required readings:
It is important to note that by emphasizing issues of sexuality when talking about adolescence, what too easily ignore the context within which this sexuality plays itself in America: the School, and, through the School, all the processes that place adolescents within the overall social system. In other words, the social future of adolescents is constructed in the interaction between family and school. The very raising of school performance into the central factor in adult success may partially explain why sexuality is relatively freed from any other issues than pleasure.
I start with a story I wish I had had the chance to make into a real ethnographic case.
A long while ago, I was standing at the back of a hotel room at one AAA meeting in a position that allowed me a view of both the center of the room and the bathroom the door to which was open. At the center of the room a small party was going on, organized by a student who had been conducting fieldwork in a middle class school. She had invited one of her star-informants to come to the meeting to see what the anthropological tribe looked like. The informant had been driven to Washington by her mother, and the two of them were now in the bathroom, one sitting on the edge of the bathtub, the other standing engaged in an earnest conversation. No joking, no anger, just business: some piece of mail had come from a college the girl had applied to and something had to be done about it urgently. (for more see my lecture "A dilemma for American middle class families: deconstructing priviledge" (Emory University 2000) |
Some questions |
StudyPlace conversations |
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