Event

Website: http://www.jessistreib.com/

Jessi Streib is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Duke University. Her research uncovers mechanisms and builds theories about how social class inequality is experienced, reproduced, and alleviated. Her book, The Power of the Past: Understanding Cross-Class Marriages, builds a theory of how love crosses class lines, uncovers a new way that culture systematically varies by class, and demonstrates that the class does not come out of the person after the person comes out of the class. Her articles illuminate how childrearing strategies vary by parents' class background and how four-year-old children engage in class reproduction.

Professor Streib's work has been recognized by awards from the American Sociological Association, the Midwest Sociological Society, and the National Center for Institutional Diversity, and has been supported by the Spencer Foundation. Her research has been featured in  The Washington Post, New York Magazine, NPR, The Atlantic, and The Boston Globe. She received a Ph.D. from the University of Michigan in 2013.

Talk Description: Getting and staying ahead often requires expressing the sensibilities that middle-class institutions expect and reward. Research shows that the working-class tends to lack these sensibilities, while the middle-class tends to have them. Despite the fact that individuals do not necessarily spend their whole lives in one social class, existing studies do little to consider how social mobility relates to sensibilities. In this talk, I draw upon interviews with upwardly mobile and class-stable college-educated individuals in cross-class marriages to develop a new theory of how sensibilities relate to mobility. 

Relevant Reading:

Streibg, J. (2015). The Power of the Past: Understanding Cross-Class Marriages. Oxford University Press: NY.