ABSTRACT
The determination to tease out black children's group and self-image through various experimental research techniques stretches back to the late 1930s and the pioneering work of Kenneth and Mamie Clark in the USA. The identity studies and complementary research on white children's attitudes towards other ethnic groups have demonstrated beyond any doubt that young people are 'racialised' by the time they experience primary school education. A theory of children's relationships has to be able to account for both friendship and hostility. All children therefore have their own model of the social network, an ideology of social relationships, which governs the desired distribution of processes of domination and equality. The absence of a concept of social structure entails the absence of a concept of conflict within social structure. Conflict is seen as central to life in schools, but the emphasis is on how conflicting interests are pragmatically reconciled into a 'working consensus'.
