student years or poverty in old age follows high living on cred- more hands—as in “on the one hand,
and, on the other hand, and
it in mid-life.
book review
Conley takes on two lines of research that challenge soci-
ologists’ interpretation of inequality: genetics and evolution-
ary psychology. Both focus on sibling resemblance and the
evidence of twin studies. Conley does not discredit these
methods, but he makes a case they cannot ignore. He inter-
views several pairs of twins, and one of his novel findings is the
social pressure they feel to resemble one another. They play
“the twins” even after their parents have stopped dressing
them alike. The point is that some of their similarity is socially
constructed, not in their genes.
Surprisingly absent from The Pecking Order are accounts
of layoffs. Conley collected his in-depth interviews from a
“snowball sample”—each interviewee recommended other
people for Conley to interview. Somehow the snowball missed
people in America’s rustbelt who suffered from downsizing.
This is unfortunate. Current academic debates in sociology
and labor economics swirl around the dislocations of the
1980s and early 1990s. Being in the wrong industry in the
wrong year also shapes life outcomes. Everything else in The
Pecking Order is so good, I wish we could see what Conley
would do with that material.
Trying to explain something as complex as variations in
economic achievement to a lay audience leads many sociolo-
gists to wreck and ruin. So we write for one another. On the
rare occasions when we talk to people who do not speak our
jargon, we forget what species we are and talk using three or
the reading
sisterhood
review by sarah m. corse
Book Clubs: Women and the Uses of Reading in Everyday Life
by Elizabeth Long.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003, 280 pages.
Although book clubs have a long history in this country,
sociologists know little about them. It is difficult to study
books, readers and reading, sociologically. Books take a long
time to analyze, and measuring and describing the meaning
of a book can be complicated. Sociologists of literature refer
to this as the “multivocality”—the multiple voices—of literary
62 contexts spring 2004
moreover.” Conley attains an ease and clarity beyond the
reach of three-handed writers like me. He chooses stories that
get complicated, but he does not compromise the nuances of
the statistical research. He keeps his prose simple. Even his
summaries focus on variation: “So, in contrast to the two
absolutist positions—claiming either that divorce is generally
harmless or that it is almost always severely damaging—I
argue that the way which divorce affects kids depends on
when it occurs during a child’s life and what role it places that
child in” (p. 94). This comes after the story of two sisters who
were just far enough apart in age that one was at college and
the other still at home when their parents split up over their
father’s extramarital affair. The girls’ lives took different tracks
because the younger one had to live amid the day-to-day ten-
sion of the divorce, while her sister got the cushion of distance.
The Pecking Order brings an important but technical
branch of social science to a new readership. Those of us who
write the technical papers he cites in his footnotes can now
cite Dalton Conley to our relatives when they ask us what we
do, or when they puzzle about presidential brothers or the
black sheep in our own families. ■
Michael Hout is Professor of Sociology at the University of California,
Berkeley. His research interests revolve around social change, especial-
ly the social consequences of growing economic inequality. He is also
writing a book with Claude Fischer on major trends in 20th-century
American society and culture.
texts. Multivocality can also be a barrier to study in a discipline
that often values hard numbers and the scientific method.
Sociologists of literature have dealt with this problem in a
variety of ways, including having multiple researchers deter-
mine the meanings of books. But most frequently they study
aspects of literature other than the books’ content. Such stud-
ies yield important insights about who reads and how books
are received, but there is a conspicuous lack of research on
what people (other than the researchers themselves) actually
make of books or of how books affect people. The strength of
Elizabeth Long’s Book Clubs lies in her attempt to explain why
women join book groups, how they discuss books in those
groups, and how they are affected by group engagement with
books. Long’s interviews with book club members are an
important contribution; the voices of readers discussing read-
ings are all too rare.
 Long herself provides another explanation for the dearth
of research on book clubs: a long-standing and systematic dis-
dain within the academy for the subject of women readers—
the most common members of book clubs. Granting that
there are exceptions, Long argues that academics are tradi-
tionally disinterested in “private” rather than “public” activi-
ties—especially private activities undertaken by women and
other marginalized groups.
At the heart of Long’s book is her data on 77 all-female
reading groups that met in Houston in 1990-91. Long sat in
on these groups’ discussions and collected survey data on a
small proportion of them. Long’s most interesting analyses
draw on observations from just four groups with whom she
developed long-standing relationships. Qualitative data of this
richness are difficult and time-consuming to collect; nonethe-
less, readers may be left wishing for a better sense of the over-
all picture. Unfortunately, the sheer number of reading groups
means that Long is only able to sit in on one to three discus-
sions for most groups.
Her most notable findings show how reading together helps
the women imagine and develop their identities, particularly as
women. Women read in book clubs, Long argues, because the
groups help them think about their place in society—e.g., how
to speak or act in largely male, public settings—and “define
who they are culturally and socially and to seek solidarity with
like-minded peers” (p. 92). Other sociologists of literature have
also demonstrated how reading helps people develop a sense
of identity.
Long focuses on two core book group processes: choos-
ing a book and discussing it. Book selection is a key moment
for defining the group and Long provides a fascinating dis-
section of how groups use “seriousness” in their selection
process to draw distinctions between themselves and other
types of people (pp. 123-28). Long also raises the provocative
question of why book groups depend on authorities in choos-
ing books, but blithely ignore the “experts” when actually
reading and discussing the books.
In the chapter “Conversing with Books, Fashioning
Subjectivity, and Dealing with Difference,” Long’s analysis
addresses the most important question: What effect do read-
ing groups have on the women in them? Long answers that
reading groups primarily give women a place to discuss being
women; they may even enable women to change by expand-
ing their perspectives. She brilliantly uses one group’s discus-
sion of William Wharton’s novel, Dad, to demonstrate both the
book review
ways the women interweave the text with their own stories
and the ways they reformulate gender roles that, she claims,
shape book group discussions (pp. 169-76). Unfortunately, she
provides only two or three other discussions of substantive
length. The examples she presents are too few and too short
to fully support her claims.
The largest leap is her claim regarding the “potentially
transformative” power of group discussion of books (p. 113).
Long argues that through discussion, and by getting to hear
different viewpoints, book club members often go home with
a broader understanding of issues raised in the books, and
may even change long-held opinions.
Yet, Long’s own analysis undercuts broad claims to that
effect by showing that most book groups are relatively homog-
enous, especially with regard to race and education. She argues
that books by and about African-American experiences are par-
ticularly disliked by the predominantly white groups, and that
groups routinely silence and stigmatize people who challenge
status quo opinions. This contradiction in Long’s argument
occurs because she does not take into account differences
among the specific books and reading styles of the groups. For
example, romance novels are not able to support the types of
textually interwoven and critical discussions books such as Dad
commanded. Other books, such as Toni Morrison’s Beloved,
also fail to generate such discussions, because they are too
inaccessible to engage most group members.
At the end of her book, Long also addresses contempo-
rary technological and social changes in the world of books.
She comments on the growing effects chain bookstores and
television programs, especially Oprah, have on reading
groups and on the spread of online book groups. She
remains convinced that book groups, perhaps influenced by
new media or institutions, will continue to proliferate and
provide many of the same benefits to their members. We will
have to await a scholar as dedicated and energetic as
Elizabeth Long to test those convictions. ■
Sarah M. Corse is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of
Virginia. Her work focuses on the use and effects of art objects, litera-
ture and popular culture. She is the author of Nationalism and Literature:
The Politics of Culture in Canada and the United States (1997).
spring 2004 contexts 63