Protecting Home: Class, Race, and Masculinity in Boys' Baseball

by Sherri Grasmuck

Book Overview

What can neighborhood baseball tell us about class and gender cultures, urban change, and the ways that communities value public space? Through a close exploration of a boys' baseball league in a gentrifying neighborhood of Philadelphia, sociologist Sherri Grasmuck reveals the accommodations and tensions that characterize multicultural encounters in contemporary American public life. Based on years of ethnographic observation and interviews with...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0813535557
• ISBN13: 9780813535555
• Release Date: April 2005
• Publisher: Rutgers University Press
• Length: 304 Pages
• Weight: 1.05 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 6.1" x 9.1"

Customer Reviews

A state-of-the-art work...

It's all here: beginning with one baseball field this book examines parenting, gender roles, urban race relations, gentrification and social class in the contemporary US city. But the most amazing part about it is its personal approach and style. We're right in there with dads (and moms) and especially with kids learning how to live through the kids' baseball league. Beautiful color photos show the joy and pain, the triumph and tragedy of an "ordinary" scene that is also truly epic. Grasmuck is a highly talented sociologist who finds in everyday life the political, moral, and spiritual struggles and lessons of our time and place. A unique achievement.