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Ain 'T No Makin' It By Jay Macleod Analysis

985 Words4 Pages

Jay MacLeod’s book Ain’t No Making’ It is a treatise on social reproduction theory, that is, the ways in which class inequality is reproduced across generations, and is equally relevant and informative to understanding the cycle of poverty today as it was in 1987 when it was first published. The explanations of the life trajectories of the men studied in this book are especially important in light of the inflamed rhetoric and intense debate that characterize the interactions between the two distinct ideologies that have bifurcated the theorists of educational reform: Economically deterministic theories and the theories emphising the autonomy of the cultural level. Though the attempt of the author is to provide a perspective which allows for the simultaneous existence of the two theories. We will see that neither perspective can be said to be entirely endorsed by the conclusions found in Ain’t No Makin’ It. Building off previous scholarship of Bowles and Gintis, Bourdieu, Bernstein and Heath, Willis and Giroux, McLeod seeks to investigate the tension between personal agency and structural barriers to social mobility, or in his words, how “class based institutional mechanisms set limits on mobility, thereby ensuring social reproduction, while cultural innovations can be at once both functional and dysfunctional for …show more content…

Unlike the Hallway Hangers, the Brothers have higher aspirations for their future, aspirations that include finding stable employment and sustaining a middle class life style. Viewing ability and hard work as integral to educational and occupational attainment the Brothers committed themselves to school and engaged in extracurricular activities, rather than substance use. These differences in aspirations provided the foundation for MacLeod to fashion his own social reproduction

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Summary Of Ain 'T No Makin' It By Jay Macleod

1703 Words | 7 Pages

Then fifteen years later when MacLeod came back to interview the Brothers for the third time, he found many of the men to be achieving the same life as the Hallway Hangers. Some men were in and out of jail. Some of the Brothers were still in the Heights while others moved away. Most of the men had children and full time jobs and were making a good

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1241 Words | 5 Pages

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Summary Of Ain 'T No Makin' It By Jay Macleod

1422 Words | 6 Pages

Social mobility is within the grasp of each person so long as they earnestly invest themselves. There exists, however, a dissonance between the achievement ideology and reality as discussed in Jay Macleod’s Ain’t No Makin’ It. In his book, Macleod perfors a longitudinal study over a group of young black men, the Brothers, living in the projects of Clarendon Heights and reveals the insidious social factors that

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622 Words | 3 Pages

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1318 Words | 6 Pages

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515 Words | 3 Pages

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748 Words | 3 Pages

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738 Words | 3 Pages

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379 Words | 2 Pages

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272 Words | 2 Pages

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348 Words | 2 Pages

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721 Words | 3 Pages

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271 Words | 2 Pages

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1705 Words | 7 Pages

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