Strangers in Their Own Land: Appendix A Summary & Analysis

Hochschild explain that sociologists describe research methods like the one used for this book as “‘exploratory’ and ‘hypothesis-generating.’” This kind of research does not try “to see how common or rare something is, or where one does and doesn’t find it, or to study how the something comes and goes through time” but rather “to discover what something actually is.” Her “something” is the “emotional draw of right-wing politics,” and figuring out what it is required “getting close” to her subjects.

Hochschild used this method for much of her previous research, adapting it to each particular topic. In her research for this book, Hochschild started with focus groups, followed up with the members, met their families, and “snowballed” out through their social networks to build a larger sample of Louisiana Republicans. She also met various conservatives through campaign events, tapped into Mike Tritico’s network of anti-environmentalist friends, and encountered activists like Mike Schaff and General Honoré at public environmentalist rallies.

All in all, Hochschild interviewed 40 Tea Party members and 20 other community members for context. Interviewees signed consent forms and could ask Hochschild to stop recording whenever they liked; many of Hochschild’s stories come from these off-the-record conversations. She picked six main interviewees to profile in depth through participant observation—she followed them about their lives and visited places that were meaningful to them. Her “core group” of 40 was roughly equally split between men and women. All these subjects were white, between working and middle class, and over 40. About a third worked for the oil industry.

Along with her research assistants, Hochschild also studied national opinion polls and compared them to her interviewees’ beliefs. Soon, she became curious about the relationship between political identification and exposure to pollution, which she summarizes in Appendix B.

Hochschild also “explored Louisiana” through visits to various institutions and events. She went to Angola Prison, the United States’ largest maximum-security facility, as well as Civil War reenactments and the restored Oak Alley Plantation, and paid attention to way different groups inhabited public space in Lake Charles. She notes that she was lucky to be “white, female, gray-haired, and writing a book about a divide that also troubled those I came to know.” She became “deeply grateful” for Southerners’ hospitality.