Fitting into Place?

Prize: Honoured at the Geographical Perspectives on Women Book Event at the 2012 AAG Fitting into Place? is a major contribution to our understanding of gender and social class inequalities in the twenty-first century. Strongly theorised, yet powerfully grounded in a range of voices across social difference, its rich tapestry of qualitative research weaves together space and place with actions, attitudes and the affective. The book is a must-read for anyone interested in contemporary class and gender formation. - Diane Reay, University of Cambridge, UK Yvette Taylor's extraordinary book brings out into the open the structural violence of social class in Britain. It is much more than just a trenchant analysis. Through her profound attentiveness to the lives of working class women in the north east we access a deep sense of how the complexities of de-industrialisation furnish the cultural landscapes of class and gender. The result is an expansive and textured account of working class life beyond anything that Orwell and Hoggart could have achieved. This is a book that needs to be read urgently by politicians and policy makers but also by theorists of urban life who rarely get close to the experiences documented in this book and what it means to live with the structure forces that fit people in to place. - Les Back, Goldsmiths, University of London, UK It may be bad practice to judge a book by its cover, but the hand-drawn map covering Fitting into Place offers the reader a tantalising clue to some of the book's major themes - women, class, reflexivity and narrative. The cover echoes on a larger scale the mapping techniques used with some participants, a nod to its qualitative, multi-methods approach... The research certainly offers insights of relevance to many places which have undergone similar economic transitions.