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

Penelope Eckert

Teachers College Press, Jan 1, 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.

Contents

• INTRODUCTION: 1
• SOCIAL CATEGORIES IN THE HIGH SCHOOL: 2
• THE REPRODUCTION OF SOCIAL INEQUALITY IN THE SCHOOLS: 6
• PEER GROUPS THE SCHOOL AND SOCIAL REPRODUCTION: 11
• ADOLESCENT CULTURE SUBCULTURES GROUPS AND CLIQUES: 13
• JOCKS BURNOUTS AND THE SCHOOL: 20
• FIELD WORK IN THE HIGH SCHOOL: 25
• PROBLEMS OF THE NATIVE ANTHROPOLOGIST: 26
• ESTABLISHING A SITE: 27
• LIFE IN THE SCHOOL: 28
• RELATIONS WITH ADOLESCENTS: 34
• THE SETTING OF BELTEN HIGH: 36
• THE LOCAL ENVIRONMENT: 38
• PHYSICAL ARRANGEMENT OF THE SCHOOL: 42
• DAILY ROUTINES: 45
• SYMBOLS OF CATEGORY MEMBERSHIP: 49
• SCHOOL TERRITORIES: 51
• LOOKING AND ACTING DIFFERENT: 60
• THE GROWTH OF SYMBOLIC OPPOSITIONS: 69
• THE DEVELOPMENT OF SOCIAL CATEGORIES: 73
• JUNIOR HIGH SCHOOL: 76
• THE PASSAGE TO HIGH SCHOOL: 93
• THE CORPORATE STRUCTURE OF THE SCHOOL: 100
• CAREERS AND THE CORPORATE SETTING: 103
• JOCKS AND STAFF: 113
• JOBS AND THE HIERARCHY: 117
• INFORMATION: 131
• LIFE OUTSIDE THE CORPORATION: 135
• NEIGHBORHOOD NETWORKS: 136
• FLUIDITY: 140
• THE CLASH WITH CORPORATE NORMS: 162
• CLASS AND BURNOUT AFFILIATION: 172
• THE EFFECTS OF SOCIAL POLARIZATION: 175
• THE CONCENTRATION OF RESOURCES: 176
• WHAT STUDENTS LEARN IN SCHOOL: 179
• REFERENCES: 185
• INDEX: 189

Popular passages

Page 49 - ... Women Counted. San Francisco: Harper. Weston, Kath (1990) Families We Choose: Lesbians, Gays, Kinship. New York: Columbia University Press. Young, Iris (1995) "Mothers, Citizenship, and Independence: A Critique of Pure Family Values." Ethics, 105: 535-56. Symbols of Category Membership Penelope Eckert WHAT MAKES SOMEBODY A BURNOUT? You know, maybe somebody who smokes all the time, you know, smokes marijuana and stuff, but you know, everybody does that. You could call me a Burnout. You know, I've...‎

Page 111 - However, when more people are empowered—that is, allowed to have control over the conditions that make their actions possible—then more is accomplished, more gets done. Thus, the meaning of power here is closer to "mastery" or "autonomy" than to domination or control over others. Power does refer to interpersonal transactions, the ability to mobilize other people; but if those others are powerless, their own capacities, even when mobilized, are limited. Power is the ability to do, in the classic...‎

Page 63 - Clothing is a particularly powerful social maker because it is regularly renewed and never separated from the individual in public situations. Just about every component of external clothing has indexical or symbolic value in the category system. Throughout society, clothing style signals economic means, access to information, and specific group identity. Economic means are reflected both in a rapid turnover of clothing — exhibited through wardrobe size and swift style changes - and in the quality...‎

Page 186 - Social Class and Color Differences in Child Rearing," American Sociological Review, XI (1946), 698-710.‎

Page 93 - ... burnout status through fighting or other displays of physical toughness, she can be cool, verbally and emotionally tough. In example (25) a burnout girl describes how she and another friend gained status during junior high as the "biggest burnouts": (25) But like we got along with everybody and uh we partied every day and that was the cool thing. And uh we'd smoke in school and that was cool. We used to get E's in classes [a failing grade], that was cool. You know? So, I don't know. I guess that's...‎

Page 152 - Those who attempt social mobility must carefully evaluate their job security, even if it is at poverty level, before they risk removing themselves from the collective help of kinsmen. The collective expectations and obligations created by cooperative networks of poverty stricken kinsmen...‎

Page 95 - ... The youngster avoids either/or positions and thinks in terms of contingencies; the hard and fast absolutism of childhood and the first years of adolescence gives way to moral and conceptual relativism. Furthermore, the youngster begins to resist the either/or alternatives proposed by our questions. He breaks set— that is, he challenges the assumptions, tacit and otherwise, contained in the inquiry.144 In "Growth of Political Ideas in Adolescence: the Sense of Community...‎

Page 14 - School of cultural studies has defined a subculture as a "meaning system [or] mode of expression or lifestyle developed by groups in subordinated structural positions in response to dominant meaning systems . . . which reflect their attempt to solve structural contradictions arising from the wider societal context.‎

Page 25 - American high school are not very different from those facing an ethnographer working in any other culture or age group. I was an outsider trying to get to know and understand a community. I needed to gain the confidence and trust of the members of the community so that they would allow me access to their activities and knowledge, and I needed to become sufficiently part of the local woodwork to be able to observe activities without producing a distraction.‎

Bibliographic information

• Title: Jocks and Burnouts: Social Categories and Identity in the High School
• Author: Penelope Eckert
• Publisher: Teachers College Press, 1989
• ISBN: 0807770043, 9780807770047
• Length: 195 pages
• Subjects: Education / Secondary; Education / Student Life & Student Affairs