ABSTRACT
Noteworthy ethnographic work has been conducted which both elicits working-class culture and identity (Lamont, 2000; Kefalas, 2003; Halle, 1984; Bensman & Lynch, 1987; Rubin, 1976; Elder, 1974) and describes and theorizes the production of this identity in relation to schools (Willis, 1977; Everhart, 1983; London, 1978; Valli, 1986; Anyon, 1981; Gaskell, 1992; Finn, 1999). Such discussion of the working class, and of social class in general, however, has been tempered, if not altogether ignored, since the 1980s, as scholarship targeted more specifically to issues of race and/or gender, as well as broader issues of representation, has taken hold. Such scholarship, while critically important, has often delved into issues of race, gender, and/or representations irrespective of a distinct social class referent, much as earlier scholarship on social class ignored gender and race-a point which critical race theorists (McCarthy, 1990, 1993; Kelley, 1994; Marable, 1997), theorists of “whiteness” production (Giroux, 1997; McLaren, 1994; Kincheloe, Steinberg, Rodriguez, and Chennault, 1998; Fine, Weis, Powell and Wong, 1997, Fine, Weis, Pruitt, and Burns, 2004), and feminist theorists across race and ethnicity have commented upon at length (Crenshaw, 1989; Lather, 1991; Spelman, 1988; Mullings, 1997; Roman and Christian-Smith, 1988).
