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DOI

Learning to Labour: How Working Class Kids Get Working Class Jobs

01 Dec 2011-Iss: 32, pp 5-8
About: The article was published on 2011-12-01 and is currently open access. It has received 1252 citations till now. The article focuses on the topics: Working class.
Citations
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Journal ArticleDOI
Rachel Yu Guo1
TL;DR: In contrast, labour studies on men have rarely considered their family inv... as mentioned in this paper, who have carefully examined how being daughters, wives, and mothers influences women's labour process, and how being a daughter, a wife, and a mother influenced women's labor process.
Abstract: Labour scholars have carefully examined how being daughters, wives, and mothers influences women’s labour process. In contrast, labour studies on men have rarely considered their family inv...

12 citations


Cites background from "Learning to Labour: How Working Cla..."

  • ...Willis (1977) made the indirect observation that working-class fathers passed knowledge of industrial labour and the associated working-class masculine pride to sons, which may help understand young male workers’ labour practices (see also Arnot, 2013; Kenway & Kraack, 2013)....

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Dissertation
01 Apr 2010
TL;DR: This article explored the everyday lives and dreams of young people living in urban poverty in Thailand, focusing on their practices and aspirations within three key spheres of action: social, cultural and economic, and argued that insufficient emphasis is placed on the unintended consequences that can ensue from everyday practice and the pursuit of dreams.
Abstract: This thesis explores the everyday lives and dreams of young people living in urban poverty in Thailand, focusing on their practices and aspirations within three key spheres of action. In recent years, a number of emerging bodies of literature have taken youth in the developing world as the objects of their analysis; the literature on youth in Thailand, studies of youth and development within the Thai and international spheres, and the new anthropology of youth each focus on the lives of young people – social, cultural and economic – and see youth as active agents in the creation of society, culture and the economy. This thesis, drawing on the analysis of ethnographic data, contends that each of these bodies of literature constructs young people in partial or misleading ways, and in particular that insufficient emphasis is placed on the unintended consequences that can ensue from everyday practice and the pursuit of dreams. It argues that if these emerging literatures on youth in the developing world are to adequately conceptualise and represent young people, then they must attend to these unintended consequences. As the thesis will demonstrate, doing so facilitates analysis of the ways in which different spheres of action affect each other, of the structures that constrain and enable young people, and of the way in which attempting to participate in dominant cultures can have profoundly counter-productive outcomes. The thesis also explores some of the methodological processes involved in immersion in, and withdrawal from, „the field‟. It argues that one of the tasks of social research is to bring out the multiple and shifting nature of interpretation, and to be explicit about the contexts in which such interpretations are produced.

12 citations


Cites background from "Learning to Labour: How Working Cla..."

  • ...…practices of the working classes are likely to be directed towards opposing dominant – middle class – culture, and that these result in „entrapping decisions in a sufficient number to grittingly meet the requirements of [capitalist] “structure” and so help to reproduce it‟ (Willis 1977, p.128)....

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  • ...Of particular interest for this thesis is the work of the Birmingham scholar Paul Willis, and specifically his (1977) ethnography of working class „lads‟ in a school setting, in which he utilises cultural reproduction theory to understand their „condemnation‟ into working class jobs....

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  • ...…theory, by challenging domination through producing oppositional cultures, working class people find themselves confirming the very inequality that subordinates them: „The very strength and success of this cultural production brings some profoundly reproductive consequences‟ (Willis 1977, p.130)....

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  • ...…children only went on to get working class jobs) because capitalist production required it to be so, some were dissatisfied with such structural determinism and the implied lack of agency; with the way in which „agency become[s] merely a reflex of structural determination‟ (Willis 1977, p.111)....

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  • ...However, they also wanted to be able to explain why, given that working class people are active social agents, they seem to „accept their unequal fates‟ (Willis 1977, p.120)....

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Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors highlighted that migration is an inherently uncertain process shaped by hopes and dreams, as well as feelings of fear and uncertainty, and highlighted that emotions within the studies of mobilities have been examined.

12 citations


Cites background from "Learning to Labour: How Working Cla..."

  • ...Echoing what Biao Xiang (2017) has termed an infrastructural ‘base’ for labour migration, vocational schools are specific sites of ‘learning to labour’ (Willis 1977) which involve the politics of subjectivation as well as the power of subject-making, a process in which the emotional aspects of…...

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References
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Book ChapterDOI
01 Jan 2010
TL;DR: The concept of community of practice was not born in the systems theory tradition as discussed by the authors, but it has its roots in attempts to develop accounts of the social nature of human learning inspired by anthropology and social theory.
Abstract: The concept of community of practice was not born in the systems theory tradition. It has its roots in attempts to develop accounts of the social nature of human learning inspired by anthropology and social theory (Lave, 1988; Bourdieu, 1977; Giddens, 1984; Foucault, 1980; Vygotsky, 1978). But the concept of community of practice is well aligned with the perspective of systems traditions. A community of practice itself can be viewed as a simple social system. And a complex social system can be viewed as constituted by interrelated communities of practice. In this essay I first explore the systemic nature of the concept at these two levels. Then I use this foundation to look at the applications of the concept, some of its main critiques, and its potential for developing a social discipline of learning.

1,082 citations

Book
27 Jun 2011
TL;DR: In this article, the Flatlands of Oakland and the Youth Control Complex are discussed. But the focus is on the role of black youth in the criminal justice system and community institutions.
Abstract: Preface Acknowledgments Part I Hypercriminalization 1 Dreams Deferred: The Patterns of Punishment in Oakland 2 The Flatlands of Oakland and the Youth Control Complex 3 The Labeling Hype: Coming of Age in the Era of Mass Incarceration 4 The Coupling of Criminal Justice and Community Institutions Part II Consequences 5 "Dummy Smart": Misrecognition, Acting Out, and "Going Dumb" 6 Proving Manhood: Masculinity as a Rehabilitative Tool 7 Guilty by Association: Acting White or Acting Lawful? Conclusion: Toward a Youth Support Complex Appendix: Beyond Jungle-Book Tropes Notes References Index About the Author

909 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The authors examines the transition to adulthood among 1.5-generation undocumented Latino young adults and finds that for them, the transition from K to adulthood involves exiting the legally protected status of K to...
Abstract: This article examines the transition to adulthood among 1.5-generation undocumented Latino young adults. For them, the transition to adulthood involves exiting the legally protected status of K to ...

663 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, student engagement research, policy, and practice must become more nuanced and less formulaic, and the ensuing review is structured accordingly, guided in part by social-ecological analysis and social-cultural theory.
Abstract: Student engagement research, policy, and practice are even more important in today’s race-to-the top policy environment. With a priority goal of postsecondary completion with advanced competence, today’s students must be engaged longer and more deeply. This need is especially salient for students attending schools located in segregated, high-poverty neighborhoods and isolated rural communities. Here, engagement research, policy, and practice must become more nuanced and less formulaic, and the ensuing review is structured accordingly. Guided in part by social-ecological analysis and social-cultural theory, engagement is conceptualized as a dynamic system of social and psychological constructs as well as a synergistic process. This conceptualization invites researchers, policymakers, and school-community leaders to develop improvement models that provide a more expansive, engagement-focused reach into students’ family, peer, and neighborhood ecologies.

528 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The Longitudinal Immigrant Student Adaptation Study (LISA) as discussed by the authors used a mixed-methods approach, combining longitudinal, interdisciplinary, qualitative, and quantitative approaches to document adaptation patterns of 407 recently arrived immigrant youth from Central America, China, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, and Mexico over the course of five years.
Abstract: Background/Context: Newcomer immigrant students are entering schools in the United States in unprecedented numbers. As they enter new school contexts, they face a number of challenges in their adjustment. Previous literature suggested that relationships in school play a particularly crucial role in promoting socially competent behavior in the classroom and in fostering academic engagement and school performance. Purpose: The aim of this study was to examine the role of school-based relationships in engagement and achievement in a population of newcomer immigrant students. Research Design: The Longitudinal Immigrant Student Adaptation Study (LISA) used a mixed-methods approach, combining longitudinal, interdisciplinary, qualitative, and quantitative approaches to document adaptation patterns of 407 recently arrived immigrant youth from Central America, China, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, and Mexico over the course of five years. Based on data from the last year of the study, we examine how the role of relationships mediates newcomers’ challenges with academic engagement and performance. We identify factors that account for patterns of academic engagement and achievement, including country of origin, gender, maternal education, English language proficiency, and school-based relationships. Findings: Multiple regression analyses suggest that supportive school-based relationships strongly contribute to both the academic engagement and the school performance of the par

356 citations