Disrupting the Invisibility of Working-Class Girls: Redemption, Value, and the Politics of Recognition

E-ISSN： 1938-8322|8|3|103-118

ISSN： 1938-8322

Source： Girlhood Studies, Vol.8, Iss.3, 2015-0, pp. : 103-118

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Abstract

At a time when individualized narratives have replaced structural explanations like social class to account for inequality, girls who are on the urban fringe are not only made invisible but are under-valued as contributing members to a future, individually oriented society. This article offers a visual disruption in order to re-value the stigmatized, working-class girl by applying the concept of use-value to identify the girls' redemption narratives as an agentic process that is expressed affectively. Drawing from an ethnography of urban, working-class girls who utilize social services, this article reveals how class as culture operated along with other classification systems to inscribe the girls as a problem. Recognizing this, each girl had a redemption tale to tell so as to recover a sense of self; the self-narratives revealed alternative value systems that provided collective and practical value to them.