Polls tell us that most Americans--whether they earn $20,000 or
$200,000 a year--think of themselves as middle class. As this
phenomenon suggests, "middle class" is a category whose definition
is not necessarily self-evident. In this book, historian Daniel
Walkowitz approaches the question of what it means to be middle
class from an innovative angle. Focusing on the history of social
workers--who daily patrol the boundaries of class--he examines the
changed and contested meaning of the term over the last one hundred
years.
Walkowitz uses the study of social workers to explore the interplay
of race, ethnicity, and gender with class. He examines the trade
union movement within the mostly female field of social work and
looks at how a paradigmatic conflict between blacks and Jews in New
York City during the 1960s shaped late-twentieth-century social
policy concerning work, opportunity, and entitlements. In all, this
is a story about the ways race and gender divisions in American
society have underlain the confusion about the identity and role of
the middle class.