Join us for a celebration of the publication of Driving after Class: Anxious Times in an American Suburb (University of California Press, 2015) byRachel Heiman, Associate Professor of Anthropology at The New School.

A paradoxical situation emerged at the turn of the twenty-first century: the dramatic upscaling of the suburban American dream even as the possibilities for achieving and maintaining it diminished. How do class anxieties play out amid such disconcerting cultural, political, and economic changes? In this incisive ethnography set in a New Jersey suburb outside New York City, Rachel Heiman takes us into people’s homes; their community meetings, where they debate security gates and school redistricting; and even their cars, to offer an intimate view of the tensions and uncertainties of being middle class at that time. She argues convincingly that to understand our current economic situation we need to attend to the subtle but forceful formation of sensibilities, spaces, and habits that durably motivate people and shape their actions and outlooks. Driving after Class is a model of fine-grained ethnography that shows how families and towns try to make sense of who they are and where they are going in a highly competitive and uncertain time.

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