Arlie Hochschild was born in Boston, grew up in Maryland, attended Swarthmore College (BA) and U.C Berkeley (MA, PhD) where she has long taught sociology. Her ten books have taken her deep into the emotional lives of people in a variety of social contexts- – a low income housing project (The Unexpected Community), Delta Airlines Stewardess Training Center where she interviewed flight attendants, and later bill collectors who perform "emotional labor" (The Managed Heart), working parents struggling to divide housework and childcare (The Second Shift), corporate employees dealing with a culture of workaholism (The Time Bind), and Filipina nannies who've left their children behind to care for those of American families (Global Woman).
Her two last books have focused on people drawn to the political right in both the deep South and Appalachia. Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right ( a New York Times best seller and National Book Award finalist) is based on immersion in the lives of people living in and around Lake Charles, Louisiana. Stolen Pride: Loss, Shame and the Rise of the Right is based on those living in the broader region around Pikeville, Kentucky. Whatever the subject, she has tried to understand the powerful role of emotion in social life. What do we feel? What do we think we should feel? (i.e., “feeling rules”) How do we manage feeling? How does emotion shape denial? How might a crisis in pride, she asks in her latest book, underlie political alienation or support for authoritarian rule? Hochschild has won ten honorary degrees, and her work is published in 17 languages.
