Class Unknown: Undercover Investigations of American Work and Poverty from the Progressive Era to the Present (Culture, Labor, History #4)

By: Mark Pittenger

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Synopsis: Since the Gilded Age, social scientists, middle-class reformers, and writers have left the comforts of their offices to "pass" as steel workers, coal miners, assembly-line laborers, waitresses, hoboes, and other working and poor people in an attempt to gain a fuller and more authentic understanding of the lives of the working class and the poor. In this first, sweeping study of undercover investigations of work and poverty in America, award-winning historian Mark Pittenger examines howintellectuals were shaped by their experiences with the poor, and how despite their sympathy toward working-class people, they unintentionally helped to develop the contemporary concept of a degraded and "other" American underclass.While contributing to our understanding of the history of American socialthought, Class Unknown offers a new perspective on contemporary debates over how we understandand represent our own society and its class divisions.