Heiman - Driving after class: anxious times in an American suburb

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Driving after Class: Anxious Times in an American Suburb, by Rachel Heiman

Driving after Class

ANXIOUS TIMES IN AN AMERICAN SUBURB

Rachel Heiman

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS

University of California Press, one of the most distinguished university presses in the United States, enriches lives around the world by advancing scholarship in the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences. Its activities are supported by the UC Press Foundation and by philanthropic contributions from individuals and institutions. For more information, visit www.ucpress.edu.

University of California Press

Oakland, California

2015 by The Regents of the University of California

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Heiman, Rachel, author.

Driving after class : anxious times in an American suburb / Rachel Heiman.

pages cm

Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN 978-0-520-27774-8 (cloth : alk. paper) ISBN 978-0-520-27775-5 (pbk. : alk. paper)

eISBN 978-0-520-96031-2

1. Social classesNew Jersey. 2. Suburban lifeNew Jersey. 3. Middle classNew Jersey. 4. New JerseySocial conditions. I. Title.

HN 79. N 53S6155 2015

305.5509749dc23

2014023241

Manufactured in the United States of America

23 22 21 20 19 18 17 16 15 14

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

In keeping with a commitment to support environmentally responsible and sustainable printing practices, UC Press has printed this book on Natures Natural, a fiber that contains 30 percent post-consumer waste and meets the minimum requirements of ANSI/NISO Z 39.481992 ( R 1997) ( Permanence of Paper ).

Contents

Illustrations

FIGURES

MAP

TABLE

Preface

As I write this, in the winter of 2014, the United States is still reeling from the economic crash of 2008. The dramatic class inequality brought to the forewhat came to be defined through Occupy Wall Street as the problem of the 1 percentshows no signs of diminishing. Foreclosures persist at an alarming rate, as luxury-housing markets rebound. Job growth comes in spurts and starts, while CEO compensation once again skyrockets. Banks and corporations enjoy the benefits of bailouts, with students left to shoulder the crushing debt of educational loans. Nightly newscasts about further cuts in basic social services are followed by reports on stock-market highs. Despite fomenting frustration with these conditions across the political spectrum, partisan politics repeatedly brings legislative bodies of the federal government to a standstill, compounding these problems rather than solving them. Where this will lead is still an open question, and climate change and other domestic and global concerns greatly complicate these issues. But one thing is certain: the postwar version of the American dreamthe idea that suburban homeownership and its related industries would be able continually to fuel the economy, promote class mobility, and maintain a robust middle classwas dealt a severe blow.

We have spent a lot of time over the last six years looking back at what went wrong, trying to better understand how we found ourselves in a situation where the collapse of a housing bubble was able to catapult the entire economy into a downward spiral. Much of this retrospective analysis has focused, for good reason, on vulnerabilities created through too big to fail banking systems, the myriad of new forms of securitization and financialization, new types of speculation and computerization, and government regulations and safety nets that have been chipped away or have failed to keep pace with new market practices, decades of neoliberal policies, and new global players. Less time, however, has been spent grappling with the subjectivities produced during the lead up to the crash, which also are an important part of the story of how we have found ourselves in these conditions and with which we are still contending. Yearnings for upper-middle-class lifestyles continue to this day, as does the presumption that the only way to feel secure as a member of the middle class is to make it into the upper middle class. As we think deeply about how to create a new American dream that will be more sustainable and equitable than the last, it behooves us to take stock of the values, expectations, and longings that became deeply engrained in peoples habits, sentiments, and spaces during the suburban American dreams magnified last hurrah in the late 1990s. To imagine a new future, we need to appreciate not just the material structures that have led us down a problematic path but the affective structures as well.