333 - Author Meets Critics Session. Cut Adrift: Families in Insecure Times (University of California Press, 2014) by Marianne Cooper

Session Submission Type: Invited Session

Abstract

Set against the backdrop of rising economic insecurity and rolled-up safety nets, Marianne Cooper’s book Cut Adrift (University of California Press) explores the emotional labor involved in managing the finances of family life. Through ethnographic case studies of families across the class spectrum in the Silicon Valley, she reveals what families are concerned about, how they manage their anxiety, whose job it is to worry, and how social class shapes all of these dynamics, including what is even worth worrying about in the first place. This study reveals the surprising anxieties of the rich to the critical role of women in keeping struggling families afloat. Cut Adrift deepens our understanding of how families are coping in a go-it-alone age—and how the different strategies on which affluent, middle-class, and poor families rely upon not only reflect inequality, but fuel it.

Sub Unit

• Author Meets Critics

Session Organizer

• Annette Lareau, University of Pennsylvania

Author

• Marianne Cooper, Stanford University

Presider

• Philip N. Cohen, University of Maryland-College Park

Critics

• Amy S. Wharton, Washington State University

• Dalton Conley, New York University

• Mary Blair-Loy, University of California-San Diego