Mastery and Drift : Professional-Class Liberals since The 1960s.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Cebul, Brent.

Contributor:

Geismer, Lily.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

United States--Politics and government--20th century.

United States.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (486 pages)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 2025.

Summary:

A revelatory look at modern liberalism’s historical evolution and enduring impact on contemporary politics and society. Since the 1960s, American liberalism and the Democratic Party have been remade along professional class lines, widening liberalism’s impact but narrowing its social and political vision. In Mastery and Drift, historians Brent Cebul and Lily Geismer have assembled a group of scholars to address the formation of “professional-class liberalism” and its central role in remaking electoral politics and the practice of governance. Across subjects as varied as philanthropy, consulting, health care, welfare, race, immigration, economics, and foreign conflicts, the authors examine not only the gaps between liberals’ egalitarian aspirations and their approaches to policymaking but also how the intricacies of contemporary governance have tended to bolster professional-class liberals’ power. The contributors to Mastery and Drift all came of age amid the development of professional-class liberalism, giving them distinctive and important perspectives in understanding its internal limitations and its relationship to neoliberalism and the Right. With never-ending disputes over the meaning of liberalism, the content of its governance, and its relationship to a resurgent Left, now is the time to consider modern liberalism’s place in contemporary American life.

Contents:

Frontmatter

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION Professional-Class Liberalism

Part I: Generational Change and Continuity

1 How Philanthropy Made and Unmade American Liberalism

2 Managing Global Development Robert Nathan and the Liberal Roots of the Contrac State in US Foreign Policy

3: CREATING "INITIATORY DEMOCRACY" Ralph Nader, the Center for the Study of Responsive Law, and the Shaping of Liberalism in the 1970s

4: "WHAT IS A POPULIST APPROACH TO THIS CRISIS?" ACORN's Liberalism and the 1980s Savings and Loan Crisis

5 SURVIVAL PENDING CORPORATE SPONSORSHIP The "Crisis" of the Black Family, Black State Skepticism, and the Evolution of Black Liberalism in the Post-Civil Rights Era

6 Queer Autonomy and the Afterlife of the Family Wage

7 MAKING THE LIBERAL MEDIA Journalism's Class Transformation since the 1960s

8: SEEING LIKE A STRATEGIST

Part II: New Governance

9: THE PRESERVATION OF CONDITIONAL CITIZENSHIP AFTER THE 1965 VOTING RIGHTS ACT

10: LIBERALISM'S LAST RIGHTS Disability Inclusion and the Rise of the Cost-Benefit State

11: COMPUTERIZING A COVENANT Contract Liberalism and the Nationalization of Welfare Administration

12: LEFT IN LIMBO The Fight for Temporary Protected Status and the Illiberal Effects of Liberal Policymaking

13: THE AUSTERITY IMPERATIVE Democratic Deficit Hawks and the Crisis of Keynesianism

14: THE PROFESSIONAL-CLASS PRESIDENCY OF BARACK OBAMA

15: STATE AGENCY Social History with and beyond Institutionalism

Acknowledgments

Notes

List of Contributors

Index

Notes:

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.

ISBN:

9780226838120

0226838129

OCLC:

1492973722