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Needing to be ‘in the know’: strategies of subordination used by 10-11 year old
school boys
Abstract
It is important for educators to understand the tactics used in subordination between
young people if they are going to take effective measures to counter them in their
pedagogical practice. This paper explores strategies used by school boys aged 10-11 to
subordinate and position boys at the bottom of the pupil hierarchy. The findings are
based on data gathered from a year long empirical study (between 1998 and 1999) set in
three UK junior schools which were differentiated by the social characteristics of their
intake. The research emphasises the role of the body in the construction of masculinity.
The hegemonic, or most idealised, form of masculinity at each school was constructed
around activity and, in particular, various forms of embodied physicality/athleticism
(exemplified through skill, strength, fitness and speed), and boys who did not wish to, or
who were unable to, use these resources generally found themselves marginalised and/or
subordinated. Many of the subordinated forms were symbolically assimilated to
femininity, and the paper proposes that the main strategies of subordination can be
summarised under the generic heading of ‘difference’. The final section discusses the
pervasive use of homophobia, and concludes that it should be conceptualised in terms of
gender as well as sex.
Introduction
While there have been a number of notable ethnographic studies exploring the
subordination of boys (both individually and collectively) in the school setting since the
late 1970s [1], many have tended to consider subordinated boys as an adjunct to the more
dominant groups and patterns of masculinity. This paper concentrates on subordinated
forms of masculinity per se. I set out to detail the strategies used to subordinate
individuals and groups of boys in the school setting at three different schools in the UK,