Falling from Grace: The Experience of Downward Mobility in the American Middle Class

by Katherine S. Newman

Examines the decreasing likelihood of achieving the American dream, as shifting social and economic conditions force a middle-class loss of earnings and self-respect

Genres: Nonfiction, Anthropology

320 pages, Paperback

First published July 1, 1988

About the author

Katherine Newman is Professor of Sociology and James Knapp Dean of the Krieger School of Arts and Sciences at Johns Hopkins University. Author of several books on middle class economic instability, urban poverty, and the sociology of inequality, she previously taught at the University of California (Berkeley), Columbia, Harvard, and Princeton.

Reviews

[Carrie]

We read a chapter of this book in my qualitative methods class as an example of one way to write up data in a readable way that weaves in theory without pontificating on it.

I liked the chapter on downwardly mobile managers the best, if only because the others were, well, fairly predictable. The overall thrust of the argument deals with how individualistic American culture contexualizes the experience of losing it all.

While I too have been a frustrated job seeker before and can only imagine the kind of mental strife it produces when a whole family is involved, the book started to depress me in its depiction of how materialistic and status conscious Americans are. The book is generally takes the pain experienced by formerly middle-class families who have experienced major job dislocation at face value and doesn't judge their priorities, which I guess is a fair way of handling it, but at times, it's hard to get too amped up about people losing the country club membership and having to make do with old furniture. It's a really sad commentary that so much of many people's psychological well-being has to do with being able to buy the latest brands. Not that this is surprising of course, although I guess it's kind of outside my own experience.

[Annette]

Interesting case studies and trend analysis of people in middle to upper class jobs that, for various reasons, lost their jobs and were pushed down into a lower class - i.e. the "downwardly mobile." Newman is an anthropologist by training, and I appreciated the cultural lens as well as the different communal analyses - not just analyzing the person who lost their job, but also how their job loss affected their relationships with others and the way others perceived them, whether that was their children, partner, parents, or friends.

[Anne]

Read the original from the 1980s, so I glossed over outdated stats/data but am still amazed at how the situations then mirror those now, more than 20 years later. Everything from age discrimination to the boomerang generation were just as they exist now. Scary.

[Holly]

So many problems without any solutions...but I'm kinda a cynic :)

[Jo]

(acquired from a dorm-mate during end of semester move-out aka saved it from the trash)

Feels longer than it is, could probably get more out of it by reading a few chapters with great attention.

[Temu]

how mah friend graces has passed away