The tile of the book itself informs its readers that it is an interrogation of women as class ‘subjects.’ Although studies of class are not new in Sociology, Julie Bettie’s book is interesting because it looks at the intersection between class, race and gender in the sphere of education in terms of gestures and performance of ‘class’. She not only highlights the intersection between these three categories, but also looks at some unique factors that shape it, for instance, friendship, family background, eating habits, fashion sense and hairstyle. Her central argument is based on the idea that it is not class per se but ‘shared experience’ within class, race and gender that shapes one’s personality. For instance, she beautifully describes how a Mexican-American girl felt when she visited two of her white American friend’s houses. While one of the friend’s mother ‘made her feel poor’, the other was ‘simple and just like me’ (pp. 124). What this interaction shows is that it is not class per se, but class performance that distinguishes people from one another.
The thrust of her book is to look at class as a ‘lived cultural identity’ rather than consciousness and it is here that she makes a departure from traditional Marxist argument that regards consciousness as the most significant attribute of class.
Bettie argues that class cannot be studied in isolation. As her main interest is in understanding the process of ‘subject formation’ (pp. xiv), she explores how race and gender contribute to formation of class identity. The site that she chooses to study is the American school in a particular region called Waretown where her target group mostly included women. Her methods of research are mostly qualitative in nature, comprising of participant observation, interview and analysing conversations and terminologies used by the students, which results in a powerful ethnography.
This book can prove useful for students of various disciplines like Sociology, Social Anthropology, History, Gender Studies and Culture Studies.
Bettie’s book is an illustration of the feminist theories of intersectionality and at the same time, is also a critique of the concept of social mobility. She convincingly argues that gender of women is not constructed in opposition only to men, but also other women (pp. 5). The intersectionality between gender, race and class is evident in the perception of Mexican-American girls as overtly sexually active in spite of lack of any evidence to support it (pp. 64). Apart from highlighting intersectionality, Bettie also critiques the idea of mobility in social position as she argues that education was not the cure of poverty. The working class students all said that college education was unaffordable for them and anyway it was ‘not worth it’. There is also an unintentional coincide between race and education. While white students go to college, mixed race students generally enrol themselves in vocational courses (pp. 79). The subtle implication behind it is also that whites possess intelligence while other races rely on physical strength.
She also mentions methodological constraints of doing an ethnography based on such committed participation. Since she ‘hung out’ with both white and mixed race students, it was uncomfortable for her to mitigate territories as both parties sometimes saw her as a ‘trespasser.’ This difficulty in conducting fieldwork was brought into light by M. N. Srinivas in his book ‘The Remembered Village’ (1976) who had to deal with both ‘upper’ and ‘lower’ castes in the village of Rampura and how both groups viewed his role suspiciously (Srinivas, 1976).
She also faced a dilemma related to identity; her being white meant that her analysis could be questioned on the grounds of being racially insensitive.
Studies of caste is also grappled with this problem as there is a debate on who should study caste. While some scholars argue that the ‘upper’ caste depiction of ‘lower’ caste conditions are grossly inaccurate since they do not experience caste discrimination, others feel that there cannot be a direct relationship between experience and theorising (Guru and Sarukkai, 2012).
The interdisciplinary orientation of Bettie’s book coupled with its combination of theoretical and empirical balance makes it a worthy read. However, in some places the reader finds the language repetitive and heavily conceptually loaded. Nevertheless, her work furthers the discussion on intersectionality and social mobility.
References:
Guru, Gopal and Sundar Sarukkai. 2012. The Cracked Mirror: An Indian Debate on Experience and Theory. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.
Srinivas, M.N. 1976. The Remembered Village. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Bettie, Julie. 2014. Women Without Class: Girls, Race and Identity (With A New Introduction). California: University of California Press. 296 pp. Pb: £22.95. ISBN: 978-520-28001-4.
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Featured image (cropped) by Mirjana Veljovic (flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0)
