i think that this is the group he wanted to study. if you understood his book--and it is--as a conversation with the authors of Habits of the Heart, then you'd get it. he is critical of the way _they_ analyzed the upscale suburban whites. but for both, there was a theoretical reason why they did so. i know the reasons why Bellah et al did so backward and forward and I'm fairly certain that Wolfe makes real clear that his reasons are the same as theirs. They didn't claim to represent all Americans, but that they had a theoretical reason why looking to this group was important. it's the same reason Ehrenreich gives for looking at the professional-managerial strata and the literatures they produce in the 50s and 60s in _Hearts of Men_
My complaint about your review was that, be/c you weren't aware of this--and it's a common practice in sociology (to re-examine even ethographic/qualitative research)--then this has shaped your critique. the book is intended to be read as part of a body of scholarship, a tradition in sociology, that examines this group of people.
moreover, the book is a follow up to _whose Keeper_ where he argues that sociology should be more concerned with the sociology of morality. he outlines what he means there.
when a sociologist (or any social scientist) makes these sorts of references, he's counting on his reader to actually go look them up because they enrich one's understanding of what the author is up to. we can't say it all in a book, so we rely on short hand. this is what _science_ is about. sometimes we don't explicate it all and we rely on the reader to be familiar with a conversation going on in the context of a research tradition.
>What I meant by the journalism crack is that bad journalism picks out a
>few dramatic instances of something without bothering to decide how
>representative they are and draws heroic conclusions from them. Good
>journalism, though, can bring lifeless stats and trends to life - but
>without leaping to conclusions recklessly. What Wolfe did in that book was
>more like bad j'ism than good.
well, you know, that's exactly what sociologists do too. the ethnographic field work you're familiar with because i've reported some of it here and elsewhere? from that research i have a four in. thick stack of field notes, transciptions, and reflections, not to mention a slew of other things. from that research project, which wasn't intended to be a book, i figure i could write about 5 different articles--at least. because it really does depend on what *I* choose to focus on. and, yep, in the end, you have to trust the ethnographer. if you wanted my transcripts, the ways i coded the data (old fashioned crayon method) or anything like that, i am under ethical obligations to turn it over.
it basically comes down to trust, a code of ethics, and honing the skills of observation. i happen to think people can manage that. AND, i happen to think that ethnographies _can_ say something generalizable. but you'll have to wait for my diss where i'll make that groundbreaking methodological argument and provide the demonstration! HA!!!