Ain't No Makin' It

By Jay MacLeod,

Book cover of Ain't No Makin' It: Aspirations and Attainment in a Low-Income Neighborhood

Book description

This classic text addresses one of the most important issues in modern social theory and policy: how social inequality is reproduced from one generation to the next. With the original 1987 publication of Ain't No Makin' It, Jay MacLeod brought us to the Clarendon Heights housing project where we met…

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Why read it?

1 author picked Ain't No Makin' It as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

This book illustrates how difficult it is to break out of one’s social structure and status because of the stubbornness and injustice reflected in our larger, societal structure that is reproduced from generation to generation. This book is successful in that MacLeod demonstrates how social inequity and immobility based on race and poverty play out in real people’s lives over a lifetime and how difficult it is to break out of the “status quo” that keeps people disadvantaged and out of reach for opportunities for social mobility. 

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