Lois Weis first visited the town of 'Freeway' in her 1990 book, W orking Class Without Work: High School Students in a De-Industrializing Economy . In that book we met the students and teachers of Freeway's high school to understand how these working-class folks made sense of their lives. Now, fifteen years later, Weis has gone back to Freeway for Class Reunion . This time her focus is on the now grown-up students who are, for the most part still working class and now struggling to survive the challenges of the global economy. Their town has been largely gutted as companies have left for cheaper labor and resources, leaving many with few options. Two introductory chapters are largely based on the earlier ethnography and introduce new readers to the individuals in their student days while the rest of the book is new material discussing the lives of the white, working-class people of Freeway today. Weis' distinctive ethnographic style uses generous quotations and extended conversations with her subjects in order to bring them fully to life.
Class Reunion is a rare and valuable longitudinal ethnographic study of both men and women and it provides fascinating insights into how their lives have changed over the last two decades and what their prospects might be for the future.