Well, she does, but it's not until later in the book if I'm remembering correctly. And, I don't think she wants to change the world or help people. Hard to say.
this is getting arcane, but I just wanted to point out that it isn't always so simple. I'm going to talk about some feminists' experiences, but it probably applies to men. (and yes, I am saying that it's not surprising that language is used to lend an air of authority precisely b/c of the issues raised, below.)
One value in a strand of feminist thought is to connect women's experiences to theory. Yet, there's is a big problem for some of us who've done this, especially those who use their own experiences. In my own experience, it delegitimates you. You're not an authority. I'm not whining, mind you; I'm pointing to structural forces manifesting as real life sanctions on individuals that militate against the kind of change we're looking for.
I used to tell what I thought was an amusing story: When I was dating, I always got up and left dinner or drinks if my date said, "So, you teach about the family, huh? If you're divorced, how can you teach about the family?"
Now, I used it for two reasons. One, to talk about how sociology can't really teach them how to "do" family better. Rather, it's useful for helping them understand that there are ways to explain what happens in their lives that don't depend on blaming individuals. Second, to have them unpack the incident and figure out why I would walk out. It wasn't any more intuitive to them than it was to the guy i left behind to contemplate why the hell he definitely wasn't getting laid that night. :)
I stopped doing that and I basically stopped talking about my own personal life, too. While I think that about the only thing sociology is good for in a liberal arts education is self-reflection, it just didn't serve me well to use my own life and my own person as an example of _how_ to do that. _I_ became the lightening rod for their own struggle with a way of thinking about the world that, for them, seems like a very hostile attack on their most cherished ways of thinking.
Marj Devault talks about how the ONE place where she talks about her own life in relation to her research in _The Work of Feeding the Family_ is the very place that fascinates people the most. All the good work she did-- it can seem like it goes straight out the window! When she put herself into her ethnography, the focus turned on her. Putting yourself in your work, and making it clear that you're not some disinterested observer, is often very important to feminists, especially feminists researchers who've criticized, heh, white male ways of staying very distanced from their work, as if they aren't really there. But, when we actually do it--voila!--we come up against entrenched ways of thinking about women, intellect, theory, etc.
Similar experience using Ehrenreich's _Hearts of Men_ . There's all this great stuff in the book, but students turn to the place where she talks about the war between the sexes, mentioning her mother and father, I believe. Well, THAT is what students latch on to. Oh, that's her problem! That's why she says all this. It's some sort of personal thing for her. Obviously, she's biased and probably a man hater who just had a bad family life.
None of this is to excuse JB or anyone else. I don't know why she wants to use arcane language or why, as Katha Pollitt has pointed out, she doesn't seem willing to use the services of a good editor. Even more troubling that it turns out that JB can write clearly, as evidenced by a recent piece in the LRoB.
Kelley