ABSTRACT
If school motivation were not socially constructed and reinforced, students in youth detention homes had ample opportunities to establish a different kind of identity within the framework of institutional schooling. This chapter explores two forms of school sabotage that students engaged in, at times paradoxically and subtly facilitated by the institution itself. The first form consists of small-scale, persistent disruptions to schoolwork, while the second involves more conspicuous acts of sabotage that, in the moment, completely overshadowed academic activities. The latter could manifest as talking over a lesson, joking through it, disrupting it with conflict, or simply sleeping through it. By repeatedly undermining schoolwork in these ways, students reinforced an identity distinct from that of a diligent student, an identity marked by defiance, mischief, coolness, cunning, or criminality. This chapter analyzes and illustrates these different forms of school sabotage as they appear in the study's ethnographic material.
