Narratives in Reconstituting, Reaffirming, and (Re)traditionalizing Identities

Abstract

The practice of othering has been widely documented in sociological research relative to social networks, ethnicity/race, sexuality, and place. This article considers othering as a strategy to mark identity boundaries and reaffirm the habitus in a small, qualitative sample of twenty-three white working-class boys from South London, aged fourteen to sixteen years, who self-identified as Boremund boys. The research relied heavily on visual methods and Bourdieu's theoretical tools to explore how images of transgression influenced the boys' conception of their own identity as centered upon a distinct version of normative race, class, and gender or othering the nonnormative behavior within their locale. The data show how white working-class boys monitor and police what they perceive as a normative white identity. As a result, the habitus of the Boremund boys engages with complex work to reconcile competing and contrasting conceptions of ordinary, white, working-class male in South London.

Leading Change in Gender and Diversity in Higher Education from Margins to Mainstream

“…Furthermore, in terms of variation, in his study of African-American men in predominantly White higher education institutions, Harper (2004) documents a diversity of identity practices, performativities and different modes of masculinity as well as a versatility to change in accordance with what is expected. These variations and versatility highlight some of the dimensions involved with becoming upwardly mobile and contrast with previous empirical work on workingclass males which draws on certain historically validated dispositions to resist new societal expectations (Stahl, 2017).…”

“…Working-class masculinities and their experiences of disadvantage remain an area of interest to researchers from a diversity of fields including sociology, sociology of education, geography and critical studies of men and masculinities. More recent scholarship has focused on how workingclass masculinities have been arguably reconstituted through a period of social and economic change where masculinities remain constrained by normative understandings of what it means to be male as well as the expectation to change these understandings (see Giazitzoglu, 2018;Stahl, 2017). Theoretical approaches have been multifaceted with researchers expanding beyond Marxist analyses of working-class boys (Humphries, 1981;Willis, 1977) to highlight the complexities of working-class masculinities (Jeffrey & McDowell 2004;Kenway et al, 2006;McDowell, 2012).…”

“…These changed social structures mean young men are required to negotiate new gendered patterns within rapidly changing discourses of aspiration and masculinity (Mac an Ghaill, 1994Ghaill, , 2000. Within these times of turbulent social change, working-class boys may often feel a 'loyalty to self' (Stahl, 2014) or, more specifically, a desire to reaffirm aspects of the traditional working-class masculinities they see as being transgressed by social change (see Stahl, 2017).…”

Transit and Transition: Student Identity and the Contested Landscape of Higher Education

“…Threadgold & Nilan, 2009;Fraser et al, 2017;, Habib & Ward, 2019. Authors highlight key problematics such as how some young people might construct counternarratives to social expectations which has been noted in studies of youth Smyth, Robinson, & McInerney, 2013;Stahl, 2017). We also see how young people must learn to appraise or contest the ways in which they are identified as minorities in educational landscapes.…”