ABSTRACT
In the last chapter we met men who were catapulted across the border of the newly articulated white working class, entering, by virtue of joband family/home-based cultural practices, class terrain notably unfamiliar to them. In this sense, they exhibit and enact a middle-class habitus, one which distinguishes them both from their family of origin and from the “hard” and “settled” livers discussed in this chapter. Of all the men reinterviewed in 2000-2001, only Jerry and Bob clearly fit the profile of the “border” crosser, and while I did not track the entire class of 1987, we can assume that the number of such men is quite small.1 Here we meet those men who stayed-whether in Freeway itself or in a somewhat upscale but distinctly working-class white suburb outside of Freeway or a comparable city in another state. These men are far more numerous, ultimately embodying and projecting the contours of the new American white working class, a class which can be understood only through careful attention to issues which swirl around masculinity, whiteness, and the new economy. Masculinity, in particular, serves as a linchpin around which the contours of the reconfigured white working class can be best understood.
