A Culture of Second Chances: The Promise, Practice, and Price of Starting Over in Everyday Life

(Hardback)

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This book examines the iconic presence of second chances in everyday life. David Newman explores its various iterations in popular culture, commercial marketplaces, religion, intimate relationships, education, criminal justice, and human bodies. He analyzes how this conceptas a cultural aspiration, driver of policy, and lived personal experiencehas become part and parcel of our individual sense of self and our collective national identity. While the rhetoric of second chances is familiar and ubiquitous, Newman uncovers their costs and constraints, paying particular attention to the importance of judgments of deservedness. Informed by an array of data sources including personal interviews, mission statements of nonprofit recovery agencies, images in popular culture, stories from the news, plot summaries of novels, and scriptural texts, Newman frames the second chance experience as the quintessential cultural paradox: a concept that simultaneously represents the pinnacle of our shared hopes for renewal and our deepest suspicions about the intransigence of human nature.

Reviews

George W. Bush once said that America was the land of second chances. In this fascinating dissection of the concept, David Newman shows that the situation is much more complicated than that. This analysis could not be better timed as America has never been more in need of a bit of redemption as a society.--Shadd Maruna, Chair of Sociology, Social Policy and Criminology, University of Liverpool; author of Making Good: How Ex-Convicts Reform and Rebuild Their Lives
Schadenfreude and second chances. The delight we take in the misfortunes and misdeeds of others is bested only by the thrill of seeing them rise above the circumstances that brought them down in the first place. Ranging from everyday triumphs over personal set-backs to the celebrated comebacks of celebrities, athletes, politicians, and even corporations, A Culture of Second Chances: The Promise, Practice, and Price of Starting Over in Everyday Life is packed with engaging stories that reveal our deep personal and cultural investments in the "do-over." David Newman offers up a compelling social psychology of the ubiquity of personal and social redemption. Against this backdrop, his analysis of those who are deemed undeserving of a second chance--those who suffer permanent stigma--shows us the intricacies of how social privilege really works.--Jodi O'Brien, Seattle University, author of The Production of Reality

Author Bio

David Newman is professor of sociology at Depauw University.