Women without Class: Girls, Race, and Identity [Paperback]

Julie Bettie (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: 2003 | ISBN-10: 0520235428 | ISBN-13: 978-0520235427

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.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Pathbreaking and original. Bettie's comparative analysis of race, class, and gender performance of the different female peer issues is unparalleled in current scholarship."-Angela Valenzuela, author of Subtractive Schooling: U.S.-Mexican Youth and the Politics of Caring

From the Inside Flap

"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 Labour--or 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-class--or 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 American Studies in a Moment of Danger

"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."--R.W. Connell, author of Gender and Power: Society, the Person, and Sexual Politics

"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 Feminism and Youth Culture

"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, Professor of Sociology, University of California-Santa Barbara

"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

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Product Details

• Paperback: 248 pages
• Publisher: University of California Press (2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0520235428
• ISBN-13: 978-0520235427
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 5.9 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #85,593 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars best book I've read all year, July 9, 2003

By 

Molly (Santa Barbara) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Women without Class: Girls, Race, and Identity (Paperback)

"Women without Class" is a tour de force of exceptional scholarly research and keen social observation. Bettie does a tremendous job exploring how class operates in many powerful, yet subtle ways in the lives of young women in one California high school. She highlights the role of economics, but also addresses issues of race/ethnicity, gender, and sexuality. Through sustained, in-depth ethnographic research, Bettie illuminates the complex social dynamics of a community and brings the personalities, experiences and worries of these young women to life. The book is honest and sharp, reading almost like a novel. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in sociology, education, youth, race/ethnic relations, or gender.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great Read for those working with Teens, July 3, 2003

By A Customer

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Women without Class: Girls, Race, and Identity (Paperback)

As a person who works daily with young people both in and out of academic settings, I found this book gave a fresh perspective on how we view teenagers (both men and women) and the influence we have on their lives; especially those influences that are unconcious on our part. It changed the way I perceive my students and gave me new tools for communication. I also thought it was a terrific read; often dramatic and moving. I highly reccomend this book to anyone whose work or lives are connected with young people in America.

5.0 out of 5 stars Class Matters, July 10, 2009

By 

N. Tucker (Oklahoma) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Women without Class: Girls, Race, and Identity (Paperback)

This is a great ethnography for anyone interested in teaching and/or school administration. Should be required reading before anyone steps foot in the classroom! Teachers expectations and actions matter!

Julie Bettie (2003) conducted an ethnographic study about how high school girls experience class in the school, and how their experiences of class intersect with race and gender. Bettie presents a case that girls and women have often been ignored in studies of class, and that when girls are studied it is usually with a focus on their gender over all other parts of identity. Her study demonstrates how girls' experience of class influences how they experience gender and race, and vice versa. She does not seek to establish class as the primary aspect of one's identity, but rather to show how the social discourses of class, race, and gender interact with each other and the individual to shape our identity and understanding of the world. Bettie is particularly interested in how these discourses shape girls' educational experience and attainment.

Bettie outlines the recent scholarship and theoretical debates regarding class, gender, race, and education. Studies on class include the symbolic meaning of class and how these meanings inform our identity. Feminist theory incompletely recognizes women as subjects with class, making gender the primary analytical feature. This tendency within feminist scholarship hides the way class impacts women's experience of gender (and race and age), making class invisible in the scholarship. The ways class is hidden or invisible in scholarship is demonstrated through Bettie's analysis of the research and through her study.