Learning Capitalist Culture presents an ethnographic study of a small, economically-depressed, predominantly Mexican American south Texas town. Like many communities in the Southwest, North Town has undergone cultural and political change since the late sixties, when the Chicano civil rights movement emerged and challenged the segregated racial order.

This book examines the way in which the youth of North Town learn traditional American values through participation in sports, membership in formal and informal social groups, dating, and interactions with teachers in the classroom. Using information gathered over fourteen years of field work, Douglas E. Foley shows how the rituals involved in these activities tend to preserve or reproduce class and gender inequalities, even as Mexicanos transform the racial order.