ABSTRACT
Up to this point, I have focused on social situations and processes that are especially prevalent in school where there are tendencies toward hierarchy: the ranking of groups and individuals. With the exception of very formal hierarchies such as in the modern military, rankings are seldom clear cut or
unambiguous. Yet, even in informal hierarchies most people can agree on who and what is at the upper end, who is at the lower end, and who is neither. When we began our case study of Woodrow Wilson High School (WWHS), our research team expected to encounter a version of hierarchy with relatively strong group boundaries. After several weeks of observations and discussions among the fieldworkers, this assumption seemed inadequate and even misleading. The puzzle was how to document and understand the proliferation of status groups with minimal ranking, variations in the rigidity of their boundaries, and little inter-group conflict. Some previous studies of high schools have suggested that status systems may be less hierarchical and boundaries may be less rigid than is generally assumed.3 There has not, however, been a systematic attempt to specify an alternative to the hierarchical ideal-type. Most studies of high school peer relationships have implicitly assumed a form of hierarchy.4 The purpose of this chapter is to outline such a model and illustrate it with data from WWHS, supplemented by less detailed information about several other high schools scattered around the United States. This nonhierarchical pattern of peer relationships is an example of the new kinds of relationships that are emerging in postmodern society-relationships that tend to be more numerous, more diffuse, and less encompassing.5
