Jocks and burnouts: social categories and identity in the high school

Penelope Eckert

Teachers College, Columbia University, 1989 - Education - 195 pages

This ethnographic study of adolescent social structure in a Michigan high school shows how the school's institutional environment fosters the formation of opposed class cultures in the student population, which in turn serve as a social tracking system.

What people are saying

Review: Jocks and Burnouts: Social Categories and Identity in the High School

User Review  - Jessica - Goodreads

So true so true on how high school prepares us for our social position as adults and how the class system becomes to identify us as young as our high school years.

Review: Jocks and Burnouts: Social Categories and Identity in the High School

User Review  - Jerry - Goodreads

kind of absurd. if you've ever taken a class with her, you hear about this book all the time. but the work remains a classic and sparks off a lot of really unexpected ideas for me. it's really good to think with, even if you're not interested in classical variation studies in sociolinguistics.

About the author

Penelope Eckert is Professor of Linguistics, Professor (by courtesy) of Cultural and Social Anthropology and Director of the Program in Feminist Studies at Stanford University. She has published the ethnography Jocks and Burnouts: Social Categories and Identity in the High School (1989), the book Linguistic Variation as Social Practice (2000), and many linguistic articles.

Bibliographic information

• Title: Jocks and burnouts: social categories and identity in the high school
• Author: Penelope Eckert
• Edition: 8, reprint
• Publisher: Teachers College, Columbia University, 1989
• ISBN: 0807729639, 9780807729632
• Length: 195 pages
• Subjects: Education / Secondary; Education / Student Life & Student Affairs