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Class Reunion
Noted scholar Lois Weis first visited the town of "Freeway" in her 1990 book, Working Class Without Work. In that book we met the students and teachers of Freeway's high school to understand how these working-class folks made sense of their lives. Now, fifteen years later, Weis has gone back to Freeway for Class Reunion. This time her focus is on the now grown-up students who are, for the most part, still working class and now struggling to survive the challenges of the global economy.
Class Reunion is a rare and valuable longitudinal ethnographic study that provides powerful, provocative insight into how the lives of these men and women have changed over the last two decades--and what their prospects might be for the future.
Class Reunion is a rare and valuable longitudinal ethnographic study that provides powerful, provocative insight into how the lives of these men and women have changed over the last two decades--and what their prospects might be for the future.
232 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2004
2 people are currently reading
34 people want to read
About the author
Lois Weis
41 books4 followersDr. Weis is author, co-author or editor of numerous books and articles that focus on race, class and gender in American schools.
Dr. Weis is Past President of the American Educational Studies Association and is on the editorial boards of several journals, including Educational Policy, International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education and Review of Educational Research.
Dr. Weis was awarded the rank of SUNY Distinguished Professor, the highest faculty rank in the State University of New York system. The award recognizes full professors of national or international prominence for outstanding achievement in research and scholarship. In addition, Weis and co-author Michelle Fine received the 2006 Critic Choice Award from the American Educational Studies Association for their book, Beyond Silenced Voices: Class, Race, and Gender in United States School.
Dr. Weis is Past President of the American Educational Studies Association and is on the editorial boards of several journals, including Educational Policy, International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education and Review of Educational Research.
Dr. Weis was awarded the rank of SUNY Distinguished Professor, the highest faculty rank in the State University of New York system. The award recognizes full professors of national or international prominence for outstanding achievement in research and scholarship. In addition, Weis and co-author Michelle Fine received the 2006 Critic Choice Award from the American Educational Studies Association for their book, Beyond Silenced Voices: Class, Race, and Gender in United States School.
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January 19, 2016
I hadn’t realised that this was going to be ‘part two’. And so somehow I have been lucky enough to have read Working Class Without Work before reading this, or of even knowing this one existed. This book involves Weis going back to Freeway 15 years after her previous research and seeking out many of the same kids she interviewed then, although, obviously enough, they are no longer kids. If I was surprised at anything it was that she didn’t seek to interview any of the teachers she had interviewed in 1990. I think that might also have been interesting, but then, in large part she had interviewed them so as to get a fuller understanding of the kids she was interviewing. All the same, how work had changed for them might, the changes in the education system since and also if there had been any recognisable changes in the kids they taught, would have been fascinating. It has been a turbulent time in the American education system, and these teachers, if any are still in the system, would have been through a lot. She also didn’t interview any of the parents this time around – although she makes the point that in some cases she was welcomed back into their homes virtually with a party. But the bit I found most disappointing, in a sense, is that she also didn’t interview any of the next generation of kids – although, admittedly, they were likely to still be too young to say anything necessarily worth hearing. Still, it would be particularly interesting to hear how the hopes and dreams of this current generation have changed compared to the hopes and dreams of the previous one.
All that said, this is still a remarkable book. I really like longitudinal research projects – I mean, I seriously love them. The television series 7 Up is the definitive case in point. It is like a soap opera except, well, it is real. And with the 7 Up series it has the added benefit of everyone being exactly 7 years older than I am – so, there is a kind of ‘shit, is that what’s up next for me?’ thing going on when I watch it too. The thing I really love about it, though, is that on one level it is a tale of class privilege playing itself out in slow motion. But on other levels it is too particular for that to be ‘all’ it is about. People are presented at seven with the cards that have been dealt to them, then in seven year increments we see both how they play those cards and also how the draw affects their hands in unpredictable and often surprising ways.
I think seven years is about the right length of time between iterations in these series, long enough for things to have changed, not so long for everything to have become impossible to remember in the details or for the details to have not been re-narrated into too coherent a story.
Diane Reay, according to one of the notes at the back of this, criticised the author for essentialising the racism of white working class males in her previous book. Reay said that you needed to remember that other classes are also racist and so constructing racism as mostly a white working class issue let these other classes and their different forms of racism (what Barry Humphries refers to in the Australian context as ‘genteel racism’). You need to know that I think Reay and Weis are almost gods – so, seeing how one responded to the other was something like hearing Mick Jagger talking about John Lennon – I know, I know, what have I become... All the same, what Weis does with this idea is strikingly interesting. She points out that the white boys in the study used black boys as a way to define the limits of acceptable behaviour, that is, they used black boys to define themselves, and therefore to define themselves as ‘not-black’. In this sense their racism as young men was intimately bound up with both their definition of their own identity and, perhaps more importantly, with their assertion of their own sexual identity in contrast to that of black boys. As she pointed out in her previous book, this simply form of racism was simply not the case with the white girls, at least, not in the sense of them using the foil of black boys to delimit their own identities. All the same, she makes the point that these white women, 15 years later, were much more racist than they had been. This is presented as being directly related to the fact that black and Arab families have increasingly moved into what had previously been almost exclusively white suburbs. Now these white women had become much more clearly racist, and racist, Weis claims, in part in response to this incursion. The point is made that America is defined much more than say, England, by its racial politics and therefore the ‘well, there goes the neighbourhood’ idea when other races move next door is much more keenly felt. All the same, the girls that has hardly been racist at all previously, had nearly, if not quite, caught up with the boys. The boys remained pretty well consistently racist throughout.
What is particularly interesting in relation to the women is the comparisons that are made between their hopes and dreams and how these ‘turned out’. Before they left school they were particularly keen to have some form of economic independence prior to getting married and having kids. There was only one girl in the high school sample who was going to do the whole ‘leave school, get married, have kids’ thing – and this, hardly surprisingly, didn’t quite work out as she’d hoped. The thing to say is that the girls were much more successful at becoming the women they had hoped they might become, than the boys proved at becoming the men they dreamed they might become. In large part this was because the girls had seen the world was changing and in large part, changing in ways that offered them some hope of a more independent life than was offered to their mothers. As many of the girls in high school had said, they really didn’t want to go from being bossed about by teachers and parents to being bossed about by a husband.
The power relationship implied here between the sexes plays out devastatingly badly for far too many of the women in this research. Too many of them end up in abusive relationships with men that are alcoholics and physically intimidating at best and dangerously violent at worst. The lack of working class jobs for these men, the sense that they had abandoned any hope that things might change and that they could see no future too often meant the only way they could assert their masculinity was in asserting their role as ‘head of the family’. However, given that the women often earned more than the men, these men could only assert their claims by an abuse of physical power rather than being able to rely on economic reality. What is particularly interesting is that these women often repeatedly found themselves in relationships with similar men. Weis’s explanation is that they have been brought up around such men all their lives and so it is these men that allow them to feel ‘comfortable’, at least, comfortable with in ways they simply are unable to feel with men from other social classes. These women ‘understand’ these men in ways they simply do not and can not understand other men. The tragedy here is that these life-long dispositions undermine other efforts the women make towards independence.
The men are not all losers – some of them have clearly turned their lives around and some have certainly ‘made good’. But this is much more rare than it is with the women. The women are the heroes in this tale, as they seek to succeed in a world where everything has been set up to ensure they fail, with these men often yet another of the hurdles they need to overcome.
One of the things that is made clear in this book, which is also true of The Unfinished Revolution and the two books co-written by Joanna Wyn, is that what has proven to be bad for the working class as a whole in the US especially the loss of jobs that paid living wages (read: jobs that allowed a male to support a family on their income alone) has provided women with opportunities and some chance of economic independence. Nonetheless, this has come at the cost of working class male pride, decreased ‘family’ income, and has also contributed to working class male violence, turned against these same women. I’m concerned I’m making all this sound far too arithmetical, you know, one plus two equals working mothers and wife-bashing. Still, I was surprised (and Weis also makes it clear that she is surprised too) by how frequent such family violence was clearly a part of the stories told here.
The casting aside of the American dream, even if it had long been a kind of myth anyway, has done much to shatter the lives of these people – particularly the males. It is terrifying how many of the men say things like, ‘god, I spent so much of my youth drunk or stoned – come to think of it, nothing has changed…’ The growing inequality in America, the ever-steeper Gini index, the ever-lower levels of social mobility, all have helped turn the American dream into a kind of nightmare. Such gross inequality associated with an ever more fixed caste system is something that is sometimes hidden behind the change that has occurred over the last three decades or so. That change, particularly for the working class, has been towards an increasingly precarious existence without security. Such has seen the working class often turn inward, particularly the white working class, as a way to reassert some sense of self-respect. This has lead to an increase in racism by this section of society, an increase in gendered violence and a crushing of the life expectations of a generation, particularly of working class males (although, it is important to remember this is a small sample study, from a very particular location, and so it is hard to generalise in quite the way I am here with abandon).
We live in interesting times. There is often an expectation that when the labour market changes that people’s definitions of what makes a good job change with it – that those who would have left school at 15 to become a machinist at one time will now stay on at school, understand the benefits of ‘working hard and getting a good education’ and so on. But such changes have to respond to the inertia that is social class, particularly the rites, expectations, beliefs and prejudices that help to define ones place within a social class. As Weis makes repeatedly clear, boys and girls alike realised things had changed while they were at school, that education increasingly was the only game in town – but both still saw this as something that could be ‘gotten around’ while they were at school – doing the absolute minimum (or rather, often not even that, copying from others when that was available). The difference is that too often for the males their working class identity blocked them from being able to go on after school and make a go of this new reality – something the girls were much more likely to achieve if only through persistence and bloody-mindedness.
This really is an interesting read – like I said, I’m a bit obsessed with longitudinal research and this has the advantage of Weis providing a coda explaining the challenges associated with this kind of research and benefits of this research presents. Does it get any better than this?
All that said, this is still a remarkable book. I really like longitudinal research projects – I mean, I seriously love them. The television series 7 Up is the definitive case in point. It is like a soap opera except, well, it is real. And with the 7 Up series it has the added benefit of everyone being exactly 7 years older than I am – so, there is a kind of ‘shit, is that what’s up next for me?’ thing going on when I watch it too. The thing I really love about it, though, is that on one level it is a tale of class privilege playing itself out in slow motion. But on other levels it is too particular for that to be ‘all’ it is about. People are presented at seven with the cards that have been dealt to them, then in seven year increments we see both how they play those cards and also how the draw affects their hands in unpredictable and often surprising ways.
I think seven years is about the right length of time between iterations in these series, long enough for things to have changed, not so long for everything to have become impossible to remember in the details or for the details to have not been re-narrated into too coherent a story.
Diane Reay, according to one of the notes at the back of this, criticised the author for essentialising the racism of white working class males in her previous book. Reay said that you needed to remember that other classes are also racist and so constructing racism as mostly a white working class issue let these other classes and their different forms of racism (what Barry Humphries refers to in the Australian context as ‘genteel racism’). You need to know that I think Reay and Weis are almost gods – so, seeing how one responded to the other was something like hearing Mick Jagger talking about John Lennon – I know, I know, what have I become... All the same, what Weis does with this idea is strikingly interesting. She points out that the white boys in the study used black boys as a way to define the limits of acceptable behaviour, that is, they used black boys to define themselves, and therefore to define themselves as ‘not-black’. In this sense their racism as young men was intimately bound up with both their definition of their own identity and, perhaps more importantly, with their assertion of their own sexual identity in contrast to that of black boys. As she pointed out in her previous book, this simply form of racism was simply not the case with the white girls, at least, not in the sense of them using the foil of black boys to delimit their own identities. All the same, she makes the point that these white women, 15 years later, were much more racist than they had been. This is presented as being directly related to the fact that black and Arab families have increasingly moved into what had previously been almost exclusively white suburbs. Now these white women had become much more clearly racist, and racist, Weis claims, in part in response to this incursion. The point is made that America is defined much more than say, England, by its racial politics and therefore the ‘well, there goes the neighbourhood’ idea when other races move next door is much more keenly felt. All the same, the girls that has hardly been racist at all previously, had nearly, if not quite, caught up with the boys. The boys remained pretty well consistently racist throughout.
What is particularly interesting in relation to the women is the comparisons that are made between their hopes and dreams and how these ‘turned out’. Before they left school they were particularly keen to have some form of economic independence prior to getting married and having kids. There was only one girl in the high school sample who was going to do the whole ‘leave school, get married, have kids’ thing – and this, hardly surprisingly, didn’t quite work out as she’d hoped. The thing to say is that the girls were much more successful at becoming the women they had hoped they might become, than the boys proved at becoming the men they dreamed they might become. In large part this was because the girls had seen the world was changing and in large part, changing in ways that offered them some hope of a more independent life than was offered to their mothers. As many of the girls in high school had said, they really didn’t want to go from being bossed about by teachers and parents to being bossed about by a husband.
The power relationship implied here between the sexes plays out devastatingly badly for far too many of the women in this research. Too many of them end up in abusive relationships with men that are alcoholics and physically intimidating at best and dangerously violent at worst. The lack of working class jobs for these men, the sense that they had abandoned any hope that things might change and that they could see no future too often meant the only way they could assert their masculinity was in asserting their role as ‘head of the family’. However, given that the women often earned more than the men, these men could only assert their claims by an abuse of physical power rather than being able to rely on economic reality. What is particularly interesting is that these women often repeatedly found themselves in relationships with similar men. Weis’s explanation is that they have been brought up around such men all their lives and so it is these men that allow them to feel ‘comfortable’, at least, comfortable with in ways they simply are unable to feel with men from other social classes. These women ‘understand’ these men in ways they simply do not and can not understand other men. The tragedy here is that these life-long dispositions undermine other efforts the women make towards independence.
The men are not all losers – some of them have clearly turned their lives around and some have certainly ‘made good’. But this is much more rare than it is with the women. The women are the heroes in this tale, as they seek to succeed in a world where everything has been set up to ensure they fail, with these men often yet another of the hurdles they need to overcome.
One of the things that is made clear in this book, which is also true of The Unfinished Revolution and the two books co-written by Joanna Wyn, is that what has proven to be bad for the working class as a whole in the US especially the loss of jobs that paid living wages (read: jobs that allowed a male to support a family on their income alone) has provided women with opportunities and some chance of economic independence. Nonetheless, this has come at the cost of working class male pride, decreased ‘family’ income, and has also contributed to working class male violence, turned against these same women. I’m concerned I’m making all this sound far too arithmetical, you know, one plus two equals working mothers and wife-bashing. Still, I was surprised (and Weis also makes it clear that she is surprised too) by how frequent such family violence was clearly a part of the stories told here.
The casting aside of the American dream, even if it had long been a kind of myth anyway, has done much to shatter the lives of these people – particularly the males. It is terrifying how many of the men say things like, ‘god, I spent so much of my youth drunk or stoned – come to think of it, nothing has changed…’ The growing inequality in America, the ever-steeper Gini index, the ever-lower levels of social mobility, all have helped turn the American dream into a kind of nightmare. Such gross inequality associated with an ever more fixed caste system is something that is sometimes hidden behind the change that has occurred over the last three decades or so. That change, particularly for the working class, has been towards an increasingly precarious existence without security. Such has seen the working class often turn inward, particularly the white working class, as a way to reassert some sense of self-respect. This has lead to an increase in racism by this section of society, an increase in gendered violence and a crushing of the life expectations of a generation, particularly of working class males (although, it is important to remember this is a small sample study, from a very particular location, and so it is hard to generalise in quite the way I am here with abandon).
We live in interesting times. There is often an expectation that when the labour market changes that people’s definitions of what makes a good job change with it – that those who would have left school at 15 to become a machinist at one time will now stay on at school, understand the benefits of ‘working hard and getting a good education’ and so on. But such changes have to respond to the inertia that is social class, particularly the rites, expectations, beliefs and prejudices that help to define ones place within a social class. As Weis makes repeatedly clear, boys and girls alike realised things had changed while they were at school, that education increasingly was the only game in town – but both still saw this as something that could be ‘gotten around’ while they were at school – doing the absolute minimum (or rather, often not even that, copying from others when that was available). The difference is that too often for the males their working class identity blocked them from being able to go on after school and make a go of this new reality – something the girls were much more likely to achieve if only through persistence and bloody-mindedness.
This really is an interesting read – like I said, I’m a bit obsessed with longitudinal research and this has the advantage of Weis providing a coda explaining the challenges associated with this kind of research and benefits of this research presents. Does it get any better than this?
December 8, 2023
In Lois Weis’s Class Reuinion:The Remaking of the American White Working Class (2004) she produces an intriguing contribution to the analysis of class dynamics and restructuring of the White American working class. This transformation began in the late twentieth century as neoliberal policies, expansion of globalization, surplus, and resource distribution had affected the economic landscape and leads to eventual de-industrialization of regions. Weis examines how this ripple of de-industrialization affected the identities and roles of White working-class women and men in the city Freeway. It is through her methods of interviews and a longitudinal ethnographic approach that she was able to assess two points in time for Freeway: in 1985 in which their largest manufacturing plant closed and once again in the early 2000’s when the city lost its industrial resources. She identifies how this impact takes the jobs from these small communities which in turn affects and challenges the patriarchal and hegemonic structures from a traditional ideology of industrialized American society. The result was the reshaping of identities and practices in daily life along with the reinforcing of cultural boundaries with the continuance of distancing themselves from the racial “other”, all to create a sense of social stability. Thus, the reconfiguring of the White working class in the late 1900’s and in turn of the century is lead to what Weis describes as a class reunion which creates a deep restructuring of economic and gender lines.
The first part of the book focused on interviews and experiences of the male and female Juniors of a Freeway high school and saw the different gendered and class viewpoints. For instance, the men in this study held onto the nostalgic notions of traditional patriarchal structures that gave them a sense of a self-fulfilled prophecy. This pertains to contradictions yet utilization of education, establishment of the nuclear family and become the sole breadwinner and provider with wives as their subordinates. Some women on the other hand did not find this social construct of family life ideal or even sustainable and sought for different alternatives and lifestyles which included education and independent careers in the work force. This realization of oppression and abuse of their parent’s marriages was recognized, and Women sought to find their own stability. Weis also recognized the social practices more frequent in young men than women in engaging in racist acts and differentiating from the racial “other” who sought to be a threat to their perceived inevitable success. These actions allowed to establish identity and social boundaries that either supported a past organizational structure, or to seek new opportunities in this global socioeconomic change.
The second part of the book jumps to 2001 and evaluates how these Freeway students restructured their daily lives. With her re-interviews of these adults formed their lives around racial, familial, financial, or job obligations Once again, gender differences in perceptions of ideal living have played a major role in how they pursued and settled for daily life. Women, and a few men, who once rejected the status quo and expectations, diverged and balanced the expected roles of wage-earner, family mediator, and used labor and education for social mobilization. For the rest of the men however, they had a mix of pursuit in which some experienced settled or hard-living. Attempting to achieve stability through hegemonic masculinity proved to be harmful as many did not have an abundance of job opportunities and needed dual wages and familial assistance. This resulted of men facing the reality of needing a two-wage earning rather than a sole breadwinner and to embrace both mental labor and gender convergence to achieve a new standard of living. She also discusses the conscious and unconscious ways White men and women reconfigure social locations to adapt to an ever-changing society.
One of the book's strengths is providing an in-depth analysis of the shifting identities and realities of the changing global economy and its impacts on working-class communities. She examines how the intersections of class, gender, and income are impacted with socioeconomic reform. It can bring a clear display of the type of “restructuring” she brings forth the importance of Bourdieu's conception of habitus (Weis, 2004, p. 12). Over time and space, the habitus is challenged by external forces that results in new social spaces, practices, and configuration of class. It brings into account to Crenshaw’s literature on intersectionality, in which in which social categories are intertwined with the political, social spheres that allow for certain benefits to assist some while others are marginalized and oppressed (Al-Faham, 2019, p.249). In addition, her longitudinal ethnography presents how class identities are fluid within a new neoliberal economy and world order that have contradictive patriarchal connections. Connell’s interpretation of hegemonic masculinity which often forms an ideal version of manhood, affects boys and men achieving such unrealistic goals in addition to positioning women in a subordinate role. (1987, p. 183). She also discusses how adolescents experience modal cultural forms in early life as well (Weis, 2004 p.36). This reminds me how “Children create and participate in their own unique peer cultures by creatively taking or appropriating information from the adult world to address their own peer concerns...children are not simply internalizing society and culture but are actively contributing to cultural production and change” (Corsaro, 2017, p.17). It presented that the White, heteronormative organization that seemed to be in favor for these young men was just an illusion to the subjective reality of external and social forces that restricts stable living.
Subsequently there are some limitations within Weis’s work. She discusses that longitudinal ethnography is an efficient way to examine youth and their identities over time yet unfortunately omit the African Americans students of Freeway students in the study. Although difficult to find the narrators after fifteen years, further investigating the difficulty of finding and possibly interviewing them would have brought more insightful of the producing, sustaining, or reaction of social boundaries or connections over time. Weiss also brings up the influence of neoliberalism and global trade yet does not further examine the continuing social problems that working class woman continue to face. She brings up the shift in domestic labor and opportunities in the labor force, she does not fully discuss the double-shift in which single or coupled women may face when seeking social stability (Hochschild and Machung,1989). Even though Women are still given socioeconomic opportunities, their social needs are still challenged within the patriarchal and hierarchal social structure. There are inequalities that women face during these times of neoliberal policies after the 1970’s altered women’s responsibility of both occupational and domestic labor, along with possibility of single parenthood from divorce or widowhood. As she discusses briefly with the girls of Freeway about divorce, I wish she could go in more in depth of the high divorce rate as it contradicts the Domestic Code. Ever since divorce reform in the late 1960’s and in 1970, the US has seen the divorce reform which allowed women the opportunity to leave unsatisfied marriages leading to an increase in separation, reaching its highest peak in the 1980’s (Schweizer,2020). With this in mind, her book touches on the implication of neoliberalism but does not critique its mode of production under capitalism, which is the main driving force for this deindustrialization and reconfiguration of class and social borders. Although neoliberalism expanded new paths in development, it has not always been the primary mode of production and its repercussions on societies are also impactful on the daily lives of the population.
Overall, Weis presents in her book a powerful piece of literature regarding class identities and social boundaries enacted within American society. Class Reunion exhibits that the economic landscape will always have its impact on power relations that influences our actions and lives. In turn how we socialize with future generations and predecessors that are impacted by the destabilization of the old world and into changing demographics is vital. Her longitudinal ethnographic approach is critical yet considerate in examining the intersections of economic positioning, family, education, and races of the lives altered from the White hegemony that has dissipated but fights to reclaim power.
References
Al-Faham, H., Davis, A. M., & Ernst, R. (2019). Intersectionality: From theory to practice. Annual Review of Law and Social Science, 15(1), 247-265. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-lawso...
Connell, R. 1987. Gender and Power: Society, the Person, and Sexual Politics. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Hochschild, A. R., & Machung, A. (1989). The second shift: Working parents and the revolution at home. Viking.
Schweizer, V. J. (2020). Divorce: More than a century of change, 1900-2018. Family Profiles, FP-20-22. Bowling Green, OH: National Center for Family & Marriage Research. https://doi.org/10.25035/ncfmr/fp-20-22
Weis, L. (2004). Class reunion: The remaking of the American white working class. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203311578
The first part of the book focused on interviews and experiences of the male and female Juniors of a Freeway high school and saw the different gendered and class viewpoints. For instance, the men in this study held onto the nostalgic notions of traditional patriarchal structures that gave them a sense of a self-fulfilled prophecy. This pertains to contradictions yet utilization of education, establishment of the nuclear family and become the sole breadwinner and provider with wives as their subordinates. Some women on the other hand did not find this social construct of family life ideal or even sustainable and sought for different alternatives and lifestyles which included education and independent careers in the work force. This realization of oppression and abuse of their parent’s marriages was recognized, and Women sought to find their own stability. Weis also recognized the social practices more frequent in young men than women in engaging in racist acts and differentiating from the racial “other” who sought to be a threat to their perceived inevitable success. These actions allowed to establish identity and social boundaries that either supported a past organizational structure, or to seek new opportunities in this global socioeconomic change.
The second part of the book jumps to 2001 and evaluates how these Freeway students restructured their daily lives. With her re-interviews of these adults formed their lives around racial, familial, financial, or job obligations Once again, gender differences in perceptions of ideal living have played a major role in how they pursued and settled for daily life. Women, and a few men, who once rejected the status quo and expectations, diverged and balanced the expected roles of wage-earner, family mediator, and used labor and education for social mobilization. For the rest of the men however, they had a mix of pursuit in which some experienced settled or hard-living. Attempting to achieve stability through hegemonic masculinity proved to be harmful as many did not have an abundance of job opportunities and needed dual wages and familial assistance. This resulted of men facing the reality of needing a two-wage earning rather than a sole breadwinner and to embrace both mental labor and gender convergence to achieve a new standard of living. She also discusses the conscious and unconscious ways White men and women reconfigure social locations to adapt to an ever-changing society.
One of the book's strengths is providing an in-depth analysis of the shifting identities and realities of the changing global economy and its impacts on working-class communities. She examines how the intersections of class, gender, and income are impacted with socioeconomic reform. It can bring a clear display of the type of “restructuring” she brings forth the importance of Bourdieu's conception of habitus (Weis, 2004, p. 12). Over time and space, the habitus is challenged by external forces that results in new social spaces, practices, and configuration of class. It brings into account to Crenshaw’s literature on intersectionality, in which in which social categories are intertwined with the political, social spheres that allow for certain benefits to assist some while others are marginalized and oppressed (Al-Faham, 2019, p.249). In addition, her longitudinal ethnography presents how class identities are fluid within a new neoliberal economy and world order that have contradictive patriarchal connections. Connell’s interpretation of hegemonic masculinity which often forms an ideal version of manhood, affects boys and men achieving such unrealistic goals in addition to positioning women in a subordinate role. (1987, p. 183). She also discusses how adolescents experience modal cultural forms in early life as well (Weis, 2004 p.36). This reminds me how “Children create and participate in their own unique peer cultures by creatively taking or appropriating information from the adult world to address their own peer concerns...children are not simply internalizing society and culture but are actively contributing to cultural production and change” (Corsaro, 2017, p.17). It presented that the White, heteronormative organization that seemed to be in favor for these young men was just an illusion to the subjective reality of external and social forces that restricts stable living.
Subsequently there are some limitations within Weis’s work. She discusses that longitudinal ethnography is an efficient way to examine youth and their identities over time yet unfortunately omit the African Americans students of Freeway students in the study. Although difficult to find the narrators after fifteen years, further investigating the difficulty of finding and possibly interviewing them would have brought more insightful of the producing, sustaining, or reaction of social boundaries or connections over time. Weiss also brings up the influence of neoliberalism and global trade yet does not further examine the continuing social problems that working class woman continue to face. She brings up the shift in domestic labor and opportunities in the labor force, she does not fully discuss the double-shift in which single or coupled women may face when seeking social stability (Hochschild and Machung,1989). Even though Women are still given socioeconomic opportunities, their social needs are still challenged within the patriarchal and hierarchal social structure. There are inequalities that women face during these times of neoliberal policies after the 1970’s altered women’s responsibility of both occupational and domestic labor, along with possibility of single parenthood from divorce or widowhood. As she discusses briefly with the girls of Freeway about divorce, I wish she could go in more in depth of the high divorce rate as it contradicts the Domestic Code. Ever since divorce reform in the late 1960’s and in 1970, the US has seen the divorce reform which allowed women the opportunity to leave unsatisfied marriages leading to an increase in separation, reaching its highest peak in the 1980’s (Schweizer,2020). With this in mind, her book touches on the implication of neoliberalism but does not critique its mode of production under capitalism, which is the main driving force for this deindustrialization and reconfiguration of class and social borders. Although neoliberalism expanded new paths in development, it has not always been the primary mode of production and its repercussions on societies are also impactful on the daily lives of the population.
Overall, Weis presents in her book a powerful piece of literature regarding class identities and social boundaries enacted within American society. Class Reunion exhibits that the economic landscape will always have its impact on power relations that influences our actions and lives. In turn how we socialize with future generations and predecessors that are impacted by the destabilization of the old world and into changing demographics is vital. Her longitudinal ethnographic approach is critical yet considerate in examining the intersections of economic positioning, family, education, and races of the lives altered from the White hegemony that has dissipated but fights to reclaim power.
References
Al-Faham, H., Davis, A. M., & Ernst, R. (2019). Intersectionality: From theory to practice. Annual Review of Law and Social Science, 15(1), 247-265. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-lawso...
Connell, R. 1987. Gender and Power: Society, the Person, and Sexual Politics. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Hochschild, A. R., & Machung, A. (1989). The second shift: Working parents and the revolution at home. Viking.
Schweizer, V. J. (2020). Divorce: More than a century of change, 1900-2018. Family Profiles, FP-20-22. Bowling Green, OH: National Center for Family & Marriage Research. https://doi.org/10.25035/ncfmr/fp-20-22
Weis, L. (2004). Class reunion: The remaking of the American white working class. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203311578
May 4, 2022
Weis presented the narratives of white working-class people and analyzed how economics and societal changes affected their lives. Weis highlights the gender, racial, and authoritative tensions that these people experienced under capitalism during a time when the system was transforming. Under capitalism, one’s class determines their experiences.
Weis discussed how gender played an important role in how men and women navigated society. Many of the men attempted to exemplify working-class attitudes of masculinity which lead to them having strong resentments toward authority and those who they saw as upholders of authority. To challenge authority some of the boys skipped class only did the bare minimum in regards to school work and participated in school as little as possible. Many of the women who were interviewed shared the same sentiment of wanting to put off marriage and children in favor of going to college.
Another thing I found very interesting was the racialized sentiments these people expressed. There is a long history of white working-class people, men especially, being pitted against those who are racialized as minorities. Many issues that are caused by the system and capitalism become twisted and the blame that should be targeted at the system is unjustly redirected at minorities. Weis analyzed how this plays out among men and women differently. For the boys, racial antagonisms started when they were young and manufactured in the form of physical violence and the usage of slurs. The women displayed more racialized prejudices when they became mothers.
What Weis demonstrated with this book was how capitalism perpetrates violence through economics and reinforces this violence through patriarchy and racism. Our system puts whiteness and men in the top position in our hierarchical structure and when anyone threatens this structure those who benefit from it feel as if an attack on the system is an attack against them. Weis wrote that the white male identity was defined by controlling women and minorities. With women and minorities seeking equal rights and demanding the right to explore societal paths that had previously been confined to only white men, this put them in a rivalry against each other. The system has made white men blame women and minorities for their disenfranchisement however it is capitalism that is responsible for the dispossession of the entire labor class.
Weis discussed how gender played an important role in how men and women navigated society. Many of the men attempted to exemplify working-class attitudes of masculinity which lead to them having strong resentments toward authority and those who they saw as upholders of authority. To challenge authority some of the boys skipped class only did the bare minimum in regards to school work and participated in school as little as possible. Many of the women who were interviewed shared the same sentiment of wanting to put off marriage and children in favor of going to college.
Another thing I found very interesting was the racialized sentiments these people expressed. There is a long history of white working-class people, men especially, being pitted against those who are racialized as minorities. Many issues that are caused by the system and capitalism become twisted and the blame that should be targeted at the system is unjustly redirected at minorities. Weis analyzed how this plays out among men and women differently. For the boys, racial antagonisms started when they were young and manufactured in the form of physical violence and the usage of slurs. The women displayed more racialized prejudices when they became mothers.
What Weis demonstrated with this book was how capitalism perpetrates violence through economics and reinforces this violence through patriarchy and racism. Our system puts whiteness and men in the top position in our hierarchical structure and when anyone threatens this structure those who benefit from it feel as if an attack on the system is an attack against them. Weis wrote that the white male identity was defined by controlling women and minorities. With women and minorities seeking equal rights and demanding the right to explore societal paths that had previously been confined to only white men, this put them in a rivalry against each other. The system has made white men blame women and minorities for their disenfranchisement however it is capitalism that is responsible for the dispossession of the entire labor class.
November 12, 2014
Not the most interesting ethnography I've ever read.
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