This article is part of a larger ethnographic and ethnohistorical project on social class in the US, as tracked through the lives of my own high school graduating class, the Class of `58 of Weequahic High School in Newark, New Jersey. In this article I focus on the underlying logic of high school social/prestige categories, and on the durability of those categories over the course of the 20th century. I argue for the centrality of both social class and what Americans call `personality' in the production and reproduction of those categories. I go on to suggest that the durability of the high school social categories may be explained by the fact that their underlying logic is nothing other than the logic of hegemonic `American culture' as a whole.
Althusser, Louis
(1969) `Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses: Notes Toward an Investigation', in Louis Althusser, Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays pp. 129-186. London: New Left Review Editions.
2.
Applebome, Peter
(1999) `Two Words behind the Massacre', The New York Times: 2May, p. 1.
3.
Baraka, Amiri
(1997 [1984]) The Autobiography of Leroi Jones. Chicago, IL: Lawrence Hill Books.
4.
Baritz, Loren
(1982) The Good Life: The Meaning of Success for the American Middle Class. New York: Harper & Row.
5.
Bellah, Robert N.
, Richard Madsen, William M. Sullivan, Ann Swidler and Steven M. Tipton (1996 [1985]) Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life. Berkeley: University of California Press.
6.
Bettie, Julie
(2000) `Women without Class: Chicas, Cholas, Trash and the Presence/Absence of Class Identity', Signs26(1): 1-35.
7.
Bourdieu, Pierre
(1978) Outline of a Theory of Practice. Trans. Richard Nice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
8.
Bourdieu, Pierre
(1984) Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste. Trans. Richard Nice. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
9.
Bourdieu, Pierre
(1990) The Logic of Practice. Trans. Richard Nice. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
10.
Canaan, Joyce
(1986) `Why a “Slut” is a “Slut”: Cautionary Tales of Middleclass Teenage Girls' Morality', in H. Varenne (ed.) Symbolizing America pp. 184-208. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.
11.
Chang, Heewon
(1992) Adolescent Life and Ethos: An Ethnography of a US High School. London and Washington, DC: The Falmer Press.
12.
Coleman, James S.
(1961) The Adolescent Society: The Social Life of the Teenager and its Impact on Education. New York: The Free Press.
13.
Cookson, Jr.
, Peter W. and Caroline Hodges Persell (1985) Preparing for Power: America's Elite Boarding Schools. New York: Basic Books.
14.
Cousins, Linwood H. (1994) `Community High: The Complexity of Race and Social Class in a Black Urban High School'. PhD Dissertation, Department of Anthropology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.
15.
DeMott, Benjamin
(1990) The Imperial Middle: Why Americans Can't Think Straight about Class. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
16.
Denby, David
(1999) `High School Confidential', The New Yorker: 31May, pp. 94-98.
17.
Eckert, Penelope
(1989) Jocks and Burnouts: Social Categories and Identity in the High School. New York: Teachers College Press.
18.
Ehrenreich, Barbara
and John Ehrenreich (1979 [1977]) `The Professional-Managerial Class', in Pat Walker (ed.) Between Labour and Capital, pp. 5-45. Hassocks, Sussex: The Harvester Press.
19.
Fass, Paula
(1977) The Damned and the Beautiful: American Youth in the 1920s. New York: Oxford University Press.
20.
Foley, Douglas E.
(1990) Learning Capitalist Culture: Deep in the Heart of Texas. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
21.
Gordon, C. Wayne
(1957) The Social System of the High School: A Study in the Sociology of Adolescence. Glencoe, IL: Free Press.
22.
Graebner, William
(1990) Coming of Age in Buffalo: Youth and Authority in the Postwar Era. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press.
23.
Halberstam, David
(1993) The Fifties. New York: Fawcett Columbine.
24.
Henry, Jules
(1965 [1963]) `Rome High School and its Students', in Jules Henry, Culture Against Man. New York: Vintage Books.
25.
Hine, Thomas
(1986) Populuxe. New York: MJF Books.
26.
Hollingshead, August B.
(1949) Elmtown's Youth: The Impact of Social Classes on Adolescents. New York: John Wiley and Sons.
27.
Ikeda, Keiko
(1998) A Room Full of Mirrors: High School Reunions in Middle America. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
28.
Jezer, Marty
(1982) The Dark Ages: Life in the United States, 1945-1960. Boston, MA: South End Press.
29.
Kraft, Herbert C.
(1986) The Lenape: Archaeology, History and Ethnography. Newark, NJ: New Jersey Historical Society.
30.
Lefkowitz, Bernard
(1998) Our Guys: The Glen Ridge Rape and the Secret Life of the Perfect Suburb. New York: Vintage Books.
31.
Lévi-Strauss, Claude
(1966) The Savage Mind. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
32.
Newman, Katherine S.
(1993) Declining Fortunes: The Withering of the American Dream. New York: Basic Books.
33.
O'Neill, William L.
(1986) American High: The Years of Confidence, 1945-1960. New York: The Free Press.
34.
Ortner, Sherry B.
(1997) `Fieldwork in the Post-Community', Anthropology and Humanism27(1): 61-80.
35.
Ortner, Sherry B.
(1998) `Identities: The Hidden Life of Class', Journal of Anthropological Research54(1): 1-17.
36.
Ortner, Sherry B. (n.d.a.) Weequahic High: Capital, Culture and the Class of '58. In preparation.
37.
Ortner, Sherry B. (n.d.b.) `Subjects and Capital: A Fragment of a Documentary Ethnography', forthcoming in Ethnos.
38.
Palonsky, Stuart B.
(1975) `Hempies and Squeaks, Truckers and Cruisers - A Participant Observer Study in a City High School', Educational Administration Quarterly11(2): 86-103.
39.
Parsons, Talcott
(1959) `The School Class as a Social System: Some of its Functions in American Society', Harvard Educational Review29(4): 297-318.
40.
Plotnicov, Leonard
(ed.) (1990) American Culture: Essays on the Familiar and Unfamiliar. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press.
41.
Potter, David Morris
(1954) People of Plenty: Economic Abundance and the American Character. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
42.
Quindlen, Anna
(2001) `Watching the World Go By', Newsweek137(9): 26 Feb., p. 74.
43.
Reynolds, Charles H.
and Ralph V. Norman (eds) (1988) Community in America: The Challenge of Habits of the Heart. Berkeley: University of California Press.
44.
Roth, Philip
(1960) Goodbye Columbus and Five Short Stories. New York: Meridian Books.
45.
Roth, Philip
(1967) Portnoy's Complaint. New York: Random House.
46.
Roth, Philip
(1993) Operation Shylock. New York: Simon & Schuster.
47.
Samuelson, Robert J.
(1995) The Good Life and its Discontents: The American Dream in the Age of Entitlement, 1945-1995. New York: Times Books/Random House.
48.
Schwartz, Gary
and Don Merten (1967) `The Language of Adolescence: An Anthropological Approach to the Youth Culture', American Journal of Sociology72(5): 453-468.
49.
Schwartz, Gary
and Don Merten (1975) `Social Identity and Expressive Symbols', in J. Spradley and M. Rynkiewich (eds) The Nacirema: Readings on American Culture, pp. 195-211. Boston, MA: Little, Brown.
50.
Sennett, Richard
and Jonathan Cobb (1973) The Hidden Injuries of Class. New York: Vintage Books.
51.
Spradley, James P.
and Michael A. Rynkiewich (eds) (1975) The Nacirema: Readings on American Culture. Boston, MA: Little Brown.
52.
Steedman, Carolyn Kay
(1986) Landscape for a Good Woman: A Story of Two Lives. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.
53.
Susman, Warren I.
(1984 [1973]) ` “Personality” and the Making of Twentieth Century Culture', in Warren I. Susman, Culture as History: The Transformation of American Society in the 20th Century, pp. 271-286. New York: Pantheon Books.
54.
Trencher, Susan R.
(2000) Mirrored Images: American Anthropology and American Culture, 1960-1980. Westport, CT: Bergin and Garvey.
55.
Vanneman, Reeve
and Lynn Weber Cannon (1987) The American Perception of Class. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press.
56.
Varenne, Hervé
(1982) `Jocks and Freaks: The Symbolic Structure of the Expression of Social Interaction among American Senior High School Students', in G. Spindler (ed.) Doing the Ethnography of Schooling. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston.
57.
Varenne, Hervé
(1983) American School Language: Culturally Patterned Conflicts in a Suburban High School. New York: Irvington Publishers.
58.
Varenne, Hervé
(ed.) (1986) Symbolizing America. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.
59.
Warner, W. Lloyd
(1962 [1953]) American Life: Dream and Reality. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
60.
Warner, W. Lloyd
, Robert J. Havighurst and Martin B. Loeb (1944) Who Shall be Educated?: The Challenge of Unequal Opportunities. New York: Harper and Brothers.
61.
Willis, Paul
(1977) Learning to Labor: How Working Class Kids Get Working Class Jobs. New York: Columbia University Press.
62.
Carrie (1976) De Palma, Brian (director) MGM.
63.
Rebel without a Cause (1955) Ray, Nicholas (director) Warner Bros.
