Revolt from the Middle

-Why doesn't social inequality generate massive protest? Jonathan Turner gives a novel answer, based on an innovative synthesis on the evolution of human emotionality. Going beyond conventional theory of inequality in money, power and prestige, Turner shifts the dynamic to stratification of positive and negative emotions. The emotional lower classes experience plenty of shame and anger, but repress and displace their emotions onto the wrong targets. The emotional middle class consists of amorphous clusters that get emotional satisfaction from many sources, chiefly outside the official values of American achievement. But the future portends an emotional revolution, as technological displacement shifts much of the middle class into the negative emotional class. This is big-picture theorizing on the level with Marx, Weber, Parsons, Freud, Darwin, and their most sophisticated modern developments.-

--Randall Collins, Dorothy Swaine Thomas Professor of Sociology, University of Pennsylvania

"Why doesn't social inequality generate massive protest? Jonathan Turner gives a novel answer, based on an innovative synthesis on the evolution of human emotionality. Going beyond conventional theory of inequality in money, power and prestige, Turner shifts the dynamic to stratification of positive and negative emotions. The emotional lower classes experience plenty of shame and anger, but repress and displace their emotions onto the wrong targets. The emotional middle class consists of amorphous clusters that get emotional satisfaction from many sources, chiefly outside the official values of American achievement. But the future portends an emotional revolution, as technological displacement shifts much of the middle class into the negative emotional class. This is big-picture theorizing on the level with Marx, Weber, Parsons, Freud, Darwin, and their most sophisticated modern developments."

--Randall Collins, Dorothy Swaine Thomas Professor of Sociology, University of Pennsylvania

"Why doesn't social inequality generate massive protest? Jonathan Turner gives a novel answer, based on an innovative synthesis on the evolution of human emotionality. Going beyond conventional theory of inequality in money, power and prestige, Turner shifts the dynamic to stratification of positive and negative emotions. The emotional lower classes experience plenty of shame and anger, but repress and displace their emotions onto the wrong targets. The emotional middle class consists of amorphous clusters that get emotional satisfaction from many sources, chiefly outside the official values of American achievement. But the future portends an emotional revolution, as technological displacement shifts much of the middle class into the negative emotional class. This is big-picture theorizing on the level with Marx, Weber, Parsons, Freud, Darwin, and their most sophisticated modern developments."

--Randall Collins, Dorothy Swaine Thomas Professor of Sociology, University of Pennsylvania