Stolen Pride: Loss, Shame and the American Right

Arlie Russell Hochschild

22.9.2025, 18:30

Conference Room of the Center for Urban History

We invite you to a talk by Arlie Russell Hochschild about her latest book Stolen Pride: Loss, Shame and the American Right, which was selected as one of Barack Obama's ten favorite books of 2024 and a New York Times Notable Book of 2024.

The book focuses on Pikeville, Kentucky, in the heart of Appalachia, the whitest and second poorest congressional district in the US. The town and the county faced the loss of jobs connected to coal mining and a deadly drug crisis. Once at the political center of the country, the district voted 80% for Donald Trump in both 2016 and 2020. Hochschild asks why this big shift took place and offers a lens on the relationship between politics, shame, and pride.

This exploration goes beyond the story of Democrats (blue)/ Republicans (red) divide and taking into account what economic and cultural loss can do to pride. It asks what happens, when a proud people in a hard-hit region suffer the deep loss of pride and are confronted with a powerful political appeal that makes it feel "stolen"?

The event will take place as part of the Center’s public program "Let’s Have a City".

post picture — Arlie Russell Hochschild

Professor Emerita of Sociology at the University of California, Berkeley and the author of ten books, including *The Second Shift* (1989), *The Managed Heart* (1983), and *The Time Bind* (1997), *The Outsourced Self: Intimate Life in Market Times* (2012), *So How’s the Family and Other Essays* (2013) as well as *Strangers in Their Own Land* (2016), which became a bestseller and was a finalist for a National Book Award, and *Stolen Pride: Loss, Shame, and the Rise of the Right* (2024).

Stolen Pride: Loss, Shame and the American Right | Arlie Russell Hochschild

Credits

Cover photo: Pikeville, Kentucky / Southern Exposure

Gallery: Mariia Varanytska