Newman, Katherine S. 1953–

PERSONAL:

Born 1953. Education: University of California—San Diego, B.A. (magna cum laude), 1976; University of California—Berkeley, M.A., 1976, Ph.D., 1979.

ADDRESSES:

Office—Princeton University, Department of Sociology, 151 Wallace Hall, Princeton, NJ 08544. E-mail—knewman@princeton.edu.

CAREER:

Urban anthropologist. University of California—Berkeley, lecturer, 1979-81; Columbia University, 1981-96, began as assistant professor, became professor of anthropology, 1992; Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, professor of public policy, 1996-98, Malcolm Weiner Professor of Urban Studies, chair of joint doctoral programs in sociology, government and social policy, 1999-2004, dean of social science at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, 2001-04; Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, professor of sociology and public affairs, 2004-05, Malcolm Stevenson Forbes Professor of Sociology and Public Affairs, 2005—, director of the joint doctoral programs in sociology, politics, psychology and social policy, 2007—, director of the Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies, 2007—. Russell Sage Foundation, visiting scholar, 1995-96. Member of advisory boards for institutions, including Harvard University and the University of Michigan. Member of editorial boards, including for the Rose Monograph Series and the University of Chicago Press.

Television appearances include Lehrer News Hour, CBS News This Morning, and the Oprah Winfrey Show. Participant in radio programs, including for the British Broadcasting System and National Public Radio.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Anthropology in Media Award, American Anthropological Association, 1994; Robert F. Kennedy Book Award and Sidney Hillman Foundation Book Award, both 2000, both for No Shame in My Game: The Working Poor in the Inner City; Harvard Graduate Student Council Award for Excellence in Mentoring, 2000; Textor Prize, American Anthropological Association, 2005. Grants from institutions, including the Ford Foundation, William T. Grant Foundation, National Science Foundation.

WRITINGS:

Law and Economic Organization: A Comparative Study of Preindustrial Societies, Cambridge University Press (New York, NY), 1983.

Falling from Grace: The Experience of Downward Mobility in the American Middle Class, Free Press (New York, NY), 1988.

Declining Fortunes: The Withering of the American Dream, Basic Books (New York, NY), 1993.

No Shame in My Game: The Working Poor in the Inner City, Knopf and Russell Sage Foundation (New York, NY), 1999.

(With Margaret M. Chin) High Stakes: Time Poverty, Testing, and the Children of the Working Poor, Foundation for Child Development (New York, NY), 2002.

A Different Shade of Gray: Mid-life and Beyond in the Inner City, New Press (New York, NY), 2003.

(With others) Rampage: The Social Roots of School Shootings, Basic Books (New York, NY), 2004.

Chutes and Ladders: Navigating the Low-wage Labor Market, Harvard University Press (Cambridge, MA), 2006.

(With Victor Tan Chen) The Missing Class: Portraits of the Near Poor in America, Beacon Press (Boston, MA), 2007.

Contributor to periodicals, including Poverty and Race, Economic and Political Weekly, and Contexts. Contributor to books, including Social Inequalities in Comparative Perspective, 2004; and Ending Poverty in America, 2007.

SIDELIGHTS:

Anthropologist Katherine S. Newman explores middle-class America's response to economic decline in two books, Falling from Grace: The Experience of Downward Mobility in the American Middle Class and Declining Fortunes: The Withering of the American Dream. In Falling from Grace, she focuses on groups of American workers who experienced a sudden decrease in their standard of living. After conducting and analyzing in-depth interviews with 150 study participants, Newman found that different groups of people reacted differently to enforced economic hardship. Managers who lost their jobs due to company restructuring or downsizing saw their self-worth negated by prolonged unemployment, while former air traffic controllers and blue-collar factory workers fired for going on strike were less likely to blame themselves for their loss of employment. Newman's book also examines the ways in which economic hardship affected relationships within families.

Beryl Lieff Benderly of Psychology Today called Falling from Grace "enlightening," and Pamela Abbott described it as "gripping and moving" in an article for Sociological Review. "The analysis and arguments are supported by quotations from the interviews, which brings the text alive and gives it a vividness often lacking in statistical analysis," wrote Abbott. "Despite my reservations about [Newman's] methodology, this is a book well worth reading." Marilyn K. Dantico noted in Social Science Quarterly that Newman's research "does not lend itself to the statistical rigor some social scientists prefer, but it offers a tremendous range of types of cases so that even the most cynical reader must grant the legitimacy of her work."

Declining Fortunes, a study of economic change and generational friction, was also the result of interviews, conducted among some 150 residents in sixty families of a suburban New Jersey town that Newman calls Pleasanton. Newman's subjects are the members of the post-World War II generation, whose financial aspirations were met with steady economic expansion, and the "baby boomers" born between 1946 and 1964, many of whom have seen their hopes for the future thwarted in the throes of an economic downturn. Many baby boomers are unable to afford the lifestyles of their parents, even though couples are often better educated and work at careers that command higher salaries than did their parents' jobs.

Michiko Kakutani in the New York Times dismissed the book as "bloated and overly familiar," and Jonathan Rauch, in an article for Washington Monthly, accused Newman of trying to create a new class of victims. "I'm the first to agree that the post-1973 economy has been disappointing, but Newman is not playing fair. Instead, she is out to show that the complaints of the baby boomers are righteous." "Newman is at her best parsing the intricacies of middle-class hopes and discontents," continued Rauch. "She has an attentive ear and a gift for putting her finger on points of social tension. Newman's insistence on rooting her analysis in the real lives of real people, supported by her clear and unpretentious prose, makes her book a good example of how the anthropologist's lens can help bring American life into sharper focus."

"What Newman is able to do in this fascinating book is get us inside the lives of this generation, and give us a sense of the human meaning behind the familiar statistics," remarked Edward S. Greenberg, a reviewer for the Journal of Politics. "The portraits are affecting at times," wrote Steven Lagerfeld in the American Spectator. Barbara Presley Noble, a critic for the New York Times, remarked that "what Ms. Newman does, sympathetically and in clear nonacademic prose, is to put texture to what could be viewed as petty fears and frustrations." Lewis A. Coser, who reviewed Declining Fortunes for Political Science Quarterly, described the work as "highly stimulating" and noted that "Newman is especially convincing when she shows that the extent to which the suburban status was rising [after World War II] … was largely the result of government intervention through massive transfers of wealth provided by the GI bill and various inexpensive governmental mortgage programs." In her review for Contemporary Sociology, Judith Stacey noted that "Newman has succeeded in unveiling many of the complex, contradictory, and painful everyday, middle-class realities that our daily diet of ominous leading economic indicators can never convey. This sensitive, pessimistic portrait of the volatile sensibilities of thwarted white-bread Americans helps to illuminate the mine field of late twentieth-century politics in the United States."

No Shame in My Game: The Working Poor in the Inner City was published with support from the Russell Sage Foundation. Newman and a team of grad students spent one year following the lives of two hundred workers in four fast-food restaurants in central and west Harlem, as well as those of one hundred job seekers. Also interviewed were the subjects' families, employers, teachers, and clergy as Newman attempted to determine how the young black and Latino workers in the study found jobs, and what their attitudes and work records were like once they had them. One of her findings is that in spite of the fact that these jobs are low-paying and offer little chance for advancement, the work ethic remains strong. She notes that while white teens in the suburbs work at burger joints for pocket money and leave when they go off to college, many of their peers in the inner city are dropouts who are trying to make better lives for themselves in their own neighborhoods.

The volume reveals the many aspects of racism that exist in this workforce—between managers and workers, and between workers themselves. Not everyone who says they are seeking a job goes about it in an effective manner. Newman looks at why people do or do not go on welfare and how young women too often sabotage their futures by bearing children out of wedlock. "In the end," wrote Progressive critic Marya R. Sosulski, "Newman comes through with some solid, practical suggestions to help the working poor. These include reinforcing—not reducing—social programs such as the Earned Income Credit and lifting the minimum wage to a living wage. In No Shame in My Game, Newman presents a well-written, persuasive argument for increased attention to the experiences of the working poor."

America contributor Robert Coles compared Newman to the late anthropologist Margaret Mead, who after studying societies and customs around the world, stated that not enough was being done in working with the ordinary people trying to make a living and survive in places like New York. Coles said that Newman, like Mead, is "a fluent, inviting writer who has no desire to hide behind professional jargon…. Were Mead with us today, she'd be mighty pleased with Katherine Newman, not only for what she has done, where she has gone to do her work, but how she has chosen to convey to her readers what she has come to understand about a neighborhood within an Island … at once well known and yet quite unknown."

Newman and Margaret M. Chin collaborated in writing High Stakes: Time Poverty, Testing, and the Children of the Working Poor, a working paper of the Foundation for Child Development. The study points out that poor parents, often marginally literate and/or non-native English speakers, are at a distinct disadvantage when it comes to helping their children succeed on standardized tests that may determine their futures. These parents, many of whom work long hours at several jobs, are often unavailable to their children, who attend inad- equate schools and are left unsupervised due to lack of daycare. The authors suggest more flexible workplace policies so that parents and children can spend more time together.

A Different Shade of Gray: Mid-life and Beyond in the Inner City is Newman's study of the aging black and Latino urban population and includes the findings of a 1995 MacArthur Foundation study of this group in New York. Newman interviewed minority elders, many of whom expressed their frustrations and dismay over deteriorating conditions in the inner city, their own problems with poverty and lack of health care, and the lack of public support not only for themselves but for their grandchildren, whom many of them are trying to help.

Newman was charged by the 1999 Congress with studying the trend of violence in the schools, which resulted in Rampage: The Social Roots of School Shootings. She and four doctoral candidates studied schools in Kentucky and Arkansas that were prone to violence, where they spoke with students, teachers, and parents to determine what triggered these acts and what might be done to prevent a reoccurrence. A conclusion was that the communities failed to acknowledge the psychological problems of the young men who had easy access to guns, which they used to make up for feelings of inadequacy and to impress peers.

Chutes and Ladders: Navigating the Low-wage Labor Market, published in 2006, is another sociological exploration of the working poor. Indeed, the book is something of a follow-up volume to No Shame in My Game. Newman re-interviews forty of the original subjects from her earlier book, finding that about one third were now unemployed. The other two thirds, however, were employed. Notably, the majority of those who were employed had even improved their prospects since she last met with them. In her interviews, Newman finds that those who were successful had either continued their educations, been granted a union job, or had begun working for an expanding business. In an attempt to track how and why some low-wage workers build careers where others fail, Newman gives a statistical overview of low-wage workers, dividing them into three categories. These categories include "‘high flyers’ (those earning at least 15 dollars an hour), a middle group characterized as ‘up but not out’ (that is, those with lower wages and wage growth), and ‘low riders,’ who apparently had fallen through the cracks since 1992," noted Daniel T. Lichter in the Industrial and Labor Relations Review. Although Lichter felt that Newman's data is somewhat limited (it pertains to a small selection of inner-city inhabitants in Harlem, New York), he still noted that "there is a lot to like about this volume…. It provides a largely sympathetic view of inner-city minority workers, who share most of the aspirations but few of the opportunities of their white, middle-class counterparts. Chutes and Ladders also paints a picture of resilience, perseverance, and optimism among poor minorities, despite the very real economic barriers they face." Another positive assessment of the work came from New York Times Book Review contributor Paul Tough, who stated: "Newman is a patient and sympathetic reporter, and she asked her subjects deep questions about their work histories, their love lives, their politics and their dreams. A lot of what she heard from them will come as a surprise to anyone who has read much recent scholarship on the inner-city poor." According to Tough, this is because Newman does not portray her subjects as "outsiders," as many other sociologists seem to do when discussing the American poor.

The Missing Class: Portraits of the Near Poor in America, which Newman coauthored with Victor Tan Chen, was published in 2007. The volume looks at the lower-middle class, those that earn a bit too much to be considered poor, but are constantly near becoming poor. Like her previous books, Newman draws on interviews conducted with her subjects, a techniques that makes her topic "come alive," according to John A. Coleman in America. A Kirkus Reviews critic also commented on Newman's technique of predominantly relying on interviews. Although the critic felt that "the many fragmented individual stories tend to blur together," he added that despite this, "the message comes through loud and clear."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

America, September 11, 1999, Robert Coles, review of No Shame in My Game: The Working Poor in the Inner City, p. 25; November 26, 2007, John A. Coleman, "Either Too Poor or Too Rich," review of The Missing Class: Portraits of the Near Poor in America, p. 29.

American Journal of Sociology, July, 1989, Stephen J. McNamee, review of Falling from Grace: The Experience of Downward Mobility in the American Middle Class, pp. 215-216.

American Spectator, July, 1993, Steven Lagerfeld, review of Declining Fortunes: The Withering of the American Dream, pp. 60-61.

Booklist, August 1, 2007, David Siegfried, review of The Missing Class, p. 14.

Childhood Education, winter, 2002, Judith Kieff, review of High Stakes: Time Poverty, Testing, and the Children of the Working Poor, p. 117.

Chronicle of Higher Education, April 16, 1999, Nina C. Ayoub, review of No Shame in My Game, p. A24.

Contemporary Sociology, May, 1989, Bart Landry, review of Falling from Grace, p. 332; January, 1994, Judith Stacey, review of Declining Fortunes, pp. 88-89.

Industrial and Labor Relations Review, Volume 61, Issue 2, 2007, Daniel T. Lichter, review of Chutes and Ladders: Navigating the Low-wage Labor Market.

Insight on the News, October 4, 1993, Kenneth Silber, review of Declining Fortunes, p. 6.

Journal of Politics, February, 1995, Edward S. Greenberg, review of Declining Fortunes, pp. 259-263.

Kirkus Reviews, November 1, 2002, review of A Different Shade of Gray: Mid-life and Beyond in the Inner City, p. 1596; July 1, 2007, review of The Missing Class.

Library Journal, December, 2002, Suzanne W. Wood, review of A Different Shade of Gray, p. 159; February 15, 2004, Suzanne W. Wood, review of Rampage: The Social Roots of School Shootings, p. 148.

New Republic, May 10, 1999, Alan Wolfe, review of No Shame in My Game, p. 48.

New York Review of Books, February 3, 1994, Nicholas Lemann, review of Declining Fortunes, pp. 9-10.

New York Times, May 16, 1993, Barbara Presley Noble, review of Declining Fortunes, p. F25; May 28, 1993, Michiko Kakutani, review of Declining Fortunes, p. C30.

New York Times Book Review, June 20, 1993, Robin Toner, review of Declining Fortunes, p. 13; October 22, 2006, Paul Tough, review of Chutes and Ladders.

Political Science Quarterly, winter, 1993-94, Lewis A. Coser, review of Declining Fortunes, pp. 744-745.

Progressive, October, 1999, Marya R. Sosulski, review of No Shame in My Game, p. 41.

Psychology Today, September, 1988, Beryl Lieff Benderly, review of Falling from Grace, pp. 71-72.

Public Interest, fall, 1999, Heather MacDonald, review of No Shame in My Game, p. 116.

Publishers Weekly, March 15, 1999, review of No Shame in My Game, p. 42; January 19, 2004, review of Rampage, p. 66; July 9, 2007, review of The Missing Class, p. 47.

Reference & Research Book News, November 1, 2007, review of The Missing Class.

Socialist Review, October, 1990, Susan Elizabeth Gerard, review of Falling from Grace, p. 135.

Social Science Quarterly, September, 1989, Marilyn K. Dantico, review of Declining Fortunes, p. 799.

Sociological Review, November, 1989, Pamela Abbott, review of Falling from Grace, pp. 829-832.

Washington Monthly, May, 1993, Jonathan Rauch, review of Declining Fortunes, pp. 53-55.

ONLINE

Democracy Now Web site,http://www.democracynow.org/ (May 8, 2007), "Katherine Newman on Rampage: The Social Roots of School Shootings."

Princeton University, Department of Sociology Web site,http://sociology.princeton.edu/ (June 2, 2008), author's curriculum vitae.

Russell Sage Foundation Web site,http://www.russellsage.org/ (June 2, 2008), "An Interview with Katherine S. Newman."