Skip to main content
Books, videos, and music - all free from your public library!
LoginSign Up

Footer

Hoopla logo, Go to homepage
  • For Patrons
  • For Libraries (opens in new window)
  • For Vendors (opens in new window)
  • Facebook (opens in new window)
  • X (opens in new window)
  • Instagram (opens in new window)
  • YouTube (opens in new window)
  • TikTok (opens in new window)
  • LinkedIn (opens in new window)

Our Company

  • Our Story
  • Get Hoopla for your Library (opens in new window)
  • Get your content on hoopla (opens in new window)
  • Join our team (opens in new window)
  • Accessibility Statement

Our Content

  • Audiobooks
  • Ebooks
  • Movies
  • Television
  • Comics
  • BingePasses
  • Music
  • The Loop Blog

Help

  • Help Center
  • Submit Feedback
  • Facebook (opens in new window)
  • X (opens in new window)
  • Instagram (opens in new window)
  • YouTube (opens in new window)
  • TikTok (opens in new window)
  • LinkedIn (opens in new window)
  • Download on the App Store (opens in new window)
  • Get it on Google Play (opens in new window)
  • Available at Amazon Appstore (opens in new window)
© 2026 Midwest Tape, LLC. All rights reserved. Privacy Policy | Terms of Use
  • Hoopla logo
    Powered by Hoopla
  • Browse
  • My Hoopla
  • Log In
  1. Navigate Home
  2. Ebooks
  3. Missing Class

EBOOK

Missing Class

Strengthening Social Movement Groups by Seeing Class Cultures

Betsy Leondar-Wright
2
(1)
sign up
Pages
288
Year
2014
Language
English
Publisher
Cornell University Press

About

Many activists worry about the same few problems in their groups: low turnout, inactive members, conflicting views on racism, overtalking, and offensive violations of group norms. But in searching for solutions to these predictable and intractable troubles, progressive social movement groups overlook class culture differences. Missing Class looks through a class lens and discovers that members with different class life experiences tend to approach these problems differently. Using this class lens enables readers to envision new solutions, solutions that draw on the strengths of all class cultures to form the basis of stronger cross-class and multiracial movements. In Missing Class, the first comprehensive empirical study of US activist class cultures, Betsy Leondar-Wright looks at class dynamics in twenty-five groups that span the spectrum of social movement organizations in the United States today, including the labor movement, grassroots community organizing, and groups working on global causes in the anarchist and progressive traditions. Missing Class applies Pierre Bourdieu's theories of cultural capital and habitus to four class trajectories: lifelong working-class and poor; lifelong professional middle class; voluntarily downwardly mobile; and upwardly mobile. Compellingly written for both activists and social scientists, Missing Class describes class differences in paths to activism, attitudes toward leadership, methods of conflict resolution, ways of using language, diversity practices, use of humor, methods of recruiting, and group process preferences. Too often, we miss class. Missing Class makes a persuasive case that seeing class culture differences could enable activists to strengthen their own groups and build more durable cross-class alliances for social justice.

Related Subjects

  • Social Classes & Economic Disparity
  • Social Science
  • Adult Nonfiction
  • General
  • Sociology

Reviews

"I cannot recommend Missing Class too highly. Some books stimulate you intellectually.... Some books deepen awareness.... Some books are practical.... It's rare to find a book that does one of these things well. A book that does all three, brilliantly, is beyond rare. It's a historical event."
Milan Rai, Peace News
"Leondar-Wright's Missing Classis by far the best book available on the touchy subject of 'classism' since her own previous work,Class Matters: Cross-class Alliance Building for Middle Class Activist, and Fred Rose's incisive 1999 study,Coalitions across the Class Divide: Lessons from the Labor, Peace, and Environmental Movements, also published by Cornell. Like Rose before her, the author illustr
The Labor Studies Journal
"From fashion sense to senses of humor, Missing Class illustrates the subtle cues in which class disparities manifest within activist groups. In a context where class is sometimes conspicuously missing from our stories, this is a welcome reminder to put it back in."
Louis Esparza, Mobilization

Artists

Betsy Leondar-WrightAuthor