ISBN-10:0807007188
Author:Arlene Stein
Publisher:Beacon Press
Imprint:Beacon Press
Format:Paperback
Number of Pages:288
Release Date:27 December 2022
Weight:369g
Dimensions:229mm x 152mm
What They're Saying

Critics Review

“Subtle, textured, and urgent … This crucial history of right-wing resentments speaks across recent decades of US politics.”
—Judith Butler

“The second edition of The Stranger Next Door could not be more relevant to the current backlash of homophobia and transphobia in the United States. This book is brimming with insights on how personal anxieties about the ‘other’ can turn into ugly political campaigns and how concerns about economic and social precarity can fuel, often indirectly, bigotry and exclusion.”
—Alexandra Minna Stern, author of Proud Boys and the White Ethnostate

“By combining the meticulousness of an ethnographer with a writer’s commitment to storytelling, Stein has written a book that’s surprisingly compelling—or, better, compelling because it’s surprising.”
—David L. Kirp, The Nation

The Stranger Next Door’s contemporary subject and theoretical breadth, coupled with a remarkable lack of jargon, should make it a sociological classic.”
—Mary Bernstein, American Journal of Sociology

“A fascinating look at the psychology of fear and persuasion.”
—Monica Drake, The Oregonian

“Every liberal ought to read this… . Arlene Stein provides an important depiction of life in a town which became a vortex of national and local issues.”
—Tex Sample, Christian Century

“What’s especially valuable about Stein’s book is her detailed look at each individual’s take on the meaning of the campaign and her patient exploration of the wide variety of forces shifting the ground of these people’s lives.”
—E. J. Graff, American Prospect

“In her cogent analysis of just how sickeningly simple it is to create an ‘other,’ a ‘stranger’ upon whom blame for our problems may be shifted, Stein has touched to the very heart of the social upheaval in America today.”
—Dan Hays, Salem (Oreg.) Statesman-Journal

“This book displays interpretive sociology at its best.”
—Robert N. Bellah, coauthor of Habits of the Heart and The Good Society

About The Author

Arlene Stein

Arlene Stein is Distinguished Professor of Sociology at Rutgers University. The author and editor of numerous books, she received the Ruth Benedict Prize for The Stranger Next Door. She is co-editor of The Perils of Populism.

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