Since the Gilded Age, social scientists, middle-class reformers, and
writers have left the comforts of their offices to "pass" as steel
workers, coal miners, assembly-line laborers, waitresses, hoboes, and
other working and poor people in an attempt to gain a fuller and more
authentic understanding of the lives of the working class and the poor.
In this first, sweeping study of undercover investigations of work and
poverty in America, award-winning historian Mark Pittenger examines
how
intellectuals were shaped by their experiences with the poor, and how
despite their sympathy toward working-class people, they unintentionally
helped to develop the contemporary concept of a degraded and "other"
American underclass.
While contributing to our understanding of the history of American
social
thought, Class Unknown offers a new perspective on contemporary debates
over how we understand
and represent our own society and its class divisions.