Running Head ANTHROPOLOGY AND EDUCATION QUARTERLY .docx

Running Head: ANTHROPOLOGY AND EDUCATION
QUARTERLY 1
Week Three Assignment Worksheet
Page 1 of 2
Part II
This is for part 2 on the final paper. This is from the Jonsson
article.
For a long time, there have been debates targeting the boys'
oppositional behavior and their underachievement in schools.
These debates are aimed at identifying the cause of these
behaviors amongst the boys. From an ethnographical point of
view, it is clear that influential theory significantly impacts the
boys' anti-school culture. Equally important, the kind of
narrative reproduced in regards to this theory gives a glimpse
that social interaction is given priority in most school setting or
contexts. The thesis statement of this article is that there has
been criticism from the scholars who have been referring to
boys as the new losers because many scholars are girls and boys
have been left behind. According to (Jonsson, R. 2014) these
researchers have observed that there is a gap when it comes to
education between males and females but there is the need to
extent the same to other categorization apart from gender. This
can be done by identifying the ratio of the scholars in different
races. From this information, it indicates that boys are at risk
when it comes to education and in turn, this will affect the
working class whereby there will be more women who are

working than men.
However, this classification whereby they talk about the boy's
anti-school culture, it explains the behaviors of the boys at
school, and this might lead to the production of the rowdy boys
in a way that it is not easy to clarify the complexity of the
students and the strategies used during the identification. With
the trend in which the boys are not valuing education, there is
the need to find measures which will be used to curb the current
situation because if the trend will be left to continue, then in
future it will not only be in the education system but also it will
extend to the workplaces. So, to avoid such situation boys
should be made value education.
Jonsson, R. (2014). Boys’ Anti-School Culture Narratives and
School Practices. Anthropology and Education Quarterly, 45(3),
276-292.
Retrieved from AnthroSource database.
Page 2 of 2
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Paper Title: Final Argumentative Essay
No. of Pages: 1,000 to 1,300 words
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and you need to propose a
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1.4 Cultural Differences
Cultures differ greatly in their ideologies and practical response
s to their varying environments. When very different peoples co
me in contact
with each other, usually the one with less political and economi
c power is changed by the otherEven when both maintain their i
ntegrity,
members of differing groups may find it difficult to understand
and appreciate each other's
ways. In this section, we will look at intercultural
influences, intercultural prejudices, ethnocentrism (the attitude t
hat one's own culture is the
only proper way of life), and cultural relativism
(understanding and appreciating other cultures in their own term

s).
Culture Shock
Anthropologists who engage in fieldwork in a culture that differ
s from the one in which they
grew up often experience a period ofdisorientation or even depr
ession known as culture shock before they become acclimatized
to their new environment. Even tourists who travel
for only a short time outside their own nations may experience s
tress in adjusting
to even relatively minor differences in what they experience
in other countries, and unless they are prepared for these differe
nces, they may simply transform their own distress
into a motive for prejudice
against their host society. For instance, although life in industri
alized England shares many
similarities with life in the United States, it is notmerely the dif
ficulty of adjusting to things such as driving on the left side of t
he street (or looking first to my right to check whether it is safe
tostep into the street as a pedestrian who wants to cross to the o
ther side) that is most
emotionally difficult for me during my short tourist stays.
Rather, it is such subtle differences as adjusting to the different
kinds of door handles when I
reach to open a door and the fact that myspontaneous "excuse m
e" when I jostle someone in a bus or subway gets strange looks f
rom those who are more accustomed to a simple"sorry" that eve
ntually leaves me ready to return home after a short few weeks.
Some anthropologists distinguish between various phases in the
experience of another culture. In the "Honeymoon Phase," peopl
e are oftenintrigued by the differences they are experiencing
in a society with a culture different from their own. For a few
weeks or even months,
disorientation may be overshadowed by the pleasure of learning
about these differences, but
often by at least three months the newness will
have worn off enough that anxiety and disorientation become m

ore center-
stage, and homesickness and even depression may become extre
me,
as the concern for one's own possible violation of rules that one
does not yet fully understand
comes to the fore. This is sometimes called the"Negotiation Pha
se" because the out-of-
place person is now faced with the necessity of consciously com
municating with those whose
culture heor she is learning in order to better cope with his or h
er own awkwardness at fitting
in. After months of effort, the "Adjustment Phase," in
which one begins to feel more at home at meeting the expectatio
ns of others and adopting the dominant norms of the mainstream
, may beachieved. This phase is not without continued
mistake making and new learning, but it is much more comforta
ble psychologically, and it may bea matter of many more month
s or even years before a "Mastery Phase" may be claimed, in
which one feels completely at home.
Today, the world is much more homogeneous and interdependen
t than it was in the early days of anthropological fieldwork. It h
as been largely taken over by states and governments
that assert their sovereignty over all peoples within their bound
aries. Thus, there are fewer
truly simple,isolated societies like those that anthropologists on
ce preferred to study. Nearly all of these independent, small-
scale societies are now extinctor have changed tremendously
to cope with the influences of the industrializing world around t
hem.
Missionaries and traders have brought about many of these chan
ges even in relatively remote
areas. The search for new sources of income andfor resources va
lued by the industries
of the cities have brought many kinds of immigrants into the fro
ntier territories that were once occupiedby societies that had no
direct experience with external governments.

Most ethnographic fieldwork, therefore, is carried out today am
ong the rural and urban
descendants of peoples of more "exotic" cultures thatexisted in t
he past. Nevertheless, culture shock is still an experience that et
hnographers must cope with, even as it has become a subtlerphe
nomenon. The economic and political interconnectedness of mos
t of the world's people has made us all more alike in many super
ficial ways.The Yanomamö of the Venezuelan and
Brazilian tropical forests now wear t-
shirts and running shorts. The Navajo wear jeans and drive
automobiles. Zuñi pottery and jewelry can be found in departme
nt stores. In many cases, the
peoples whose lives and customs ethnographers
study today speak the national language of the countries in whic
h they live. It has become easy for anthropologists to approach t
heir fieldwork with naïveté, expecting fewer differences
and misunderstandings than they actually discover because supe
rficial similarities can mask important
deeper cultural differences that may not have been lost.
Due to the similarities among the world's increasingly interdepe
ndent peoples, the phases of
culture shock described above may not be aspsychologically int
ense as they might once have
been, but almost all students from other countries I have known
at American universities reportsimilar problems in adjusting to
what is, for them, a foreign country. Likewise, American
students, who have studied abroad for any length oftime, face si
milar challenges. And culture
shock is still an experience of anthropological fieldworkers, as
well as of others who are committed tolong-
term residence in a cultural environment that differs from that o
f their homeland. Immigrants,
foreign students, and employees ofinternational companies who
are stationed away from
home for long periods are still confronted with the psychologica
l difficulties of adjusting

to, if not mastering, their new circumstances.
Ethnocentrism
When people learn about groups whose ideologies and adaptive
strategies differ from their
own, they may have little understanding orappreciation of those
differences. People grow up
under the nurturance of their group, identify themselves as mem
bers of the group, and learn
to fulfill their needs by living according to its culture. Often, th
e training of children in the ways of the group is communicated
expressly by
contrasting them with the supposed behaviors of outsiders: "Oth
er parents may let their
children come to the table like that, but in our family
we wash our hands before eating!" Such expressions teach child
ren the patterns of behavior
expected of group members, but they also
communicate a disapproval of outsiders.
In complex societies with large populations, people may learn t
o express prejudices about the
superiority of their own groups over other
competing ones within the society. The expression of these prej
udices may vary from the good-
natured jibes of members of one political partytoward those in t
he "loyal opposition," to the
friendly but serious theological disagreements between neighbor
s of different religious
persuasions, to the confrontational hostilities exchanged betwee
n political demonstrators, such as the exchanges that sometimes
occur in theUnited States over issues like gun control or
abortion.
In all societies it is common for people to feel prejudices agains
t groups whose cultures differ
from their own. This attitude that the culture ofone's own societ
y is the naturally superior one, the standard by which all other c
ultures should be judged, and that cultures different from

one'sown are inferior, is such a common way of reacting to othe
rs' customs that it is given a
special name by anthropologists: ethnocentrism,
centered in one's ethnos, the Greek word for a people or a natio
n. Ethnocentrism, which is
found in every culture, involves the way that people
allow their judgments about human nature and about the relative
merits of different ways of
life to be guided by ideas and values that arecentered narrowly
on the way of life of their own society.
Ethnocentrism serves a society by creating greater feelings of gr
oup unity. Individuals affirm their loyalty to the ideals of their s
ociety when theycommunicate with one another about the superi
ority of their way of life over other cultures. This enhances thei
r sense of identity. A sharedsense of group superiority—
especially during its overt communication
between group members—
can help them overlook internal differencesand prevent conflicts
that could otherwise decrease the ability of the group to undert
ake effectively coordinated action.
For most of human history, societies have been smaller than the
nations of today, and most people have interacted only with me
mbers of theirown society. Under such circumstances, the role o
f ethnocentrism in helping a society to survive by motivating its
members to support oneanother in their common goals has prob
ably outweighed its negative aspects. However, ethnocentrism d
efinitely has a darker side. It is a directbarrier to understanding
among peoples of diverse customs and values. It enhances enmit
y between societies and can be a motivation forconflict among p
eoples whose lives are guided by different cultures.
Ethnocentrism stands in fundamental conflict with the goals of a
nthropology: the recognition of the common humanity of all hu
man beings andthe understanding of the causes of cultural differ
ences. To many students, much of the appeal of the field of anth
ropology has been itsintriguing discussions of the unending vari
ety of customs grown out of what, from the viewpoint of the uni

nitiated, may seem like strange,exotic, unexpected, and even sta
rtlingly different values. Yet, a people's values generally make
perfectly good sense when seen and explained inthe context of t
heir cultural system as a whole.
Cultural Relativism
The alternative to ethnocentrism is cultural relativism, the idea t
hat the significance of an act is best understood by the standard
s of the actor'sown cultural milieu. This implies that it is acade
mically invalid to evaluate other cultures in terms of the standar
ds and values of one's ownculture and that each way of life is be
st understood by its own standards of meaning and value. Relati
vism is not an idea unique toanthropology. In every culture, peo
ple interpret the meaning of a thing depending on the context in
which it occurs. For instance, we mightreact very differently to
seeing someone lying in a gutter in an inner city ghetto versus fi
nding someone lying face down in an office in thefinancial distr
ict of the same city. In the first situation we might assume, perh
aps mistakenly, that the person was simply drunk, while in these
cond setting the possibility of a heart attack would probably co
me to mind more quickly. The symbolic basis of all cultural syst
ems invariablyleads to differences in the meanings of things fro
m situation to situation. People who share the same culture lear
n to take the context of oneanother's acts into account when the
y are trying to communicate. Of course, intergroup prejudices s
ometimes interfere with people's efforts tounderstand one anoth
er, even within the same culture.
Anthropologists have come to value cultural relativism as a first
step toward understanding
other cultures. A relativistic view of other culturesholds all way
s of life to be equally valid sources of information about human
nature. Relativism, as a research tool, reminds us that evencusto
ms that seem inhumane or irrational according to our own value
s must be described and analyzed as objectively as possible if w
e wish todevelop scientifically valid understandings of human b
ehavior. Relativism reminds us that all cultures have customs th
at seem bizarre orrepugnant to outsiders. For instance, both elec

troconvulsive treatment for depression and the use of machines
for measuring heartbeat, bloodpressure,
and respiration to determine whether a person is lying might we
ll seem inhumane or irrational to people whose cultures do notin
clude these practices.
Cultural relativism grew out of the recognition that cultures can
be quite diverse in the meanings they assign to the same behavi
ors and in thevalues they embody. However, cultural relativism
is not the same as moral relativism, the idea that because there a
re no absolute or universalstandards that are shared by all cultur
es for deciding what is right or wrong, all values can be rejected
as arbitrary, and any custom is asacceptable as any other. Unlik
e moral relativism, cultural relativism is not the claim that "anyt
hing goes" and does not imply that we mustabandon our own val
ues or accept customs that are personally repugnant to us. Rathe
r, it is a methodological tool for understanding othercultures an
d their customs, including customs that we might not like. We n
eed not, for instance, come to value infanticide in order tounder
stand the roles it may play in peoples' lives in a society where it
is customary. What cultural relativism requires of us is simply t
hat we donot confuse our own feelings about such a custom with
understanding it. To do the latter, we must investigate the mean
ings the custom has forthose who practice it and the functions it
may fulfill in their society.
As a result of working among peoples with ways of life very dif
ferent from their own, anthropological fieldworkers commonly f
ind that thepreconceived notions they bring with them do not he
lp them understand what is going on in the culture they are stud
ying. Cut off from theirown people and their accustomed way of
life, it is they who must learn to understand the meanings of th
e symbols of the people they areliving with, rather than the othe
r way around. The anthropological imperative is "Respect or fail
!" Learning to understand the language and thecustoms as they a
re understood by the insiders of the group is often a clear and ba
sic necessity for survival in a foreign culture. It can also be apr
erequisite to the work of gathering accurate information about a

culture or of developing insights about how it might have come
to be theway it is and why it functions the way it does. The nec
essity of interpreting the meaning or value of an act within the c
ulture in which it isfound—
that is, from a cultural relativistic viewpoint—
has been long recognized within anthropology as a fundamental
first step in learning tounderstand a culture as a coherent system
of meaningful symbols.
An experience by Elizabeth Hahn (1990, pp. 73–
74) illustrates the difficulties that ethnocentrism
can impose on puzzling out the meanings ofcultural behavior. H
er fieldwork took her to the island of Tongatapu in Tonga. After
a frustrating period of isolation in which she was unable toesta
blish a relationship with anyone, Hahn decided to visit a govern
ment official. He showed his thoughtful attentiveness to her dis
cussion ofthe anthropological work she wished to carry out by t
he traditional Tongan custom of raising and wiggling his eyebro
ws at her; she had only herown culture as a basis for interpretin
g what his behavior meant. She became convinced that he was c
oming on to her, and she began to feelanger at what she now tho
ught was his only feigned show of interest in her work. It was o
nly until sometime later, while Hahn was talking to aTongan wo
man who did the same thing that Hahn began reinterpret the pos
sible meanings of the gesture, but she still wondered whether it
might be a show of teasing her. As she interacted with other peo
ple, Hahn eventually decided the gesture did not seem to fit her
idea that itmight express a joke that she had missed and eventua
lly came to realize that it was "a simple, elegant expression of a
ffirmation—
a gesture thatdraws the participants to each other's eyes, giving
an intensity and intimacy to a friendly exchange," a conclusion t
hat she later confirmed by adirect inquiry to a friend (p. 74).
It is not always an easy task to describe customs in terms that p
eople who follow a different way of life can comprehend. This i
s especially truewhen we try to explain things that we ourselves
have always taken for granted. Our experiences are so common i

n our own culture that werarely need to talk about them or expla
in them—
even to ourselves. This can pose problems when people of quite
different cultural backgroundsattempt to communicate. Barre To
elken (1979, pp. 277–
278) described an experience during his fieldwork among the N
avajo that illustrates sucha difficulty. After living with a Navajo
family for some months, an old man asked him about the noise
made by Toelkin's watch early eachmorning. Toelkin tried to ex
plain that the watch was a tool for keeping track of time. This w
as difficult, since the Navajo language had no wordfor the gener
al term "time" in English. None of his explanations seemed to m
ake any sense to the elderly Navajo man. Resorting to concretee
xamples, Toelkin explained that the positions of the hands on th
e watch told him when he should do things like eating, to which
the Navajoreplied "Don't your people eat when they are hungry
? We eat when we are hungry if there is food." The old man fou
nd the idea of letting thewatch tell him when to do his work stra
nge; after all, he was able to do things that were necessary with
out having to rely on a machine to tellhim to do so. He asked, "
Aren't those things that you do anyway? What is it that this tells
you to do that you wouldn't do anyway?" Afterfurther attempts,
Toelkin finally had to give up and admit that he could not reall
y explain the purpose of the watch in any way that wasmeaningf
ul to the Navajo elder.
These kinds of cultural misunderstandings are increasingly com
mon in our globalized and technologically connected world. For
example, in manyWestern countries, people have come to see th
e free flow of, and access to, information on the Internet as a ki
nd of "human right." Thus, theyare shocked by the Chinese gove
rnment's filtering of some "Western" content accessed via Googl
e, or by the Egyptian government's decision toshut off the Inter
net during the 2010 uprisings known as the Arab Spring. In such
instances, it is important to recognize that citizen's "rights" tot
he global Internet are—like all aspects of culture—
relative and shaped by particular social and political contexts.

Boys’ Anti-School Culture? Narratives and
School Practices
RICKARD JONSSON
Department of Child and Youth Studies, Stockholm University
Boys’ underachievement and oppositional behavior in school
has for a long time been the target of
various public debates. Drawing on ethnographic data from
fieldwork in two Swedish secondary
schools, this article explores how the influential theory of boys’
anti-school culture can be inter-
preted as a master narrative that is reproduced, but also
contradicted and subverted, by students
and teachers in social interaction within local school contexts.
[masculinity, anti-school culture,
failing boys, narrative analysis, small stories]
Introduction
“Boys perform worse and worse in school and that is a situation
we can no longer accept” [says
Swedish Minister for Education Jan Björklund]. He believes
that new pedagogical methods, where
the pupils mainly have to work on their own, may have
contributed to that development. “That
method benefits girls, who usually are more mature compared to
boys of the same age, while many
guys prefer a coffee break instead of doing studying” [—] Jan
Björklund believes more male
teachers would help to improve boys’ results. “If school is
perceived as a very feminine place, there
is a risk that some guys think that ‘this is not for me.’ That’s

why it is important to have male role
models for teenage boys in school,” states Björklund.
[Sydsvenska Dagbladet 2008 June 13, author’s
translation]
The issue of young men’s academic achievement—described
along the lines of boys as
the new losers in a so-called feminized school—has for a long
time now been the subject
of various Swedish public debates. These debates are further
fueled by national and
international surveys that indicate a gender difference in
academic success, according to
which girls and women appear to be winners throughout the
educational system (Epstein
et al. 1998; Francis and Skelton 2005; Kimmel 2010;
Sunderland 2004). The epigraph with
which this paper begins, concerning the worrying “discovery”
that existing pedagogic
methods are no longer suitable for boys, also echoes similar
debates that have taken place
in Australia, the United Kingdom, the United States, and many
other countries over the
past decades. As noted by many gender scholars, the issue of
gender and school achieve-
ment is often portrayed as constituting an educational crisis (cf.
Epstein et al. 1998; Francis
2006; Smith 2003), and critical voices have underlined the risk
of a moral panic as well as
a feminist backlash hidden in these debates (Foster et al. 2001;
Smith 2003). Griffin (2000)
stated already a decade ago that such debates on boys and their
schooling are usually
organized around the theme of a “loss.” On the one hand, boys
are constructed as victims
of the educational crisis, and on the other hand, the tone of the

public discussion is, in
many instances, tinged with nostalgia for a lost masculinity
whose superiority is left
unchallenged. Also note the causality between education and
boys’ lower grades, as
pointed out by the minister in the quotation above: gender is
seen as something crucial for
teaching (the minister claims that boys need more male role
models) and learning (the
minister surmises also that while girls can work independently
because of their maturity,
boys would rather spend their time on a coffee break). Thus,
boys and girls are constructed
as two distinct, homogeneous, and different categories with
both discrete and varying
needs. Gender relations are hardly challenged in this short
quotation; on the contrary, male
teachers are blessed with something specific by virtue of their
gender, which is supposed
bs_bs_banner
Anthropology & Education Quarterly, Vol. 45, Issue 3, pp. 276–
292, ISSN 0161-7761, online ISSN 1548-1492.
© 2014 by the American Anthropological Association. All
rights reserved.
DOI:10.1111/aeq.12068
276
to favor boys’ learning. In this article, I claim that the “rowdy
boy” category is taken for
granted in this and other similar contributions on the subject.
The category may be used to

explain rule-breaking activities and disciplinary problems in
classrooms, and it is often
treated as an unchallenged fact that needs to be dealt with. I
argue that it is precisely this
category that needs to be deconstructed. As part of a critical
discussion of dominant
conceptions of boys’ underachievement in school, this article
takes as its point of depar-
ture Judith Butler’s call for reversing the relationship between
deeds and identity, as
represented in the claim that there is no doer behind the deed, or
as Butler puts it, in a
classic quote “there is no gender identity behind the expressions
of gender; that identity
is performatively constituted by the very ‘expressions’ that are
said to be its results”
(1999:33).
I shall first explore how the phenomenon of failing boys and
their anti-school attitudes
are dealt with in Swedish public reports. Here, I approach the
anti-school culture theory
as a master narrative (Bamberg 2004), which provides certain
explanations, as well as
categories and presumed activities related to failing boys in
school. Thereafter, drawing on
ethnographic data from fieldwork in two Swedish secondary
schools, I explore the ways in
which the anti-school narrative permeates and is contradicted by
social interaction in
everyday school life.
Anti-School Culture in Swedish Public Reports
One theory widely used in both academia and the popular media
to explain boys’

underachievement posits the existence of an anti-school culture.
This thesis was originally
established by Paul Willis (1977), in his pioneering work
Learning to Labour, along with
several other contributions that have followed in his tracks.
Willis, however, has been
criticized for, among other things, not depicting girls and for
romanticizing boys’ resis-
tance (McRobbie 1980). This criticism withstanding, Willis’
description of an anti-school
culture among young men has surprisingly not been the subject
of much critical scrutiny.
On the contrary, the idea has won considerable approval, not
least in major Swedish public
reports on the subject. According to the idea of an anti-school
culture, to make a serious
effort to do well at school is simply not consistent with
performing “cool” or other
normative forms of masculinities. Other scholars have, in a
similar vein, discussed a
“hegemonic masculinity” (Connell 1995, 2000) or “traditional
ideologies of masculinity”
(Kimmel 2010) as not consistent with schoolwork (see also Mac
an Ghaill 1994). However,
in their oft-cited book Young Masculinities, Stephen Frosh, Ann
Phoenix, and Rob Pattman
(2002) claim that many of the British schoolboys who they
interviewed have developed a
middle way, according to which boys engage in popular
practices of masculinity and yet
(albeit more implicitly and quietly) remain focused on their
studies. The authors demon-
strate how, in their British study, boys talk about the
importance of gaining good grades,
but they have to make it look as if they had made such
achievements without making any

effort (cf. Nyström 2012).
These important findings are often referred to in various
Swedish official reports on the
topic of gender and school achievement (Björnsson 2005; DEJA
2010; Kimmel 2010;
Skolverket 2006, 2009; Wernersson 2010). There has been a
significant production of such
texts, and yet, in spite of their plurality, what appears so
striking is a general convergence
around the thesis that there exists an anti-school culture. For
example, in a report that
received much public attention upon publication, Mats
Björnsson claims that,
Compared to boys, it is easier for a girl to be both “popular”
and a “swot” in school. This situation
is framed by the fact that schools are being more and more
feminized with respect to school staff
[. . .] Boys often develop their positions within an anti-school
culture, something that seems to
decline in higher education. [Björnsson 2005:41, author’s
translation]
Jonsson Boys’ Anti-School Culture? 277
In another report, published by the Agency for Education in
2006, the gender gap in school
achievement is discussed in terms of certain characteristics that
are attributed to boys:
compared to girls, boys are described in the report as having
more relaxed and less
ambitious attitudes towards schoolwork. Furthermore, in
another report published by this

agency that investigated factors affecting school results in
Swedish elementary schools, the
presence of an anti-school culture is used to explain boys’
school achievements:
Several studies show that anti-school cultures—of various kinds
and strengths—are rather wide-
spread above all among boys from working class homes, and
this in turn plays a crucial factor in
their school achievements. [Skolverket 2009:238, author’s
translation]
Moreover, in 2008, the Swedish Ministry of Education and
Research appointed a commit-
tee, named “Delegationen för jämställdhet i skolan” (DEJA), to
inquire into equality in
schools. The results of the inquiry were published in several
volumes of the Swedish
government’s official reports series. In their final and
concluding publication, DEJA (2010)
wrote that the “boy problem” could be explained by the fact that
to make a serious effort
at school is not perceived among boys as “cool” and that,
furthermore, a negative male
peer culture is believed to emerge as a result of boys’ later
maturity.
Needless to say, the quotations above do not account for the full
content of the reports,
and some of the texts provide critical discussions of the same
concepts (see Wernersson
2010). Nonetheless, in the reports, one can identify plenty of
descriptions of “cool” or
“traditional” masculinities, which are said not to be fully
compatible with the efforts
needed in order to get on at school, as well as judgments about

the existence of an
anti-school culture among boys. My point here is that the theory
discussed by Willis and
others has in many respects during the last decade taken on a
life of its own, serving as the
unquestioned backdrop against which the issue is discussed in
policy documents. In this
article, I shall not undertake any further critical review of
Willis’ (or others’) original
academic works. What I shall argue, instead, is that it is
possible to investigate the theory
of anti-school culture as a master narrative—that is, a
sociocultural form of interpretation,
which both precedes and provides a way to make sense of
experiences, practices, and
identities about school (see Andrews 2004:1; Bamberg
2004:360).
According to Bethan Benwell and Elizabeth Stokoe, for a piece
of talk or text to be
categorized as a narrative, it has to “ incorporate basic
structural features including a
narrator, characters, settings, a plot, events that evolve over
time, crisis and resolutions”
(2006:133). In addition, to be called a narrative, the story
should be able to answer the
question of tellability; that is, it has to provide an answer to
why the story is worth telling.
The anti-school culture theory, as presented in the Swedish
reports, includes all these
elements: first, there are the narrators who produce the reports;
second, we have the presence
of established gendered characters, for example “the relaxed,
cool, and rowdy boy” or “the
ambitious school girl”; third, there is a distinct plot about boys’
disengagement in school as

well as, fourth, a clearly defined setting, the school, in which
the narrative is said to reside.
Furthermore, the story of failing boys and their anti-school
culture unfolds temporally. Note
how the DEJA report refers to how girls and boys may over time
develop different attitudes
towards schoolwork; the aspect of boys’ later maturity is
believed to cause different,
gender-related, peer cultures. The theme of crisis is also
present: the narrative gains much of
its sustenance in diagnosing a gender gap in school
achievement, with reports seeking to
offer up possible solutions. Finally, considering the amount of
texts written on the subject,
there is no doubt that the narrative of boys’ anti-school culture
is indeed tellable. As I
mentioned in the introduction, my principal interest is in how
this narrative is treated, in
policy reports, as an unchallenged fact that must be dealt with.
The aim of this article is
therefore to explore the ways in which the anti-school culture
narrative is reproduced, at the
same time as it is also contradicted and subverted by students
and teachers in social
278 Anthropology & Education Quarterly Volume 45, 2014
interaction within local school contexts. Thus, an implicit
consequence of this study may be
to contribute to a critical discussion of dominant understandings
of boys’ lower academic
achievement and oppositional behaviors in school.
A Narrative Perspective

Drawing on Butler’s (1999) theory of performativity, my
analysis will stress the impor-
tance of language use in the construction of gender identities.
This implies the recognition
of the constitutive character of language, according to which
both the stories told and
linguistic styles used (Bucholtz 2011; Coupland 2007) play a
crucial role in the construction
of particular identities. Thus, the position of the young male
student is understood as
being constituted in interaction through talk. This statement
should, however, not be
interpreted as supposing that individuals are free to “choose
their own identity” by using
whatever linguistic feature they like. Rather, I regard the
“rowdy boy” as a subject position
that emerges through the intersection of both what particular
individuals do with linguis-
tic practices and the attitudes about boys and schooling that
circulate in public discourse,
and that come to be transmitted within the school setting itself
(cf. Cameron and Kulick
2003).
One way of analyzing talk as action is through a narrative
perspective. Narratives
provide us with explanations and meaning, as well as resources
with which to construct
identities and to make sense of experiences (Riessman 2008;
Squire et al. 2008). When
students describe their positions or experiences in school, they
use stories that are cultur-
ally known. Furthermore, within the anti-school narrative, the
category of the “rowdy
boy” is ascribed certain category bound activities (Sacks

1992)—activities that the category
is expected to do—such as “being cool,” “relaxed,”
“independent,” “a rule breaker,”
“active,” or “immature.” I shall be taking as my point of
departure that master narratives
may “structure how the world is intelligible, and therefore
permeate the petit narratives of
our everyday talk” (Bamberg 2004:361). As Andrews states,
dominant cultural narratives
“become the vehicle through which we comprehend not only the
stories of others, but
crucially of ourselves as well” (2004:1).
Furthermore, following Michael Bamberg’s call (2006:140) for
“small stories” in narra-
tive research, this article shall consider storytelling as an
activity that takes place between
people, with the narrative emerging at the very point of its
telling. This perspective on
narratives and small stories should be contrasted with a
tradition of studying what we
might call more canonical stories, often collected in interviews
by a researcher with the
ambition of grasping the informants’ lengthy and undisturbed
narratives. On the contrary,
a small story perspective takes an interest in stories that are
jointly constructed in inter-
action. Following Ellinor Ochs and Lisa Capps (2001), I am
looking for the “less polished,
less coherent narratives that pervade ordinary social encounters
and are a hallmark of the
human condition” (2001:57). A key issue in the analysis of
small stories is, as Alexandra
Georgakopoulou (2007:4) states, to recognize narratives as
phenomena embedded in local
practices and to understand these stories as both emergent and

as a result of processes of
negotiation and interaction among members engaged in
conversation (see also Milani and
Jonsson 2011; Phoenix 2008). This perspective includes an
interest in what conversational
actions people accomplish in their storytelling (Stokoe and
Edwards 2006:57). I will pay
specific attention to one such aspect of narrative action, namely
the practice of giving
accounts, which is defined by Marvin Scott and Stanford Lyman
as:
[A] linguistic device employed whenever an action is subjected
to valuative inquiry. Such devices
are a crucial element in the social order since they prevent
conflicts from arising by verbally
bridging the gap between action and expectation [. . .] By an
account, then, we mean a statement
made by a social actor to explain unanticipated or untoward
behavior. [1968:46]
Accounts can in this sense be described as forms of
justification, which play the role of
saving face for the actor giving the account. In a similar vein,
Richard Buttny (1993) suggests
that accounts can be viewed as “the use of language to
interactionally construct preferred
meanings of problematic events” (1993:21). However, Buttny
states that accounts have
many different functions and cannot solely be said to have a
reparative function. They
emerge in social interaction and are given meaning in and

through a specifiable context.
Michael Billig (1996) adds that the purpose of giving an
account is far from always to seek
consensus, stating that “accounts can be controversial, rather
than being devices which
prevent controversy” (Billig 1996:212). In this sense, an
account can be described as a sort of
accusatory disagreement in which the account needs to be
performed, otherwise others will
presume the accused agrees with the blame (Buttny 1993:60). In
other words, blame,
accusation, or other forms of criticism call for the addressee to
offer an account, an
explanation “designed to recast the pejorative significance of
action and an individual’s
responsibility of it” (Buttny 1993:1; see also Evaldsson 2007).
Methodology and School Context
The data used in this article are taken from two ethnographic
studies in two secondary
schools; both of them are situated in multi-ethnic suburbs of the
Swedish capital Stock-
holm. The schools are referred to as the South (project 1) and
the North (project 2) school
in the text. Despite a widespread image of Sweden as the
egalitarian welfare society of
northern Europe, the multi-ethnic suburbs of Sweden’s larger
cities have become associ-
ated with social and ethnic segregation, unemployment,
discrimination, poor Swedish
language skills, and, not least, underachieving students in
underachieving schools (Bunar
2011:142; Kallstenius 2010). Both schools in this article can be
described as such examples.
Even if some of the students I followed have attained good

grades, narratives of the
underperforming suburban school, and especially the “rowdy
immigrant school boy,”
flourish among the informants. The Swedish media plays its part
in establishing this image
by comparing the achievement of schools, and recurrently
publishing their average
grades, providing thereby a picture of the winners and losers of
schools. This, in turn,
serves to strengthen a pattern of well-performing students
fleeing from low-status subur-
ban schools to the schools of the inner city (which in a Swedish
context is equivalent with
high status).
Because there is a greater concentration of low-income jobs and
higher rates of unem-
ployment in the multi-ethnic suburbs, issues of ethnicity and
class are very much inter-
woven here. Indeed, while I shall talk about students in multi-
ethnic schools, many of
these same students could be described as children of a new
Swedish working class. All
the same, in this article it is gender—rather than ethnicity and
class—that is the primary
focus, principally because I wish to highlight the assumptions
underpinning the Swedish
reports of both a “male anti-school culture” and “the rowdy
boy” category. Though gender
is the main focus, the context of the two multi-ethnic schools I
have just offered remains
relevant for the cases presented in this article and thus should
be kept in mind.
The first project took place in a secondary school in a suburban
area south of Stockholm

over a period of one year, from 2003 to 2004. About half of all
students at the school are
categorized by school staff as “immigrant pupils” or students of
“immigrant descent”
(with both parents having been born outside Sweden). I spent
three days a week in the
school, both at lessons and breaks, with the intended aim of
accounting for the pupil’s
entire school day. Methodologically, the project involved tape
recordings of informal
conversations, participant observation annotated in the form of
field notes (about 400
printed pages), five group interviews, and 12 individual
interviews with students in Years
8 and 9 (age 14–16).
The second project was conducted in a secondary school north
of Stockholm, situated in
a multi-ethnic setting, in which a majority of its population are
either immigrants or have
parents who migrated to Sweden. As part of a commissioned
research project to examine
why boys from the municipal’s school are performing below the
national average, I
followed the students two days a week between September 2007
and February 2008,
during which time I observed five of the school’s classes in
Years 6–9 (ages 12–16). Field
notes (about 100 printed pages) were complemented with tape
recordings of naturally
occurring talk and semistructured group interviews with 18
pupils. When, in this article,

I present excerpts of conversations, I am referring to data that
were audiotaped and then
transcribed. When I present students’ conversations in text with
quotation marks but
without using excerpts, I am utilizing data that were
documented by my field notes, which
were written down as the conversations took place.
So as to obtain a variety of narratives and perspectives on the
subject, I followed both
male and female students, both those who do well and those
who do less well at school.
Because I am interested in the performance of gender, alongside
the positions that stu-
dents come to occupy in everyday school life, participant
observations together with tape
recordings of naturally occurring talk have, in my data
collection, been privileged over
individual interviews. Nonetheless, interviews—which I
consider as another instance of
social interaction, jointly produced by the researcher and the
participants in the study—
offer a further opportunity to discuss the topic of gender and
school achievement under
circumstances that differ from interaction in the classroom and
during break times; such
data therefore provide additional perspectives on the subject.
The four cases presented below have been selected from this
large data corpus for several
reasons. First, they all relate to the anti-school culture narrative
and thus allow an investi-
gation into how this narrative is used or contested in mundane
talk. For instance, in focusing
exclusively on these four cases, a possibility will be afforded to
make sense of those

situations in which students in various ways oppose schoolwork.
Second, they offer
examples in which the participants themselves (whether
teachers or students) explicitly
define the situation or the story as one about rule-breaking
activity, in one form or another,
or an unwillingness among students to fulfill what school
requires. Third, these types of
activities—along with the commentaries offered on these same
activities—are part of
everyday school life, insofar as they remain common to my
material, broadly speaking.
During my time at the two schools, I noticed daily examples of
students disengaging
themselves from schoolwork, whether sharing a joke among
friends or partaking in other
oppositional interactions within the class room. At the same
time, my field notes are equally
filled with examples of situations where those same students
followed teachers’ instruc-
tions and fulfilled their school tasks with quiet efficiency.
Having said that, I shall not claim
that the examples below are in any way representative of all the
interactions that took place
in the schools under investigation, neither shall I provide any
form of typology of all kinds
of rule-breaking activities that might exist in these schools.
Rather, I have selected these four
cases in order to critically discuss the prevailing narrative of
boys’ anti-school culture.
We Have to Focus!
Locally collated statistics on pupils’ grades show that the North
School has a lower
ranking than the municipal average, with boys having somewhat

lower grades than girls
in all the schools in the area. This is, after all, the reason why I
was invited to the school’s
classrooms in the first place; as part of a commissioned research
project, I was asked to
study and comment on boys’ achievement in one of the
municipality’s schools.
On one particular day, I sit in a Swedish class for Year 9 pupils
(15 to 16 years old) when
the teacher, Inger, instructs the pupils to work in small groups
and write a short essay.
Dennis, Nima, Ale, and Mark—four boys described by some of
their peers as “popular” or
“those who think they’re cool”—quickly ask their teacher if
they can work in a small study
room next to the classroom. With Inger’s permission, the boys
enter the study room, and
as they close the door the atmosphere changes from quiet
classroom chit-chat to loud
banter. Dennis looks at me and asks: “Why are you following
us?” Before I have an
opportunity to respond, Mark suggests: “Well, to get the worst
examples!” By posing the
question, Dennis, for a few moments, reminds me about my
position in the class. Being a
white adult male in my mid-thirties, I am not perceived as one
of the boys in school, nor
am I seen as a teacher; simply, I am recognized as a researcher
by students.

Retrospectively I sometimes felt that my presence served to
accentuate an anti-school
culture narrative, as if the boys had an idea of what kind of
stories I was trying to collect
in my role as “researcher.” By endeavoring not to lecture the
boys, of habitually taking
field notes while suspending moral judgments whenever the
classroom norm was being
overrun, sometimes these strategies provoked laughter from the
students and, even,
instigated more rule-breaking activities among those I followed.
On the other hand, my
presence generated many accounts of students seeking explicitly
to distance themselves
from anti-school culture attitudes, as a way of absolving
themselves from being held
responsible for any rule-breaking actions. Interestingly, both
the performance of the
student position that Mark then labels as the “worst example,”
and the strategy to disso-
ciate oneself from the same position, draws on the narrative of
boys’ anti-school culture. To
be able to embody as well as to mark out a distance from the
“rowdy boy” category means
that the category of the “rowdy boy” must have already been
culturally established.
Therefore, when Mark describes his group as “the worst
example,” I cannot avoid
thinking that this is an interesting self-presentation—what
exactly is he referring to?
Maybe the next few minutes in the study room will give some
indication.
On one side of the study room, books and other school supplies
are stored on some

shelves. There Mark finds some rolls of tape which he starts
unwinding so that he can
make a ball of tape. Suddenly, Inger opens the door and the lads
are caught off guard. They
try to hide the ball and pretend to be doing their schoolwork.
Nonetheless, Inger notices
the ball of tape and tells Mark to throw it in the rubbish bin,
whereupon she underlines the
importance of concentrating on the classwork. The boys then
mumble their explanations
as they briefly lean over their textbooks. However, as soon as
Inger leaves the room again,
Mark says: “Pick up the ball of tape, she’ll kill me if she sees
me, give me the tape too! I
hope she won’t see me, I don’t want no shit!” The boys continue
chatting while throwing
the ball to each other. Now and then, they look out through the
room’s glass windows to
see if the teacher will return. They disobey their teacher’s order
not to play with the ball,
and they run the risk of being found out by the teacher.
Within narrative analysis, temporality is often described as a
hallmark that distin-
guishes narratives from other linguistic features. However,
Georgakopoulou (2007)
argues that this aspect should not be restricted solely to time
that has passed. In the studio
room, the boys discuss a near future—what might happen if the
teacher discovers their
rule-breaking activities. This small story of theirs includes a
possible crisis: the risk of
being detected and then falling from their teacher’s grace. The
very point of the game with
the tape ball seems to be exactly this: to collectively break a
class rule, to dare to take that

risk and to talk about what will happen if or when the teacher
enters. Furthermore, both
the practices of breaking the school rules as well as
speculations surrounding a possible
future conflict with the teacher are associated with the category
of the “rowdy student.”
Otherwise put, we can say that this short conversation indexes
(Georgakopoulou 2007:142;
Ochs 1992) who the boys in the study room are.
On the one hand, the anti-school culture narrative offers the
positions to which the boys
relate in their discussion of what will happen if their teacher
sees them playing with the
ball; it is through this established narrative that, indeed, the
jokes and the tape-ball game
come to make sense. On the other hand, however, this very
narrative is contradicted by
other statements made during the same interaction event. While
playing with the ball of
tape, the boys begin to think aloud about who should initiate the
classwork. This is a
lengthy procedure: “I cannot, you can write!” Nima says. “No, I
can’t be bothered” Ale
replies. “We really should be working by now, we have to finish
in time!” Nima repeats,
commenting on the fact that time is running out in the lesson.
Nima’s turn is almost
identical to Inger’s previous words, even though she is no
longer present in the room.
After having reminded his comrades of the importance of doing

schoolwork, Nima sits
down and starts writing the first few lines in his notebook and
after a short while Dennis
suddenly takes over from Nima as the author of the essay. He
sits in Nima’s seat and starts
writing where Nima had stopped. There seems to be a tacit
agreement that someone has
to assume responsibility to ensure that the work is coming along
while the others keep
him company, telling jokes, playing with the ball, and being
social. Inger once again opens
the study room door and asks how they are getting on with the
work. “We’re discussing
the key points today, and putting it in words tomorrow,” Nima
explains in a way that I
perceive as a strategy to confirm that they really are working on
the essay and to conceal
the fact that a few minutes earlier they were not doing the work
and were clearly breaking
the class rules. However, when the teacher leaves the room, the
same points are made, but
this time it is Nima telling his friends: “Now we’ve really got to
work. We’ve got to keep
up, this is Year 9!” “Well, I can read if you write, I’m not
important to the group anyway!”
Mark states.
How to interpret Mark’s response, here? Maybe it is to be read
along the lines of the
anti-school narrative, as a strategy adopted by Mark to avoid
making an effort. And yet, at
the same time, the statement is presented as an excuse; he
provides an account (Buttny
1993) for not doing the school task. According to Ochs and
Capps (2001:103), a social group
holds its members morally accountable for their actions. An

important way to construct
membership in such a community is for its members to
recognize what is to count as the
moral standard, what principles shall keep right distinct from
wrong? This question is
addressed by Mark in the form of a comment to the discussion
about the school task. His
account includes a norm, such that one is supposed to contribute
to schoolwork and be
important to the group. All the boys agree to finish the
schoolwork, and finally Ale
summarizes this agreement by asking about the standard of their
work: “All right, what
grade are we aiming for then, a high or an average one?”
The boys use different recognizable linguistic features, or what
Coupland (2007) calls
styles, with various performative effects during the short
episode. Note how Nima uses a
style that mimics the voice of the teacher. Because no laughter
follows his words, his
speech is not perceived as a form of parody or irony. Nima’s
shift in style serves none-
theless to challenge hegemonic discourses about how boys are
categorized as the “cool”
boys in their local school context, and how such boys are
expected and appear to speak. By
shifting styles, Nima is for a moment embracing the position of
the school-oriented
student. By showing themselves as both rule-breaking and
ambitious school students, the
boys negotiate identities and piece together an evaluative
perspective (Ochs and Capps
2001:36) on school strategies. This situation resembles what
Frosh, Phoenix, and Pattman
(2002:201) note about boys’ balancing act between performing

hegemonic masculinity and
being successful students. There is, however, a crucial
difference when comparing their
research with the situated example I have described above.
Drawing on data from indi-
vidual and group interviews, the British study pointed out that
boys’ school-oriented
approach should not be visible to other boys. This meant that
young men tried to achieve
good grades in school without showing the others their efforts.
Conversely, in the present
study, Ale, Mark, Dennis, and Nima are very open about the
importance of producing
good school assignments. Although, admittedly, the strategy of
playing with a ball of tape
while writing the essay is probably not the most efficient way of
achieving the best grades.
And yet the boys make plain that they must make an effort, as
demonstrated by their
comments: “Come on!,” “Now we have to focus!,” “This is Year
9!,” and “What grade are
we aiming for?” Obviously, it is possible in the boys’
community to perform other
masculinities than solely the one of the anti-school–oriented
young man. Therefore, it is
neither a refusal to study nor a risk of losing face in front of
male friends when engaging
in schoolwork that explains the situation.
I Don’t Care!

There are now different types of rule-breaking activities taking
place in school, and the
above example of boys who challenge classroom norms while
showing a willingness to do
well in their studies is far from the only scenario. The following
case is taken from an
ethnographic study at a secondary school in the south of
Stockholm.
Daniel, 14, is often described by teachers and classmates as a
“rowdy boy.” This
categorization carries within itself a narrative of who he is and
how he is to be addressed
in school: when it came to light during my year of fieldwork
that there had been various
violations of school rules, I noticed that Daniel was usually
singled out as a suspect for
questioning. During an interview, he explains to me that he has
been summoned to the
principal’s office many times and that he has to, in different
ways, defend his conduct in
school. He describes himself to me as someone who is “not the
teacher’s pet” and who
dissociates himself from both the teachers and the vast majority
of his classmates. In the
same interview, Daniel presents himself as “Swedish,” in
opposition to what he calls the
“disturbing immigrant boys” at the school. His statements,
jokes, and disparaging remarks
on the theme of immigrant identities are also the reason why he
is accused of being racist
by some of his classmates—a label from which he clearly
disidentifies. Nonetheless, such
an allegation further establishes his position among classmates
as somewhat strange,
exhibiting as he does the wrong or immoral set of beliefs. At

school, Daniel has few friends
and, apart from these friendships, he describes his schooldays as
a pretty frustrating part
of his life.
During one of his English classes, Daniel sits beside me at the
back of the classroom.
The teacher, Berit, tells her pupils to listen carefully to a tape-
recorded story and to be
ready to answer questions afterwards about the piece to which
they have listened. It is a
story about someone at a radio station who makes a prank call
and, in jest, tells a lie.
Daniel is slouched over his desk; it looks like he is asleep when
the teacher turns off the
tape recorder and asks him the first question: “Who is the
caller?” Daniel replies that he
does not know, but Berit is unsatisfied with his answer. “Why
don’t you know, were you
asleep?” Daniel defends himself by saying: “I didn’t hear!”
Berit rewinds the tape and
plays the story once again as Daniel openly goes back to
slouching over his desk. When
the story finishes for the second time, Berit asks him the same
question: “Who is the
caller?” “The studio . . .” Daniel begins, but then falls silent.
“If I ask you to listen, then
you should listen!” “The studio technicians” Daniel replies and
Berit confirms that he
finally got it right, adding that, in any case, he has to keep up
and do what is expected
of him during her lessons.
The class picks up where it left off. Berit asks her pupils
questions about the story, and
for a moment Daniel escapes her attention. At the end of the

lesson though, Berit returns
to him with new questions, and once more he cannot give
satisfactory answers. Berit now
switches from English to Swedish, so as to emphasize the
seriousness of what she says and
to ensure that no words will be misunderstood: “Don’t you
understand that I am disap-
pointed with you, you have done well otherwise!” Daniel replies
that he doesn’t under-
stand why she would be disappointed with him, saying that he
will switch to another
teacher’s language group anyway, adding; “So I don’t care!”
Daniel’s replies, in combination with his way of openly
slouching over his desk, are
illustrative of the anti-school narrative. We are here presented
with the necessary narrative
elements: the male student character who (as the plot of the
story) distances himself from
school, who expressly says he does not bother about either the
teacher’s instructions or her
reprimands, and who performs a “cool” masculinity with his
classmates as his audience.
This is also the retelling of a story that is clearly evaluated by
his teacher: Daniel’s actions
are taken by her as an example of bad manners and serve as a
reason for her to be
disappointed. However, there are some ambiguities in this
situation that ought to be
considered too. When I ask other students in the class about the
incident, it does not look

like Daniel’s comments have gained him popularity, and he does
not seem to have
performed a “cool masculinity” at all. On the contrary, the
dominant view among his
classmates is that he has disturbed the lesson; he is generally
annoying and somewhat odd
to boot. Thus, I understand the classroom interaction as follows:
Daniel’s defiant reply, “I
don’t care,” is a linguistic resource he uses in classroom
dialogue framed by evaluation
and discipline. When Berit repeats her questions, Daniel is
revealed as someone who is not
paying enough attention, or in other words, he is positioned as a
failing student. This is an
accusation that calls for an account, and the practice of giving
accounts is therefore an
important part of the narrative work undertaken in this
classroom example.
Buttny (1993:21) describes accounts as closely related to the
normative organization of
adjacency pairs in talk. An adjacency pair is composed by two
utterances, expressed by
two speakers. Either the second part provides an expected
answer to the first part’s turn,
or the speaker gives an account of why the preferred answer
does not work. Failure to
provide one of these responses counts as violating the adjacency
pair rule (Buttny 1993:42).
Daniel clearly provides a dispreferred response because he
answers that he does not know
who the caller in the story is. The teacher’s questions are not
only a test of knowledge here;
by posing the questions, Berit does not only blame him for not
giving the correct answers
but also for not being watchful at her lesson. The teacher’s

questions have, in that sense, a
disciplinary effect.
Despite the fact that the teacher and the student do not agree, I
regard their classroom
conversation as an example of how a narrative of the “rowdy
school boy” emerges in
interaction. This narrative includes a certain dramaturgical
element: Daniel is asked ques-
tions he initially cannot answer, and the fact that the teacher
returns at the end of the
lesson with new questions that remain unanswered serves to
consolidate Daniel’s position
as a pupil who does not perform well at school. By announcing
that he will switch
language groups and telling his teacher that he does not care, he
is claiming he is not
dependent on the class that makes judgments on his behavior.
Thus, the teacher’s words
do not have such a profound effect on him. Daniel’s account
reduces thereby the power of
the blame (Buttny 1993). This is in line with Goodwin’s finding
(1990) that expressions like
“I do not care” can be used to demonstrate that the previous
speaker’s turn will have less
impact. It is a strategy to reduce the force of the previous
speaker’s words, a way to claim
that what has just been said is irrelevant. Moreover, I would
assert that the “rowdy boy”
category is deeply ingrained in the school’s local discourse.
Berit’s appeals to Daniel—
calling upon him to change his behavior and start listening to
the lesson—have their point
of derivation in the existence of this position. Equally, Daniel’s
defense that he does not
care has its origin in the presence of the “rowdy boy” category.

The classroom dialogue
evokes this masculine position. According to this interpretation,
Daniel is basically not
distancing himself from the school in order to construct a “cool
masculinity.” On the
contrary, his use of the expression “I don’t care” could be
understood as a way to escape
the accusation that he is failing at school. To be categorized as
a failed student, or as a pupil
in whom the teacher has reason to be disappointed, is a blame
that Daniel seems to defend
himself against. At the same time, telling the teacher “I don’t
care” confirms the anti-school
narrative as well as Daniel’s position as the “rowdy boy” in the
classroom.
You Shouldn’t Be a Doormat!
What I have tried to show so far is how the anti-school culture
theory could be
interpreted as a master narrative, which is both reproduced and
contested in local school
contexts. The influence of the narrative, when used to make
sense of experiences from
school life, is also evident when, in group interviews, I ask
students at the North School to
reflect on study strategies and gender. A recurring response
when I ask them to describe
how a good student is expected to act—or what the
characteristics of a successful study
strategy are—is that one should be attentive and willing to

follow the teacher’s instruc-
tions. However, this strategy seems to be associated with a
problem.
On one occasion, Ale, Saman, Dennis, and Nima speak
ironically about being able to
follow instructions, and then, in a more serious tone, they add
that students awarded the
highest grades “are silent and feel embarrassed.”
A—Ale (student)
S—Saman (student)
R—Researcher
A: Like it’s like this, what do you call it? Girls who feel
embarrassed and are quiet all the
time.
S: They get the good grades!
A: Even if they do badly, even if their results are bad but
they’re kind-
R: What do you mean they feel embarrassed? I think that’s
interesting.
A: Well, they’re quiet, they do not talk, and they don’t dare to
speak.
R: No, and then you get good grades?
A: Yes that’s (.) yes kind of, or like if I’ve got good grades
good results but at the same
time I’m a bit disruptive then maybe someone else who’s quiet
and feels embarrassed
and who has worse results than me, they can still get just as
good grades as mine or
even better! [—]
R: Does that go for both boys and girls or is it-

A: For girls because most guys are not so quiet (yes) and then
they say that you should
be active and participate in the lessons (.) but (1.0) it seems that
when you don’t
participate you get good grades.
The above discussion includes a metalinguistic reflection; what
Ale portrays as a success-
ful study strategy is at the same time a description of a
linguistic style characterized by not
speaking during a classroom discussion and by feeling
embarrassed, which the boys in
their comments index as something feminine. Here, Ale makes a
comment on gender and
language as well as on academic performances—two phenomena
that, according to his
description, are closely connected. His reflection is also
reminiscent of dominant descrip-
tions of “silent girls” and “noisy boys” in school. Boys’
domination in classroom talk has
been ascribed to their anti-school culture, whereas girls’ silence
(whatever that means)
does not seem to prevent them from performing well in
schoolwork (for a critical discus-
sion, see Sunderland 2004).
Furthermore, in their conversation, femininity is constructed in
relation to masculinity
and is described as something of which the boys are not a part;
femininity is described as
something, more to the point, deemed to be of lower value,
associated with characteristics

such as cowardice and obsequiousness (cf. Frosh et al. 2002).
The boys, however, articulate
this feminine style with what it means to be successful in the
school system. Being quiet
and being a girl is, according to the boys, rewarded with high
grades in the school’s
hidden curriculum.
Ale continues the conversation a little bit later, saying that in
order to succeed in school,
you have to “brown nose.” “You have to bake biscuits and bring
music from your country
of origin,” Dennis adds, as one of the girls in his class once did.
“Be nice and do your
homework,” Saman continues; “Never argue!” Dennis further
adds, and once the topic is
introduced, the examples seem to never end: “Don’t be late, do
not talk during classes
because even if you are smart and know the subject, your
chances are ruined if you talk too
much.” “So then they will judge you before they’ve seen your
results,” Ale says, and Nima
agrees: “Exactly, they judge you if you talk in the classroom.”
What performative work is being done, and what narrative is
being told here? Through
their jointly constructed story on silent girls and talkative boys,
the boys construct them-
selves as autonomous, independent, and unfairly treated. They
manage to do so by using
characters from established narratives on gender and school
achievement; the “indepen-
dent boy,” the “unfair teacher,” and the “brown-nosing” and
“quiet girl.” These categories

are drawn upon to explain why the boys themselves are unable
to achieve higher grades
or why there is no point studying more than they already do.
Together the boys construct
a story where the word embarrassed, along with the strategy of
brown nosing, includes
aspects of subordination to the teacher’s authority but also
performs expected pupil
identities—in the boys’ account, a student passes as a good
student by not challenging the
teacher’s position. This, we can add, is a highly tellable story;
not just one of many to be
told, rather it is greatly encouraged in the conversation.
Ale and Saman comment on a further category, namely that of
“immigrant students.”
An “immigrant student” is expected to perform an immigrant
stereotype who “brings
biscuits and music from their homeland” as the boys ironically
remark. These comments
shall be interpreted in relation to another influential narrative,
which is sometimes
drawn upon by the schools’ staff when non-white students, who
happen to have parents
who were born outside of Sweden, are affirmed as “immigrant
students” in school. This
is often carried out in a positive tone that nonetheless makes
race and ethnicity the
principal marker of difference. I have shown in previous
writings (Jonsson 2007; Milani
and Jonsson 2011; Milani and Jonsson 2012) how the category
of the “young immigrant
lad” is often associated with trouble, disturbance, and improper
language use in every-
day school life. In the excerpt above, however, we discover an
interesting twist on this

theme: the boys critically point out an equally common
stereotype, namely the well-
behaved “immigrant girl” who helps around the house, baking
cookies with an “ethnic
recipe.”
Furthermore, even though much school ethnographic research
shows examples of the
active, gender-bending school girl or the cocky working-class
girls who connect “being a
nice girl” to a deficit and a lack of toughness and personality
(Ambjörnsson 2004; Reay
2001), the discourse of the silent and obedient girl stands firm.
Thus, the boys’ reflections
are also a description of the problems associated with being too
quiet in school.
Berivan and Shirin, two girls from middle-class homes, both of
whom have very good
grades, give a similar description when I ask them about their
study strategies. They point
out that although they both achieve good grades in school, they
do not always intend to be
hard-working students, and it would probably not even be wise
for them to do so:
S—Shirin (student)
B—Berivan (student)
R—Researcher
S: Well, you can’t go nine years in school without getting
thrown out of the classroom

at some time or other! Without getting told off at some stage
and without anything
bad written in your absence report, it just isn’t possible, you
would go crazy, it simply
can’t be done!
R: What do you mean by that? Why would you go crazy?
S: Hey listen! Imagine you have been in school for nine years
and just have listened to
what people say and only done what others are telling you to do
(1.0), how would
you then cope with working life after school? It doesn’t work!
R: No, so you also need-
S: Your boss would take the rip! [In original “driva sönder,”
meaning tease and exploit]
(Berivan laughs)
R: What else do you need then?
S: You would become a doormat, it doesn’t work! You have to-
R: So instead you have to?
S: Well different opinions, sometimes you just have to live!
R: But what does that mean? Just to live?
S: You can’t simply be a school person, just go home from
school, back to school! (yeah)
then you would go completely (1.0) insane!
B: Instead go out sometimes, go home, eat, and take it easy.
Even though Berivan and Shirin themselves really are aiming to
achieve high grades,
they claim in the excerpt that there are still reasons for
violating the position of being
completely loyal to the lesson. “You can’t simply be a school

person” as Shirin says. The
girls seem to denote a different ability, beyond those that are
rewarded in the classroom.
This ability could be described as acting independently. “Take
it easy” and “go out” are
used in the talk as positive words that indicate independence in
relation to school and
studies. Time—both with respect to the past and the future—is
used as a resource in the
girls’ narrative. To spend nine years of compulsory schooling as
the passive student is
evaluated against the girls’ future positions as adults in the
labor market. Through the
use of time in their narrative telling, the girls transform various
student positions, from
a past and present in school to a coming future beyond the
school yard. A link is thus
made between various chronological selves (Blomberg and
Börjesson 2013), according to
which of those positions established in school are presumed to
follow you into adult
life and, specifically, into the workplace. In this way, the girls
use a narrative that orders
the characters of students in both time and space (Bamberg
2004:354). In addition, the
silent or passive student, which was previously rendered
feminine in the boys’ conver-
sation, is obviously a position from which Berivan and Shirin
clearly wish to distance
themselves.
Concluding Remarks
Many gender scholars have critically discussed discourses of a
“feminized school” or
“the poor boys as the new losers” as dominant explanations to

the gender gap in school
achievement (Epstein et al. 1998). I concur with their criticism
and also with the argu-
ment that there are reasons for drawing attention to other
categorizations than gender
when investigating students’ different learning outcomes
(Lahelma 2005). As Griffin
(2000) has pointed out, boys are often constructed as a
homogeneous group within the
dominant discourse that focuses on their collective
underachievement. Nonetheless,
there is an implicit understanding also as to which boys are
actually at risk—often
categorized as working-class or ethnic “other” (Francis 2006;
Nordberg 2008; Reed
1999). The discourses on failing boys in school may therefore
actually reproduce a
normative masculinity at the same time that it marginalizes
other groups of pupils as
deviant, in need of a firmer upbringing and more discipline. In
this article, I have sought
to make a further contribution to this critical discussion. I have
argued that when
the concept of boys’ anti-school culture is used as both a master
narrative and the
unquestioned point of departure in explaining boys’ attitudes
and behaviors in schools,
it risks reconstructing the “rowdy boy” category and
establishing it in a way that fails to
elucidate the complexity of students’ negotiations of both study
strategies and pupil

identities.
I have advocated an analysis that pays close attention to
linguistic resources in social
interaction. I have promoted a small story perspective, based on
ethnographic field notes
and the documentation of naturally occurring talk and group
interviews. This perspective
has been harnessed in order to grasp the co-constructiveness of
narratives and moreover
to understand how stories about failing boys in school can be
seen as the results of
processes of negotiation among students and school staff,
engaged in everyday conversa-
tions (Georgakopoulou 2007). Within this perspective, the anti-
school culture theory shall
not be seen solely as a way to explain attitudes and school
experiences that students
express; it also constitutes a master narrative that precedes
identities and that is available
to use—or to contradict—when students and teachers make
sense of their everyday school
lives.
Finally, with use of the concept of account, it is possible to
analyze situations in which
students in various ways oppose schoolwork and thus shift
analytical focus on the inter-
actional work being done in specific classroom events.
Departing from Buttny’s (1993:1)
description of accounts as talk designed to recast the pejorative
significance of action and
an individual’s responsibility for that said action, I argue that
situations of protest in
classrooms are not necessarily or always expressions of “cool
masculinities” or boys’

anti-school culture. When Daniel informed his teacher he could
not hear the tape, nor that
he cared about her criticism, he used these expressions to
escape the accusation of being
labelled a failing student. For further research on boys and
schooling, I call for an analysis
that considers various expressions of opposition as linguistic
resources, and their avail-
ability to some students, as part of their complex and ongoing
performances of gender and
pupil positions in everyday school life.
Rickard Jonsson is associate professor of Child and Youth
Studies at Stockholm Univer-
sity ([email protected]).
Notes
Acknowledgments. Special thanks to former AEQ editor
professor Nancy H. Hornberger and three
anonymous reviewers for their incisive critique. I am also
grateful to Tommaso M. Milani for useful
feedback on an earlier version of this text and to David Payne
for proofreading as well as making
insightful comments on the article. Earlier versions of this text
were presented at the International
Multidisciplinary Workshop of Marginalization Processes,
Örebro, April 2012, and at the Platform for
Research on Inclusive Schooling, Göteborg, March 2013. This
research has been generously funded
by the Swedish Research Council.
Transcription conventions: (.) denotes a short pause of less than
one second; (1.0) denotes a longer
pause, time in seconds; underlined marks something said with
emphasis; ? denotes question into-

nation; ! denotes exclamation intonation;—denotes words that
are cut off; [—] marks removed part of
speech or text.
mailto:[email protected]
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Chapter 3
3.2 Race, Cultural Ability, and Intelligence
Discriminatory treatment of socially defined "racial" groups is g
enerally rationalized by the idea that different races are biologic
ally endowedwith different abilities. Yet there is no scientific
evidence that any racial group is superior or inferior to any oth
er in its innate cultural abilities.
Neither is there any evidence of racial differences in individuals
' abilities to learn and

adequately participate in any cultural system when they
are given an equal opportunity to learn the necessary skills.
Anthropological researchers who have studied human ways of li
fe around the world have
reported again and again that biological differences
seem to be no barrier to sharing a way of life. They report that c
ommon ways of living, customs, and values are sometimes sprea
d over several
regions occupied by peoples of different biological backgrounds
. How people go about their
lives is determined by their experiences in life andtheir opportu
nities to implement what they
learn through that experience. A child of British parentage whis
ked away at birth and raised by
adoptive Chinese foster parents will learn and value the customs
of his or her Asian peers and
speak an Asiatic language with the same accentas his or her Asi
an playmates. Nothing in the
biological makeup of such a child would impel him or her to val
ue the British political system or to speak with a British accent.
As early as 1911, anthropologist Franz Boas (1911) critiqued th
e biases inherent in
intelligence tests and debunked the myth that "primitive" people
were culturally or
intellectually inferior to White people. Instead, he emphasized p
anhuman shared traits
and cultural relativity. Yet the argument continues to arise that
some races are
inherently less capable of full participation in a particular societ
y. In the United States,
the form of logical thought that is measured by intelligence test
s is a highly valued
social skill, and much has been made of the fact that some so-
called "races" seem toscore higher on these tests than others. W
hen IQ (intelligence quotient), the scores on
intelligence tests, are grouped by race, there is a difference of a

pproximately 15 points
between the averages of Blacks and Whites on most tests of inte
llectual skills
commonly used in the United States. In this section, we will loo
k closely atnonbiological factors that may influence this discrep
ancy in test scores, including
differences in education, language, socioeconomic background,
motivation, and cultural biases in the tests themselves.
The Instability of Test Scores
Contrary to popular belief, an individual's IQ score is far from a
stable measure of an
unchanging trait. In fact, anthropologists, psychologists, and ot
hers fail to agree on what even
counts as intelligence. Intelligence can include various cognitiv
e abilities: verbal,
linguistic, mathematical, spatial, even social; and each ability m
ay reflect a particular
kind of intelligence, some of which are required in some cultura
l contexts more than others.
Nevertheless, beginning in the early 20th century in the United
States, there was aquest to
measure intelligence differences, particularly between Blacks an
d Whites. Such
efforts built upon the misguided efforts of the previous century,
when scientists likes
Samuel Morton tried to show that the skulls of White people we
re larger, and thus that
their brains were larger than other "racial" groups. Such work w
as based on flawed science,
poor sampling, and the erroneous belief that skull
size correlates with intelligence (it does not).
More recently, studies have shown how social context and envir
onment affect intelligence. For instance, during World War I, w
hen the U.S.Army carried out a massive intelligence-
testing program of personnel from many civilian backgrounds, it
found that Blacks in some

northernstates scored higher on IQ tests than did Whites in som
e southern states. Several
studies have demonstrated that environmental factors are able
to affect IQ scores by much more than 15 points in individual ca
ses. In one study of 12-year-old Black New York City school
children, most of
whom had come from southern states, it was found that those w
ho had lived in the city for
more than 7 years scored 20 points higher on IQ
tests than those who had lived there for 2 years or less (Downs
& Bleibtreu, 1972). It has also
been demonstrated that our IQ continues to rise
while we attend school and begins to decline again when we lea
ve the academic setting. The
school environment keeps students actively
engaged in the use of precisely those skills that are called on wh
en they take an intelligence test. A group's average IQ score is t
herefore influenced by the quality and length of its education.
The fallacy that IQ test scores reflect an inborn level of mental
ability is best illustrated by the
rapid changes that have occurred in average IQtest scores throu
ghout the world in the past half century. Data has shown that IQ
s worldwide have increased by about 0.3 points per year since
IQ tests began to be administered. Does this mean that we are al
l getting smarter? Actually,
according to James R. Flynn (2009), the gains inintelligence pri
marily reflect people's ability to perform better on a specific gro
up of questions: questions about similarity (e.g., "how are dogs
and rabbits alike?"). Such questions test our ability to think in t
erms of abstract categories,
which is arguably more a product of modernization
than a product of increased intelligence.
Exactostock/SuperStock
Stereotypes assert that all members of a group share thesame att
ributes. Often, even positive attributes can beracist.

Flynn also addresses racial disparities in intelligence. He finds t
hat the cognitive testing of
Black and White infants shows no differences in intelligence. B
ut, by age 4, the average
Black IQ is 95.4, which is 4.5 points lower than the average Wh
ite IQ. Between ages 2 and
24, Blacks lose 6/10 of a point each year, such that by age 24, t
heir IQ scores have
dropped to 83.4. This change does not reflect a decrease in "inn
ate" intelligence; rather, it
is better understood as the product of particular school and dom
estic environments,
economic circumstances, and social conditions (including racis
m). In effect, IQ tests can be
said to simply measure performance on those tests, and not true
intelligence.
Language Effects on IQ Scores
Dialect or language differences may be another important variab
le affecting the average
intelligence test scores of different groups. Even when tests are
not specifically about
one's knowledge of spelling and grammar, taking intelligence te
sts requires the use of
language skills simply to read any written instructions or unders
tand the test questions. Itis only to be expected that immigrants
whose native languages differ from the one in
which the tests are written would perform poorly on such tests,
regardless of race.
Chandler and Platkos (1969) clearly demonstrated the language
bias in intelligence testing
in one California school district by reevaluating the intelligence
test scores of its Spanish speaking children with a Spanish-
language intelligence test. Most of the children
who had previously been classified as "educable mentally retard
ed" on the basis of the earlier English-
language tests achieved a normal score, and some of them achie

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