Audiobooks by C.J. Pascoe

Nice is Not Enough: Inequality and the Limits of Kindness at American High

This provocative story of contemporary high school argues that a shallow culture of kindness can do more lasting harm than good. Based on two years of research, Nice Is Not Enough shares striking dispatches from one high school's 'regime of kindness' to underline how the culture operates as a Band-Aid on persistent inequalities. Through incisive storytelling and thoughtful engagement with students, this brilliant study by C. J. Pascoe exposes uncomfortable truths about American politics and our reliance on individual solutions instead of profound systemic change. Nice Is Not Enough brings listeners into American High, a middle- and working-class high school characterized by acceptance, connection, and kindness-a place where, a prominent sign states, 'there is no room for hate.' Here, inequality is narrowly understood as a problem of individual merit, meanness, effort, or emotion rather than a structural issue requiring deeper intervention. Surface-level sensitivity allows American High to avoid 'political' topics related to social inequality based on race, sex, gender, or class. Being nice to each other, Pascoe reveals, does not serve these students or solve the broader issues we face; however, a true politics of care just might.

C.J. Pascoe (Author), Emily Beresford (Narrator)

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Dude, You're a Fag: Masculinity and Sexuality in High School

High school and the difficult terrain of sexuality and gender identity are brilliantly explored in this smart, incisive ethnography. Based on eighteen months of fieldwork in a racially diverse working-class high school, Dude, You're a Fag sheds new light on masculinity both as a field of meaning and as a set of social practices. C. J. Pascoe's unorthodox approach analyzes masculinity as not only a gendered process but also a sexual one. She demonstrates how the 'specter of the fag' becomes a disciplinary mechanism for regulating heterosexual as well as homosexual boys and how the 'fag discourse' is as much tied to gender as it is to sexuality.

C.J. Pascoe (Author), Emily Beresford (Narrator)

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