ABSTRACT
This chapter presents a short ethnographic study of a marginalized population of high school males in a moderately large high school in a suburban community in the northeastern United States. The study points to the significance of a male student’s use of violence as a means of constructing his identity as “masculine.” As marginalized members of this school community, the boys in this study occupy a conflicted social space vis-à-vis traditional male uses of violence: at times, they are victims of aggression by more socially powerful peers; and, at other times, they take up the tactics of the dominant group to secure the social status they would otherwise lack. Over the course of the chapter, I will seek (1) to review the literature on masculinity and schooling as it is relevant to my study, (2) to define the significance of violence in the context of a boy’s construction of his masculine identity, (3) to present an analysis of the most salient features of my findings, and (4) to offer some reflections on this work and how it may be used to further our understanding of the needs of boys in public schools.
