We Are All Equal

Levinson Bradley U. Levinson

Description

We Are All Equal is the first full-length ethnography of a Mexican secondary school available in English. Bradley A. U. Levinson observes student life at a provincial Mexican junior high, often drawing on poignant and illuminating interviews, to study how the the school's powerful emphasis on equality, solidarity, and group unity dissuades the formation of polarized peer groups and affects students' eventual life trajectories.Exploring how students develop a cultural "game of equality" that enables them to identify-across typical class and social boundaries-with their peers, the school, and the nation, Levinson considers such issues as the organizational and discursive resources that students draw on to maintain this culture. He also engages cultural studies, media studies, and globalization theory to examine the impact of television, music, and homelife on the students and thereby better comprehend-and problematize-the educational project of the state. Finding that an ethic of solidarity is sometimes used to condemn students defined as different or uncooperative and that little attention is paid to accommodating the varied backgrounds of the students-including their connection to indigenous, peasant, or working class identities-Levinson reveals that their "schooled identity" often collapses in the context of migration to the United States or economic crisis in Mexico. Finally, he extends his study to trace whether the cultural game is reinforced or eroded after graduation as well as its influence relative to the forces of family, traditional gender roles, church, and global youth culture.We Are All Equal will be of particular interest to educators, sociologists, Latin Americanists, and anthropologists.

Sujets

• Sociologie, société et politique
• México
• Secondary school
• Anthropology
• Mexico

Informations

• Publié par: Duke University Press
• Date de parution: 12 juillet 2001
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780822381075
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 2 Mo

Extrait

WE ARE ALL EQUAL

WE ARE ALL EQUAL

Student Culture and Identity

at a Mexican Secondary School,

1988–1998Bradley A. U. Levinson

d u k e u n i v e r s i t y p r e s s

Durham and London, 2001

∫All rights reserved2001 Duke University Press Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper$ Typeset in Adobe Minion by Keystone Typesetting, Inc. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data appear on the last printed page of this book. Acknowledgments for the use of copyrighted material appear on page 434 which constitutes an extension of the copyright page.

To Joan Pearl Levinson,

Arcadia Rangel, Ofelia Hernández,

and Debra Susan Unger Levinson—

strong and heartful women, across

cultures and generations

CONTENTS

List of Illustrations

Preface

xi

Acknowledgments

i

x

xix

Introduction: Questions and Methods for a Study of Student Culture 1

1. Historical Contexts: The Adolescent, the Nation, and the Secundaria, 1923–1993 13

2. Ethnographic Beginnings: A City, a School, an Anthropologist

3. Institutional Contexts: The School Students Encountered

4.Somos Muy Unidos: The Production of Student Culture in the Grupo Escolar 92

5. Sites of Social Di√erence and the Production of Schooled Identity 145

55

36

6. Friendship Groups, Youth Culture, and the Limits of Solidarity 190

7. Political Economic Change, Life Trajectories, and Identity Formation, 1988–1998 236

8. Games Are Serious: Reflections on Equality and Mexican Secondary Student Culture 302

Appendix A. Structure, Culture, and Subjectivity: The Elements of Practice 323

Appendix B. Focal Student Profiles

Notes

363

Works Cited

Index

417

391

351

ILLUSTRATIONS

figures 1. Major options and paths in Mexican schooling, 1991 8 2. Ground plan ofesf57 3. Weekly class schedule, grupo 3c, 1990–1991 school year 75 4. ‘‘Nesting’’ of situated identifications and enduring identities 5. Dynamics of history, student culture, and identity formation atesf318

tables 1. Fathers’ occupations, by school 48 2. Male focal students atesf102 3. Female focal students atesf106 4. Focal students in 1997 244

photographs Typical rural landscape of the San Pablo region 29 Typical San Pablo street scene 39 Second-year students take a break from their lesson Third-year girls take a break from chatting 63 Second-year girls escort the flag 67 Female teachers set a gendered example 85

59

188