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Formations of Class & Gender: Becoming Respectable
Bev Skeggs
€ 65.21
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Description for Formations of Class & Gender: Becoming Respectable
Paperback. 'A sophisticated and passionately written account of the classed and gendered identities of a small group of working-class white women who live in the north-west of England. It is ethnography at its best, having been built on long-term, thoughtful engagements in the field' - Gender and Education Series: Published in Association with Theory, Culture & Society. Num Pages: 200 pages, black & white illustrations. BIC Classification: JFSJ1. Category: (P) Professional & Vocational; (U) Tertiary Education (US: College). Dimension: 234 x 158 x 11. Weight in Grams: 322.
Explanations of how identities are constructed are fundamental to contemporary debates in feminism and in cultural and social theory. Formations of Class & Gender demonstrates why class should be featured more prominently in theoretical accounts of gender, identity and power.
Beverley Skeggs identifies the neglect of class, and shows how class and gender must be fused together to produce an accurate representation of power relations in modern society. The book questions how theoretical frameworks are generated for understanding how women live and produce themselves through social and cultural relations. It uses detailed ethnographic research to explain how ′real′ women inhabit and occupy the social and cultural positions of class, femininity and sexuality.
As a critical examination of cultural representation - informed by recent feminist theory and the work of Pierre Bourdieu - the book is an articulate demonstration of how to translate theory into practice.
Beverley Skeggs identifies the neglect of class, and shows how class and gender must be fused together to produce an accurate representation of power relations in modern society. The book questions how theoretical frameworks are generated for understanding how women live and produce themselves through social and cultural relations. It uses detailed ethnographic research to explain how ′real′ women inhabit and occupy the social and cultural positions of class, femininity and sexuality.
As a critical examination of cultural representation - informed by recent feminist theory and the work of Pierre Bourdieu - the book is an articulate demonstration of how to translate theory into practice.
Product Details
Publisher
SAGE Publications Inc
Number of pages
200
Format
Paperback
Publication date
1997
Series
Published in Association with Theory, Culture & Society
Condition
New
Number of Pages
200
Place of Publication
Thousand Oaks, United States
ISBN
9780761955122
SKU
V9780761955122
Shipping Time
Usually ships in 4 to 8 working days
Ref
99-2
About Bev Skeggs
Beverley Skeggs is Distinguished Professor of Sociology at Lancaster University. She has published The Media; Issues in Sociology; Feminist Cultural Theory; Formations of Class and Gender; Class, Self, Culture Sexuality and the Politics of Violence and Safety (with Les Moran) and Feminism after Bourdieu (with Lisa Adkins), and with Helen Wood, Reacting to Reality TV: Audience, Performance, Value and Reality TV and Class, along with many journal articles on class and culture. As an ESRC Professorial Fellow she developed a “sociology of values and value’’ that included projects on the digital economy and prosperity theology, and whilst Director of the Atlantic Fellows Programme, established the ‘Global Economies of Care’ theme at the LSE.
Reviews for Formations of Class & Gender: Becoming Respectable
This book is brilliant. Formations of Class and Gender is a sophisticated and passionately written account of the classed and gendered identities of a small group of working-class white women who live in the north-west of England. It is ethnography at its best, having been built on long-term, thoughtful engagements in the field. When Beverly Skeggs met these women they were all students on a variety of ′caring′ courses at a further education college. More than eleven years later, the production of this text testifies to the quality of theoretical analysis which can be produced if only those who fund research or press for lists of publications were willing to acknowledge that leading edge work normally requires real time. The text is concerned with the production of cultural and social relations and is located within an analytical framework which draws on the work of Bourdieu... Overall the text is a robust piece of writing which I have already recommended as required reading to my research students.
Gender and Education Skegg′s Bourdieu-influenced account of British cultures of class provides a useful empirical corrective to the more grandiose theorizing within recent cultural studies, underscoring not just the economic but the cultural and attitudinal gulf between working-class individuals and the left/feminist intellectuals who claim to be their allies. For this reason alone, it should be required reading.
International Journal of Cultural Studies In a discipline that boasts a high division of labour, this book goes a long way in dismantling the futile divide between class theory and feminism. It is an articulate and impassioned ethnography, fuelled by an anger of inequality but also an anger at those who are reluctant to challenge it. At a time when sociologists seem less concerned with the tangible and more interested in the abstract, Skeggs shows how these can be used productively together; theory becomes a means to an end rather than an end in itself... This book really deserves to be read and taken seriously. It is a good example of responsible research which seeks to bring out the pains and humour of working- class life and the ways in which people negotiate their environments... But the greatest achievement of this book is that it gives a voice to a group of women in the hope that they can ′...no longer be ignored, made invisible, deconstructed to irrelevance, dismissed as part of a redundant concept, or pathologized as just another "social problem"′ (168). In our present political climate, what work could be more important than that?
Paul Johnson
Gender and Education Skegg′s Bourdieu-influenced account of British cultures of class provides a useful empirical corrective to the more grandiose theorizing within recent cultural studies, underscoring not just the economic but the cultural and attitudinal gulf between working-class individuals and the left/feminist intellectuals who claim to be their allies. For this reason alone, it should be required reading.
International Journal of Cultural Studies In a discipline that boasts a high division of labour, this book goes a long way in dismantling the futile divide between class theory and feminism. It is an articulate and impassioned ethnography, fuelled by an anger of inequality but also an anger at those who are reluctant to challenge it. At a time when sociologists seem less concerned with the tangible and more interested in the abstract, Skeggs shows how these can be used productively together; theory becomes a means to an end rather than an end in itself... This book really deserves to be read and taken seriously. It is a good example of responsible research which seeks to bring out the pains and humour of working- class life and the ways in which people negotiate their environments... But the greatest achievement of this book is that it gives a voice to a group of women in the hope that they can ′...no longer be ignored, made invisible, deconstructed to irrelevance, dismissed as part of a redundant concept, or pathologized as just another "social problem"′ (168). In our present political climate, what work could be more important than that?
Paul Johnson