| Description |
ix, 165 pages ; 24 cm |
| Contents |
Foreword / Ann Oakley -- Ch. 1. 'Grandiose revelations of the obvious': themes of girls' friendships -- Ch. 2. Re/theorizing culture: girl subjects and girls' subjectivities -- Ch. 3. Learning your place: researching into girls' friendships -- Ch. 4. Middle-class girls managing their differences -- Ch. 5. Cultural practices of friendship amongst white working-class girls -- Ch. 6. 'Hyper femininity revisited': a working-class girls' heterosexual education -- Ch. 7. Young, gifted and white: middle-class femininities -- Ch. 8. Girls' cultural and social identities and the construction of hegemony |
| Summary |
This lively and revealing study explores a sociologically invisible but important social relationship: girls' friendship. It uncovers often suppressed schoolgirl cultures, at times representing in their most condensed and dramatic form issues of intimacy, secrecy and struggle. Most women have memories of, and most mothers of young daughters become re-immersed in, these all-consuming but little understood passions. This taken-for-granted 'ordinary' relationship is examined using girls' notes, talk, diaries and interviews gathered by observing girls' groups within city schools |
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An important and previously ignored question is addressed by examining how girls' intimacy is structured through class, gender, sexuality and race, especially its paradoxical role in maintaining and challenging 'compulsory heterosexuality'. In this way, a series of case studies analyses how girls variously come to understand and construct 'difference'. In addition, this detailed analysis of girls' friendship contributes to our understanding of how girls simultaneously survive their schools, their families, their relations and subordination to boys and men |
| Notes |
Bibliography: p147-157. - Includes index |
| Bibliography |
Includes bibliographical references (pages [146]-157) and index |
| Subject |
Teenage girls -- Social networks -- Great Britain.
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Friendship in adolescence -- Great Britain.
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Interpersonal relations in adolescence -- Great Britain.
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Girls -- Social networks -- Great Britain.
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| LC no. |
96022706 |
| ISBN |
0335194079 hardback |
|
0335194060 paperback |
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