Responsible girls: the spatialized politics of feminine success and aspiration in a divided Silicon Valley, USA

Authors

Elsa M Davidson, Montclair State UniversityFollow

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

9-2015

Journal / Book Title

Gender, Place & Culture

Abstract

This article offers a comparative ethnographic examination of working-class Latina and middle-class white girls’ narratives of aspiration and expressions of self-cultivation in early twenty-first-century Silicon Valley, USA. I argue that such girls’ subject-making statements of aspiration and gendered practices of self-cultivation reflect their emotively charged negotiations of race and class differentiated ideals of feminine success, their experience of school and community spaces inscribed by hierarchies of race, class, and gender, and shifting political-economic circumstances. Moreover, I maintain that such statements and practices reveal girls’ engagements with an open-ended gendered dynamic of responsibilization.

DOI

10.1080/0966369X.2013.879099

MSU Digital Commons Citation

Davidson, Elsa M, "Responsible girls: the spatialized politics of feminine success and aspiration in a divided Silicon Valley, USA" (2015). Department of Anthropology Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works. 33.
https://digitalcommons.montclair.edu/anthropology-facpubs/33

Published Citation

Davidson, E. (2015). Responsible girls: the spatialized politics of feminine success and aspiration in a divided Silicon Valley, USA. Gender, Place & Culture, 22(3), 390-404.