Peer group cultures and social identity: an integrated approach to understanding masculinities1

1. Portions of this article have been presented previously at the 5th International Gender and Education Conference on Gender, Power, and Difference (29–31 March 2005; see Sherriff, 2005a; see also Sherriff, 2005b).

Abstract

Sociological research investigating boys' masculinity performances has commonly recognised the importance of peer group cultures in identity construction. Whilst such work has undoubtedly offered important and useful frameworks for interpreting and understanding boys' behaviour in schools, the article argues that social psychological theories of intergroup relations also proffer important insights. Drawing upon interview and survey data, the article focuses on the existence of intergroup bias between peer groups in two secondary schools and demonstrates how a social identity framework can assist in providing a fuller and more complex understanding of boys' masculinities than sociological insights alone. Furthermore, it is suggested that gender work strategies designed to address and ultimately help some boys restructure their constructions of masculinity, which recognise the range of complex sociological and social psychological processes at work, are likely to more effective than those that offer partial insights. As such, strategies that draw upon work on masculinities and upon social psychological theories of intergroup relations may be particularly effective.

Acknowledgements

This article is drawn from the author's Ph.D. research funded by an Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) award (R42200154458). Thank you to Dr Carolyn Jackson for her comments on various aspects of this work and to the members of the C31 PGR discussion group. Finally, I would like to thank the British Educational Research Journal anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments on an earlier version of this article.

Notes

1. Portions of this article have been presented previously at the 5th International Gender and Education Conference on Gender, Power, and Difference (29–31 March 2005; see Sherriff, 2005a; see also Sherriff, 2005b).

2. As a consequence of the inability to disentangle self‐concept from self‐esteem, it is common practice for researchers to use the two terms interchangeably (see Byrne, 1996).

3. A ‘neutral’ option was deliberately omitted from the instructions. As adolescence is a particularly irresolute period for many children, it was deemed necessary to ‘force’ an opinion rather than provide a (probably) more attractive middle choice, which, analytically, would be of little value.

4. All six points were divided into approximately equal‐sized units and both verbally and numerically labelled to help increase both reliability and validity (see Klockars & Yamagishi, 1988; Krosnick, 1999). A middle or neutral score was again omitted from the scale for the same reason stated previously.

5. One might argue that there is a further category whereby an individual is a member of the out‐group at the superordinate level of gender, but an in‐group member at the subordinate level of subgroup (for example, when a sporty male pupil considers a sporty female pupil). However, it is important to note that this is not a study on cross‐categorisation in which one would otherwise distinguish 2×2 categories, for instance male/female by studious/non‐studious. Moreover, one might additionally argue that a pupil cannot logically belong to a subgroup of the opposite gender category (Vonk & Olde‐Monnikhof, 1998). That said, pupils can participate in opposite‐sex peer groups without necessarily belonging to the gender category itself. These categorisations were explored primarily through the interview process.

6. Further analysis revealed a gender difference, with boys showing significantly greater levels of in‐group favouritism than girls (M = 3.27, SD = 1.6 vs. M = 2.80, SD = 1.9, respectively; t(329) = 2.41, p<.01).