Arlie Russell Hochschild, a sociologist whose spent five years in Lake Charles trying to understand red state voters,
will speak at the University of New Orleans*next Wednesday.
Hochchild's recent book,
Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right, adds to a growing volume of scholarship about the "Great Paradox," or how conservative voters embrace politicians and policies that seem to oppose their own interests: the poor Appalachia resident who hates "Obamacare," the Gulf Coast fisherman who votes to deregulate the oil industry. You can read an essay adapted from the book
here; it was a National Book Award finalist in 2016.?