Ain’t No Makin’ It

Aspirations and Attainment in a Low-Income Neighborhood

By: Jay MacLeod

Narrated by: Christian Rummel

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 the "Brothers" and the "Hallway Hangers". Their story of poverty, race, and defeatism moved listeners and challenged ethnic stereotypes. MacLeod’s return eight years later, and the resulting 1995 revision, revealed little improvement in the lives of these men as they struggled in the labor market and crime-ridden underground economy.

The third edition of this classic ethnography of social reproduction brings the story of inequality and social mobility into today’s dialogue. Now fully updated with 13 new interviews from the original Hallway Hangers and Brothers, as well as new theoretical analysis and comparison to the original conclusions, Ain’t No Makin’ It remains an admired and invaluable text.

©1987, 1995 Westview Press, Inc. (P)2014 Audible, Inc.

Great book

I loved how they would show different perspectives of life from different people. They all were from the same area but had different lives and different mindsets.

A must-read for any conflict theory sociologist

Read this for a class and very glad that I did. It was a great insight into the lives of these individuals and I found myself becoming attached to various characters throughout. If nothing else, it's a great conversation piece.

A Classic Every American Should Read

This book is a classic that every American should read. The performance is great except for the decision to attempt reading certain voices in accents. Audiobook narrators need to stop doing accents. There is no way the producers could have known what the people in the book speak like since they are all anonymous and so the accents feel like caricatures.