Synopses & Reviews
"Pathbreaking and original. Bettie's comparative analysis of race, class, and gender performance is unparalleled in current scholarship."Angela Valenzuela, author of
Subtractive Schooling: U.S.-Mexican Youth and the Politics of Caring "What a wonderful book! It deserves to be placed next to Paul Willis' Learning to Labouror in front of it. Bettie seamlessly weaves bold theoretical arguments together with a nuanced portrayal of senior high school girls, Anglo and Mexican, working-class and middle-classor in their words, the preps, hicks, smokers/rockers/trash and the Mexican preps, cholas/cholos, hard-cores, and las chicas. Her book is equally a challenge to feminists who can see only gender, and theorists of class and race who cannot see gender at all. It is one of the finest empirical and conceptual discussions of how gender, race, and class intersect. It is also a page-turner, lucidly and often movingly written."Elizabeth Long, author of From Sociology to Cultural Studies: New Perspectives
"Julie Bettie has written an extraordinary book. Engagingly written, empathetic, and filled with insight, Women Without Class makes a clear and convincing case that essentialized concepts of race and gender are not only inaccurate, but even worse, part of the ideological structure that renders class invisible. Bettie's book sets a new standard of excellence for studies of schooling and social identities."George Lipsitz, author of How Racism Takes Place
"In this fresh and realistic book, Julie Bettie tells us uncomfortable, but important truths about the lives of young women in an American high school. Within the kaleidoscope of gender and ethnic identities are injuries, exclusions, and the powerful (though often hidden) effects of class. This is a book to be read by everyone who wants to understand contemporary youth."Raewyn Connell, author of Confronting Equality: Gender, Knowledge and Global Change
"Women Without Class is an important contribution to scholarship on young women and the intersections of race and class with gender. The book is fantastically rich in observation and analysis. The author resists with vigor a victimology perspective, but at the same time shows how the marginalization of class from contemporary work in the field results in a failure to understand how assumptions about post-feminism, female success, and social mobility produce new and virulent exclusions."Angela McRobbie, Professor of Communications at Goldsmiths College London and author of The Aftermath of Feminism: Gender, Culture and Social Change
"Bettie is doing something no one has done before: she explores the many ways that BOTH Mexican American and White adolescent girls interpret and enact racially gendered class identities. This book is essential reading for any serious scholar of gender, class, and race-ethnicity."Denise Segura, editor of Women and Migration in the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands: A Reader
"Rather than following traditional and stereotypical notions common in mainstream U.S. sociology and criminology, which portray youth as delinquent and criminals, Bettie gives the reader the vivid representations of a group of working-class youth who are searching for 'creative responses to the injuries of inequality.'"Esther Madriz, author of Nothing Bad Happens to Good Girls: Fear of Crime in Women's Lives
Synopsis
Thousands of pregnant women pass through our nation s jails every year. What happens to them as they gestate their pregnancies in a space of punishment? Based on ethnographic fieldwork and clinical work as an Ob/Gyn in a women s jail, Carolyn Sufrin explores how, in this time when public safety is in disarray and when incarceration has become a central strategy for managing the poor, jail has become a safety net.
Focusing on the experiences of pregnant, incarcerated women as well as on the practices of the jail guards and health providers who care for them, Jailcare describes the contradictory ways that care and maternal identity emerge within a punitive space presumed to be devoid of care. Sufrin argues that jail is not simply a disciplinary institution that serves to punish. Rather, when understood in the context of the poverty, addiction, violence, and racial oppression that characterize these women s lives and their reproduction, jail can become a safety net for women on the margins of society.
"
Synopsis
Thousands of pregnant women pass through our nation's jails every year. What happens to them as they carry their pregnancies in a space of punishment? In this time when the public safety net is frayed, incarceration has become a central and racialized strategy for managing the poor. Using her ethnographic fieldwork and clinical work as an ob-gyn in a women's jail, Carolyn Sufrin explores how jail has, paradoxically, become a place where women can find care. Focusing on the experiences of incarcerated pregnant women as well as on the practices of the jail guards and health providers who care for them, Jailcare describes the contradictory ways that care and maternal identity emerge within a punitive space presumed to be devoid of care. Sufrin argues that jail is not simply a disciplinary institution that serves to punish. Rather, when understood in the context of the poverty, addiction, violence, and racial oppression that characterize these women's lives and their reproduction, jail can become a safety net for women on the margins of society.
Synopsis
In this examination of white and Mexican-American girls coming of age in California's Central Valley, Julie Bettie turns class theory on its head and offers new tools for understanding the ways in which class identity is constructed and, at times, fails to be constructed in relationship to color, ethnicity, gender, and sexuality. Documenting the categories of subculture and style that high school students use to explain class and racial/ethnic differences among themselves, Bettie depicts the complex identity performances of contemporary girls. The title, Women Without Class, refers at once to young working-class women who have little cultural capital to enable class mobility, to the fact that class analysis and social theory has remained insufficiently transformed by feminist and ethnic studies, and to the fact that some feminist analysis has itself been complicit in the failure to theorize women as class subjects. Bettie's research and analysis make a case for analytical and political attention to class, but not at the expense of attention to other axes of identity and social formations.
Synopsis
High school and the difficult terrain of sexuality and gender identity are brilliantly explored in this smart, incisive ethnography. Based on eighteen months of fieldwork in a racially diverse working-class high school, Dude, You're a Fag sheds new light on masculinity both as a field of meaning and as a set of social practices. C. J. Pascoe's unorthodox approach analyzes masculinity as not only a gendered process but also a sexual one. She demonstrates how the "specter of the fag" becomes a disciplinary mechanism for regulating heterosexual as well as homosexual boys and how the "fag discourse" is as much tied to gender as it is to sexuality.
Synopsis
"Laced with evocative stories based on ethnographic observations and interviews with high school kids,
Dude, You're a Fag tells gripping stories of life in high school, while helping to extend the cutting edge of scholarly theory on gender and sexualities. C.J. Pascoe has contributed a highly readable and extremely insightful book that will be required reading for students and scholars of youth and the construction of sex and gender in schools."Michael A. Messner, author of
Taking the Field: Women, Men and Sports"This is a strikingly original study of schoolboys renegotiating class, gender, and ethnicity, along with the labeling as 'fag'. Here homophobia is at work in a path breaking study, which is also a highly readable must-read."Ken Plummer, University of Essex, and editor of Sexualities
"We know that schools are a central site for the construction of gender identity, but until C. J. Pascoe's careful and compassionate ethnography, we haven't known exactly how gender conformity is extracted from a slurry of humiliations, fears, and anxieties. Boys will not be boys unless they are made to be, by violence, real or implied. A troubling, thoughtful work."Michael Kimmel, author of Manhood in America
"Pascoe's thoughtful analysis of the rhetorical and interactional processes that constitute the field of masculinity for young, high school men coming of age is rich and engaging. With fresh insight and careful observation, Pascoe sheds new light on the complex interplay of masculinity, homophobia, sexuality, and the body, compelling us to rethink the formation of gender identities, collective gender practices, and the reproduction of gender inequalities."Amy L. Best, author of Prom Night: Youth, Schools and Popular Culture and Fast Cars, Cool Rides: The Accelerating World of Youth and Their Cars
"In this superb ethnography of daily life in a contemporary high school, C. J. Pascoe highlights the sexualized dynamics of youthful masculinity. With vivid detail and perceptive analysis, she examines the 'fag talk' which pervades boys' conversations; the convergence of gender, sexual, and racialized practices in school rituals like the 'Mr. Cougar' contest; and the experiences of girls who display themselves as masculine. The result is a book that breaks fresh ground in masculinity and gender studies-and is a very good read!"Barrie Thorne, author of Gender Play: Girls and Boys in School
Synopsis
In this ethnographic examination of Mexican-American and white girls coming of age in Californias Central Valley, Julie Bettie turns class theory on its head, asking what cultural gestures are involved in the performance of class, and how class subjectivity is constructed in relationship to color, ethnicity, gender, and sexuality. A new introduction contextualizes the book for the contemporary moment and situates it within current directions in cultural theory.
Investigating the cultural politics of how inequalities are both reproduced and challenged, Bettie examines the discursive formations that provide a context for the complex identity performances of contemporary girls. The books title refers at once to young working-class women who have little cultural capital to enable class mobility; to the fact that analyses of class too often remain insufficiently transformed by feminist, ethnic, and queer studies; and to the failure of some feminist theory itself to theorize women as class subjects.
Women without Class makes a case for analytical and political attention to class, but not at the expense of attention to other social formations.
About the Author
Julie Bettie teaches cultural politics and cultural theory at the University of California, Santa Cruz, where she is an Associate Professor of Sociology.
Table of Contents
Preface to the 2012 Edition
Acknowledgments
1. Making Masculinity: Adolescence, Identity, and High School
Revenge of the Nerds
What Do We Mean by Masculinity?
Bringing in Sexuality
Rethinking Masculinity, Sexuality, and Bodies
Methodology
Organization of the Book
2. Becoming Mr. Cougar: Institutionalizing Heterosexuality and Masculinity at River High
River Highs Gender and Sexuality Curriculum
Pedagogy: The Unofficial Gender and Sexuality Curriculum
School Rituals: Performing and Policing Gender and Sexuality
Gender and Sexuality Regimes
3. Dude, Youre a Fag: Adolescent Male Homophobia
What Is a Fag? Gendered Meanings
Becoming a Fag: Fag Fluidity
Embodying the Fag: Rickys Story
Racializing the Fag
Where the Fag Disappears: Drama Performances
Reframing Homophobia
4. Compulsive Heterosexuality: Masculinity and Dominance
A Stud with the Ladies
Getting Girls
Touching
Sex Talk
Girls Respond
Im Different from Other Guys
Females Are the Puppets
5. Look at My Masculinity! Girls Who Act Like Boys
Tomboy Pasts
Rebeca and the Basketball Girls
The Homecoming Queen: Jessie Chau
The Gay/Straight Alliance Girls
Embodying Masculinity
6. Conclusion: Thinking about Schooling, Gender, and Sexuality
Masculinity at River High
Theoretical Implications
Practical Steps
Appendix: What If a Guy Hits on You? Intersections of Gender, Sexuality, and Age in Fieldwork with Adolescents
Notes
References
Index