Arlie Russell Hochschild: Background information when reading Strangers in Their Own Land

Arlie Russell Hochschild

This article relates to Strangers in Their Own Land

Sociologist Arlie Russell Hochschild's eleventh book, Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right, was a 2016 National Book Award finalist. She has also written several magazine and newspaper articles and essays, all focusing on how 20th Century changes in roles, relationships and responsibilities affect the feelings of women, families, communities and commerce. She received her BA from Swarthmore College (Pennsylvania) in 1962 and then her MA and PhD from University of California-Berkeley where she taught for decades. She is currently Professor Emerita of Sociology there and has numerous honors, fellowships and awards to her credit.

She was born in Boston, Massachusetts into a diplomatic family, an experience that gave rise to her fascination with the difference between how people present themselves to each other in social or business settings, and how they might really feel. Her research and writings on how the emotions affect everything from gender-based division of labor to international commerce to politics have influenced the study of sociology and beyond. With a gift for pithy phrasing, she has coined such descriptive expressions as "emotional labor," "feeling rules," and "the time bind" that perfectly sum up her points.

According to the American Sociological Association, while at University of California, Berkley, Hochschild took:

"A leading role in developing institutional settings for the study of women and gender. ... Hochschild was chair of the committee that established the Beatrice Bain Institute for Research on Women in 1986, thereby helping to foster research by others on the role of women in society. More recently, Arlie Hochschild's abilities to provide both institutional and intellectual space for research on gender, work, and families came together in her founding and co-directing the Center for Working Families at U.C. Berkeley (one of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation funded centers on work and family) At the Center, with Arlie's unflagging encouragement and support, pre-doctoral, post­doctoral, and senior scholars conducted innovative research on 'cultures of care' to illuminate issues that are central to the study of gender and the position of women."

A long time supporter and mentor of her students, Hochschild has devoted her teaching career to developing women's roles in the field.

Arlie Russell Hochschild

Filed under Books and Authors

This "beyond the book article" relates to Strangers in Their Own Land. It originally ran in February 2017 and has been updated for the February 2018 paperback edition. Go to magazine.