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Beyond The Story of J.d. Vance 'Hillbilly Elegy'

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Words: 1273 |

Pages: 3|

7 min read

Published: Apr 11, 2022

Words: 1273|Pages: 3|7 min read

Published: Apr 11, 2022

The memoir Hillbilly Elegy by J.D. Vance is a well-written book that awakens my mind and allows me to connect to some part of this country never knew existed. In his story, Vance not only focuses on his own family crisis, with his mom’s addiction, the poverty and the domestic violence, but it goes on to the population level to point out the social issues within his community and between the hillbillies and the outsiders. The author wrote in an understanding manner while using data and applying the sociological perspectives to support his arguments. I will admit that if it was not for this Sociology class, I would have never read that book. Nonetheless, I am glad I have. To write my sociological essay on this book, I will be using the class stratification to illustrate my arguments. The reason as to why is simply because of the obvious class issue present in Vance’s community. But what is class stratification? A dictionary-based definition would be the hierarchical or vertical division of society according to rank, caste, or class which is a bit too general. Yet, in sociology, class stratification has a more explicit definition which is based on divisions within our society based on access to important resources. For instance, In the Hillbilly Elegy, we have on one side is the Appalachian people, the lower strata living in a deprived neighborhood with meager resources and on the other side is the upper strata already living in affluent neighborhoods with more resources.

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Karl Marx, the father of communism, was a philosopher, sociologist who introduced a major theoretical perspective in sociology known as the social conflict theory. This theory focuses on the way inequalities contribute to social differences and preserve these differences in power. The analytic view of the conflict theory on class stratification is that it perpetuates inequality and unfairness. Conflict theorists try to bring cognizance to inequalities, such as how a rich society can have so many poor members by drawing on the work of Karl Marx. Since Marx’s time, bourgeois capitalists owned high-producing businesses, factories, and land while the proletariat were the workers who performed the manual labor to produce goods. Sadly, today, while working conditions have improved, conflict theorists believe that the strained working relationship between employers and employees still exist. A perfect illustration of this inequality is shown in the struggled lives of the Scot-Irish families who were coal miners and steelworkers desperately crawling their way toward prosperous living conditions by migrating north for better work opportunities. In addition, unlike the functionalists who believe that the different strata are necessary to maintain social order and that class mobility is possible for everyone if one works hard enough. But how hard does one have to work before accomplishing upward mobility? If we are being honest, the chances of that happening are slim. conflict theorists argue that class stratification is maintained to protect those at the top from having to share the prestige and the privilege.

“I grew up poor, in the Rust Belt, in Ohio steel town that has been hemorrhaging jobs and hope for as long as I can remember.” (Vance J., 2016, p. 9) J.D Vance starts his story that way not to indicate his tragic childhood but to make readers have a more sympathetic understanding to people who like him had or are still living in such conditions. However, J.D Vance wants to show that he found a way to achieve upward mobility despite being statistically labeled to fail based on his ancestors’ failure to achieve it. Yet, the community that he loves still suffers for the simple reason that although he grew up in that community and poor as he says, he still had more social capital that most of the people there. There are different types of poverty such as absolute poverty, relative poverty, deprived, and subjective poverty. For instance, he quoted in his memoir that “As the manufacturing center of the industrial Midwest has hollowed out, the white working class has lost both its economic security and the stable home and family life that comes with it.” (Vance J., introduction, 2016, p. 18) This demonstrates perfectly absolute poverty which is lack of the basic needs required for a healthy life. In this world, being different so often arises stereotypes and prejudice. 

Similarly, having a different culture to the society one lives in arises ethnocentrism. Vance says that hillbillies mean poverty because the white working class is considered by the white upper class to be white trash, meaning the shame of the white races. Unfortunately, it is a sad truth; the Appalachians are poor. Why is that? “Although the nation has faced the Great Recession that rocked our nation’s economy, where people struggled a long and extremely high unemployment season, those in the lower classes felt the impact most profoundly.”  They were already poor and theoretically after that chaotic event, they were left without government assistance, so their situations have worsened because they were stereotyped as being xenophobic just for having strong values and cultural traditions. The reason is that the system has always be planned that way to maintain the order of class stratification. Consequently, their offspring inherit their poverty because even the education system fails to prevent poverty to harvest in those areas. Kids, who are the future were condemned to fail, just because their families were at the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder, and their teachers would give them a palpable sense that they would never make it. (Lannamann, 2016) Then most ends up quitting and hoping to work in the famous Armco or other big steel companies. “The public schools are so bad that the state of Kentucky recently seized control. Nevertheless, parents send their children to these schools because they have little extra money, and the high school fails to send its students to college with alarming consistency.” Moreover, to most, achieving a higher living standard has become an unrealistic dream. Therefore, most give in to deviance and despair. “Federal housing policy has actively encouraged homeownership, from Jimmy Carter’s Community Reinvestment Act to George W. Bush’s ownership society.” and “As jobs disappear in a given area, declining home values trap people in certain neighborhoods.” (Vance J., Chapter 4, 2016, p. 143) As a result, many people are trapped by that law and unable to move out of these poor neighborhoods towards better opportunities since it is costly to do so. “For many, part-time work is all they have access to because the Armcos of the world are going out of business and their skill sets don’t fit well in the modern economy.”

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The capitalists have always gained their comforts at the suffering of the proletariat. For example, big companies like Armco will move their big companies to considered poor areas to create job opportunities with good wages. Then, the workers become content with having wages that help support their families and feel like they have accomplished upward mobility from lower-class to the middle class. Though, if we take the time to analyze it closely, they are set to forget about their dreams. Who wants to go to school when he can make $16 an hour without a degree? The real problem erupts when the skills they gained while working in those well-paid jobs become no good to them in the modern world. There again, they find themselves right back, where they started, in the lower-class. How could they escape this poverty if even when they worked as hard as possible, they were given less than no opportunities? They might be hardworking, but what good is that if there are no job opportunities?       

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Beyond The Story Of J.D. Vance ‘Hillbilly Elegy’. (2022, April 11). GradesFixer. Retrieved March 29, 2024, from https://gradesfixer.com/free-essay-examples/beyond-the-story-of-j-d-vance-hillbilly-elegy/
“Beyond The Story Of J.D. Vance ‘Hillbilly Elegy’.” GradesFixer, 11 Apr. 2022, gradesfixer.com/free-essay-examples/beyond-the-story-of-j-d-vance-hillbilly-elegy/
Beyond The Story Of J.D. Vance ‘Hillbilly Elegy’. [online]. Available at: <https://gradesfixer.com/free-essay-examples/beyond-the-story-of-j-d-vance-hillbilly-elegy/> [Accessed 29 Mar. 2024].
Beyond The Story Of J.D. Vance ‘Hillbilly Elegy’ [Internet]. GradesFixer. 2022 Apr 11 [cited 2024 Mar 29]. Available from: https://gradesfixer.com/free-essay-examples/beyond-the-story-of-j-d-vance-hillbilly-elegy/
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