Abstract
Donald Trump’s election has forced a collective re-evaluation of who the “ordinary citizen” or “forgotten man or woman” is. Level of education distinguished Trump voters from Clinton voters. In spring 2016, Trump exuberantly shouted, “I love the poorly educated!” The ordinary citizens who voted for Trump did not care about his well-documented outrageous statements. This article asks what made Donald Trump so attractive to the constituency of the “poorly educated”? Using a method of bricolage – the assemblage of diverse facts, slogans and visual images that dominated the electoral campaign – I develop an interpretation of Trump’s victory that is cultural and also speaks to profound structural changes that began in the United States in the 1970s. The evidence for this article comes from over 50 hours of watching Donald Trump on television – during the debates, the primary season and the election; the Republican convention and a series of speeches during the campaign season, as well as popular culture from the 1970s through the present.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Canby, V. (1970) Perfection and a ‘Love Story’: Erich Segal’s Romantic Tale Begins Run. New York Times, published online 18 December, http://www.nytimes.com/movie/review?res=9E07E5DA1E30E337A2575BC1A9649D946190D6CF.
Case, A. and Deaton, A. (2015) Rising morbidity and mortality in midlife among white non-Hispanic Americans in the 21st century. Proceedings of the National Academy of the Sciences 112(49). http://wws.princeton.edu/faculty-research/research/item/rising-morbidity-and-mortality-midlife-among-white-non-hispanic.
Cramer, K.J. (2016) The Politics of Resentment: Rural Consciousness in Wisconsin and the Rise of Scott Walker. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Gieryn, T.F. (2002) What buildings do. Theory and Society 31(1): 35–74.
Goldin, C.D. and Katz, L.F. (2008) The Race Between Education and Technology. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard.
Hafner, J. (2016) Donald Trump loves the ‘poorly educated’—and they love him. USA Today. 24 February, http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/onpolitics/2016/02/24/donald-trump-nevada-poorly-educated/80860078/.
Hall, J.R. (2009) Apocalypse: From Antiquity to the Empire of Modernity. Cambridge, UK: Polity
Hoberman, J. (2000) Off the Hippies: ‘Joe’ and the Chaotic Summer of ‘70. New York Times, 30 July, http://www.nytimes.com/2000/07/30/movies/film-off-the-hippies-joe-and-the-chaotic-summer-of-70.html.
Hoschschild, A. (2016) Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right. Princeton, NJ: Princeton.
Jarzabkowski, P. and Trevor, P. (2014) Sociomateriality is the New Black. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/268807633_Sociomateriality_is_%27the_New_Black%27_Accomplishing_Re-purposing_Re-inscripting_and_Repairing_in_Context.
Kimmel, M.S. (2012) Manhood in America: A Cultural History. NewYork: Oxford University Press.
Koeske, Z. (2015) Staten Island by the numbers: Income, jobs and education data by ZIP code. Silive.com. 13 January, http://www.silive.com/specialreports/index.ssf/2015/01/staten_island_by_the_numbers.html.
Kirshner, J. (2013) Hollywood’s Last Golden Age: Politics, Society, and the Seventies Film in America. Ithaca, NY: Cornell.
Konczal, M. (2016) We missed what was so effective about Donald Trump’s campaign speeches—Vox http://www.vox.com/the-big-idea/2016/12/6/13853314/trump-speeches-lessons-democrats-economics-trade.
Lamont, M. (2000) The Dignity of Working Men: Morality and the Boundaries of Race, Class, and Immigration. Cambridge, MA: Harvard.
Lareau, A. (2011) Unequal Childhoods: Class, Race, and Family Life. Berkeley: UC Press.
Leonard, R. (2017) Why Rural America Voted for Trump. New York Times. 5 January. http://www.nytimes.com/(2017/01/05/opinion/why-rural-america-voted-for-trump.html.
Lipset, P.S.M. and Raab, E. (1978) The Politics of Unreason: Right-Wing Extremism in America, 1790–1977. Chicago, IL: Chicago.
Lyons, P. (1990) The silent majority baby boomers. Socialist Review 20(4): 37–56.
Monthy Labor Review, (2016) www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2016/article/pdf/current-employment-statistics-survey-100-years-of-employment-hours-and-earnings.pdf.
Murray, C. (2013) Coming Apart: The State of White America, (1960–2010). New York: Crown Forum.
Packard, V. (1957) The Hidden Persuaders. NY: Simon and Schuster.
Reardon, S.F. and Bischoff, K. (2011) Income inequality and income segregation. American Journal of Sociology 116(4): 1092–1153.
Rivera, L.A. (2015) Pedigree: How Elite Students Get Elite Jobs. Princeton, NJ: Princeton.
Roosevelt, F.D. (1932) The Forgotten Man Speech. Radio Address, Albany, NY 7 April http://newdeal.feri.org/speeches/(1932c.htm.
Schudson, M. (1989) How culture works: Perspectives from media studies on the efficacy of symbols. Theory and Society 18: 153–180.
Schulman, B.J. (2001) The Seventies: The Great Shift in American Culture, Society, and Politics. NY: Free Press.
Shapiro, R. (2016) Why Trump triumphed here: Staten Island voting by the numbers, silive.com, 11 November, http://www.silive.com/news/index.ssf/2016/11/heres_how_donald_trump_fared_o.html.
Shields, P.M. (1981) The burden of the draft: The Vietnam years. Journal of Political and Military Sociology 9(2): 215.
Silver, N. (2016) Education, Not Income, Predicted Who Would Vote For Trump. Five Thirty Eight. 22 November, http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/education-not-income-predicted-who-would-vote-for-trump/.
Spillman, L. (2012) Solidarity in Strategy: Making Business Meaningful in American Trade Associations. Chicago, IL: Chicago.
Trump, D. (2015a) Great Again. NY: Threshold Editors.
Trump, D. (2015b) Presidential Announcement Speech. 16 June, http://time.com/3923128/donald-trump-announcement-speech/.
Trump, D. (2016a) Republican Convention Acceptance Speech. 21 July, http://www.politico.com/story/2016/07/full-transcript-donald-trump-nomination-acceptance-speech-at-rnc-225974.
Trump, D. (2016b) Speech Responding to Assault Accusations, 13 October, http://www.npr.org/2016/10/13/497857068/transcript-donald-trumps-speech-responding-to-assault-accusations.
Trump, D. (2016c) Argument for America Campaign Ad, 6 November, www.salon.com/2016/11/07/watch-donald-trumps-last-campaign-ad-is-a-fitting-end-to-an-anti-semitic-campaign/.
Trump, D. Jr. (2016) Republican Convention Speech, 19 July, http://www.cnn.com/videos/politics/2016/07/20/rnc-convention-donald-trump-jr-entire-speech-sot.cnn.
Trump, I. (2016) Republican Convention Speech, 21 July, http://time.com/4417579/republican-convention-ivanka-trump-transcript/.
Vance, J.D. (2016a) Hillbilly Elegy. NY: HarperCollins.
Vance, J.D. (2016b) How Trump Won the Troops. The New York Times, 25 November.
Wacquant, L. (2002) Body and Soul. Chicago, IL: Chicago.
Willis, P.E. (1977) Learning to Labor: How Working Class Kids Get Working Class Jobs. NY: Columbia.
Winberg, O. (2017) Archie bunker for president: The strange career of a political icon in Moynihan’s America. PS: Political Science & Politics 50(2):392–396.
Young, M.D. (1970) The Rise of the Meritocracy, 1870–2033; An Essay on Education and Equality. Baltimore: Penguin.
Zeitlin, M., Lutterman, K.G., Russell, J.W. (1973) Death in Vietnam: Class, poverty, and the risks of war. Politics & Society 3(3): 313–328.
Acknowledgements
I am indebted to Ted Perlmutter for his assistance on matters large and small as well as his substantive insights. Ruth Milkman and Trevor Pinch provided important references. The external reviewer provided insightful comments that helped me re-think. Jeffrey Alexander and Philip Smith invited me to present this paper at the Yale Center for Cultural Sociology where I benefitted from two hours of probing commentary.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Berezin, M. On the construction sites of history: Where did Donald Trump come from?. Am J Cult Sociol 5, 322–337 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41290-017-0045-7
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/s41290-017-0045-7