| This study explores the lived experience of inequality by examining how two processes, the rise in income and wealth inequality and the privatization of risk, shape the lives of fifty families from across the socioeconomic spectrum in Silicon Valley. Through over 100 in-depth interviews and ethnographic research, my study finds that in an ever more stratified society, wherein families are increasingly expected to manage their own risk, security is emerging as a more salient basis of social class division. My study documents how families across the socioeconomic spectrum respond to the macroeconomic story that surrounds them by tracing the various types of security projects the families pursue in coping with that story. In doing so, I argue that the privatization of risk increases insecurity for all families, but that class stratification in resources, skill-sets, educational credentials, and cultural practices engender more insecurity for some and much less for others. My study focuses on the multidimensional nature of this phenomenon I call “the inequality of security,” and argues that this concept is not simply a structural matter. Rather, my research discovered that people 'do security'; in other words, they develop coping strategies to grapple with their social location within the changing character of risk in American life. My study explores these strategies, highlighting the classed and gendered aspects of the emotion work involved in the 'doing of security projects.' Specifically, my study finds that those at the top upscale their approach to security, yet are anxious because they feel an ever-increasing need for more security, while those with fewer resources downscale their approach to security, submerging some feelings and evoking others, in order to manage “down” their anxiety. Additionally, my study analyzes the gendered division of worry work in families and finds class differences in that it is the men at the top who are responsible for financial concerns while it is the women at the middle and below who are their family‘s “designated worriers.” This discovery reveals an emerging trend—the feminization of security work in families. Taken together, these findings shed light on the social price of inequality. |
