Abstract
Allison Pugh has written a thoughtful book on the realities of working and family life in the contemporary United States, and it is a wistful book without being nostalgic. The tone of The Tumbleweed Society: Working and Caring in an Age of Insecurity is reminiscent of the barren but beautiful landscape shown on the book cover. There is a forlorn quality to the stories her interview respondents share, and their isolation is clear. Yet there is much to appreciate about the ways the tumbleweeds move through the desert as well. I grew up in the semi-arid and open landscape of far West Texas, and I also remember the uglier moments of that landscape—the sandstorms that leave you with grit in your teeth and your eyes and the baking heat of a dry summer. Both the harshness and the moments of beauty are explored by Pugh as she looks carefully and deeply at job insecurity and family commitments. She asks, “When people believe that employers do not owe them much of anything, how do they interpret what they themselves owe to others? In an insecure age, how do we make sense of our own obligations?” (p.5).
Pugh is a cultural sociologist and scholar of family life whose analysis has much to say to the work and family field. This may not be an obvious “work-family” book because it does not examine work-family conflict or time strain as its dependent variable nor consider how family responsibilities and gendered family identities affect who works, how much they work, or how gender inequality is reproduced by overwork and the ideal worker norm. We’ve spent a lot of time in work-family scholarship and in sociological studies of gender, work, and family on those questions, and that’s not where this book points us. But this is certainly a work-family book because Pugh is helping us think through the relationship between churn at work—job loss, insecurity, and instability in one’s work life—and how families are constructed and, especially, maintained. While work-family scholarship is rich in part because it is interdisciplinary, some of the research can feel thin. Cultural sociology like Pugh’s deepens our understanding of these questions with its attention to emotional life and to emotion work.
One way of simplifying the book is to say that it asks: How does our experience of job insecurity and job loss affect the likelihood that marriages and intimate partnerships are sustained over the long term? However, that is a very incomplete description of the book because Pugh delves into the cultural schemas and the emotional experiences that affect both the way job insecurity is managed and the way intimate partnerships are cultivated, or not. With Pugh’s interview data, we can see a causal pathway in which work experiences (specifically, exposure to job loss) affect expectations about others and oneself, which then affect the emotions that are felt and how those feelings are managed. These managed emotions also affect the next actions that seem sensible, in the family domain and in the work domain. And yet reality is even richer: Pugh helps us see how the causal pathway is more of a circular system where both meaning and feeling are absolutely central.
This rich cultural analysis is evident in Pugh’s description of expectations as “coloring books” that “create empty shapes that wait to be filled in” (p.30). Pugh’s respondents generally expect employers to do whatever they supposedly need to do to meet business goals—even if that is laying off workers or cutting schedules so an hourly worker’s pay falls unpredictably. But those Pugh interviewed expected much more of themselves: that they would stay positive, continue giving their full effort, and “move on” without a fuss so that they could find the next position. As Pugh says, the expectations-as-coloring books means workers “invoke those prefabricated shapes that demand narratives of personal accountability and fill them in with their own stories” (p.30). Those interviewed convey acceptance, resignation, and a privatized responsibility for making the best, working hard, and not expecting too much. This “one-way honor system” names a key feature of U.S. employment that stretches from the top to the bottom of the labor market.
Pugh considers how these expectations and emotional experiences vary by gender and by class, with recognition of the specific experiences of African American women and other women of color as well. The interview sample deliberately includes three groups: 1) professionals and managers who have faced relocation or job disruptions but are highly paid and seem confident in their opportunities, 2) people who work intermittently and insecurely in low-wage jobs and face all the stresses of barely making ends meet, and, in between those groups, 3) a moderate-income group who have steadier jobs, often in the public sector or helping professions such as social work or teaching.
Pugh also acknowledges variation among women and among men, reflecting “gender innovations” rather than portraying simplified gender differences. Some mothers are fiercely committed to all their family members and engage in intensive caring and self-sacrifice. Other women carefully manage how much time or emotional intimacy or how many resources or second chances they will give to other adults they love (including spouses or partners), though these women still prioritize the practical and emotional needs of their children. Some men respond to felt betrayals by leaving their family members or cutting emotional ties while staying around, but other men have a “care work ethic” and dive into primary caregiver roles deeply.
All of this variation feels accurate and important to acknowledge, but it also makes the middle chapters somewhat complicated. For that reason, instructors will want to guide students (with a schematic or orienting questions) to help them see the big picture of who responds to insecurity in what ways. Still, this is an important analysis of insecurity today and so well worth that effort. Instructors can also use the book to illustrate what thoughtful interview analysis looks like. I was inspired by Pugh’s interviews and what she helps us see from a close reading of those exchanges. Pugh has recent articles on interviews and cultural analysis that might be paired with the book in a methods course as well.
Pugh has provided a gripping, if depressing, portrayal of the ways the realities of work today affect our emotional lives and our family commitments. The book is only more relevant now that we are in the Trump era, where we are engaged in debates every day about who owes whom what, what we can expect of U.S. companies and of each other, and how social solidarity can be supported in the face of economic insecurity. TheTumbleweed Society foregrounds the intimate—the work and family lives of women and men navigating this landscape—but Pugh’s thoughtful analysis connects their stories and discourse to these broader concerns.