Session Information
19 SES 08, Parallel Paper Session
Paper Session
Contribution
The schoolyard plays an important role in how children understand themselves as individuals and as groups. The school children are, during break-times, supervised by teachers and under regulations that encourage certain behaviors and silence others. Break-time at the schoolyard also represents ‘free’ time and space for the children, and a cease from other, more regulated school activities. As the schoolyard often is the only place in the school environment where children themselves can choose activities and whom to interact and spend time with, it is often considered and communicated as their ‘own’ place in school. The regulated, supervised and free space that the schoolyard represents, and the multiple social interrelations that are in play there, makes it particularly interesting in view of identity processes. The schoolyard is, an arena where identity acts are in play. This applies not least to identity processes related to gender (e.g. Thorne, 1993; Epstein et. al, 2001).
By focusing on children's narratives about places within their schoolyard the aim of this study is to describe and critically analyze spatial aspects of gender identity. The questions addressed are: 1. How is gender identity processed through narratives about the schoolyard? 2. What places are used, and how are they used? 3. What representations of ‘I’, ‘we’, ‘them’ and ‘a school child’ are present in the narratives?
The theoretical framework consists of theories on space and gender. Massey (1994) describes space as a dimension through which and over which social relations are constructed. One of the relational aspects of space which she explores is that of gender. Spaces and our senses of them are gendered, “and this gendering of space and place both reflects and has effects back on the ways in which gender is constructed and understood in societies in which we live” (Massey, 1994, p 186). ‘The particular mix of social relations’, or the specific ‘articulation’ of relations (Massey, 1994, p 5) is part of what defines the uniqueness of a place in relation to time. However, these relations are by no means demarcated and restricted to that specific place, but extend the particular place and the particular time. The understanding of space as an articulation of relations which go beyond the particular place and time, relates to the theorizing of social categories as serial structures provided by Young (1997). Following Young, individuals are positioned in series/structures of gender, class, ethnicity, sexuality and age; positions which bring about similar and different social experiences and powers but turn out differently in different places and times. Individuals are not determined by their serial positions; they move and act in relation to them (Young 1997). Individuals’ serial and spatial positions enable and constrain action, but they do not determine or define action. In sum, this provides a theoretical framework to understand processes of gender identity as socially constructed and spatialized.
Method
Expected Outcomes
References
Coffey, A., & Atkinson, P. (1996). Making sense of qualitative data. Complementary research strategies. Thousand Oaks: Sage. Epstein, D., Kehily, M., Mac-an-Ghaill, M. & Redman, P. (2001). Boys and Girls Come Out to Play. Making Masculinities and Femininities in School Playgrounds. Men and Masculinities, 4 (2), 158-172. Hammersley, M. & Atkinson, P. (2007). Ethnography. Principles in practice. Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon: New York: Routledge. Kraus, W. (2006). The narrative negotiation of identity and belonging. Narrative Inquiry, 16(1), 103-111. Massey, D. (1994). Space, Place and Gender. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press. Thorne, B. (1993). Gender Play. Girls and boys in school. Buckinham, UK: Poen University Press. (Published in the United States by Rutgers University press) Young, I. M. (1997). Intersecting voices : dilemmas of gender, political philosophy, and policy. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. Young, I. M. (2005). On Female Body Experience. “Throwing like a girl” and other essays. New York: Oxford University Press.
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