Learning to Labor: How Working-Class Kids Get Working-Class Jobs / Edition 1

by Paul Willis, Stanley Aronowitz

Overview

Hailed by the New Society as the "best book on male working class youth," this classic work, first published in 1977, has been translated into several foreign languages and remains the authority in ethnographical studies.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780231053570
Publisher:	Columbia University Press
Publication date:	12/22/1981
Series:	Morningside Bks.
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	240
Product dimensions:	8.10(w) x 5.30(h) x (d)
Lexile:	1370L (what's this?)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Paul Willis is Research Fellow at the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies, Birmingham University.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction
Part 1. Ethnography
2. Elements of a Culture
3. Class and Institutional Form of a Culture
4. Labour Power, Culture, Class, and Institution
Part II. Analysis
5. Penetrations
6. Limitations
7. The Role of Ideology
8. Notes Towards a Theory of Cultural Forms and Social Reproduction
9. Monday Morning and the Millennium

What People are Saying About This

New Society - David H. Hargreaves

A remarkable achievement...the best book on male working class youth since Whyte's Street Corner Society [1943].

David H. Hargreaves

A remarkable achievement...the best book on male working class youth since Whyte's Street Corner Society [1943].

— New Society

Stanley Aranowitz

The unique contribution of this book is that it shows, with glittering clarity, how the rebellion of poor and working class kids against school authority prepares them for working class jobs.No American interested in education or in labor can afford not to read and study this book carefully.

Editorial Reviews

In the outpouring of books on education in the last decade, none has been more important than Paul Willis's Learning to Labor. The unique contribution of this book is that it shows, with glittering clarity, how the rebellion of poor and working class kids against school authority prepares them for working class jobs. No American interested in education or in labor can afford not to read and study this book carefully.

Stanley Aronowitz

A remarkable achievement...the best book on male working class youth since Whyte's Street Corner Society [1943].

New Society - David H. Hargreaves

The unique contribution of this book is that it shows, with glittering clarity, how the rebellion of poor and working class kids against school authority prepares them for working class jobs.No American interested in education or in labor can afford not to read and study this book carefully.

Stanley Aranowitz

Offers new empirical grounding for a theory of culturally based resistance.

Theory and Society - Ron Eyerman

An important contribution to the study of class, culture, schooling, and social reproduction.

Contemporary Sociology - Philip Wexler

Willis' approach has had a profound effect on Marxist analyses within the sociology of education.

British Journal of Sociology of Education - Liz Gordon

One of the most enduring analyses of resistance to schooling.

British Journal of Sociology of Education - Mark McFadden and Geoff Munns

It would be difficult to overstate the influence of Learning to Labor. It has been widely cited as a foundational text in contemporary ethnography, cultural studies, sociology, and critical theory.

Review of Educational Research - Ken McGrew

A much broader contribution to a Marxist theory of culture and cultural reproduction, and to issues surrounding the relation between capitalism and patriarchy

The Insurgent Sociologist - Amy Wharton

The value of this book is in the flexibility of cultural examinations and the subtle nature of schooling… Investigations of other socioeconomic trade-offs in schools and job settings will profit greatly from this book.

Comparative Education Review - Edgar Litt