A culture of aggression: school culture and the normalization of aggression in two elementary schools

Abstract

Since the late 1990s, increased public and academic attention has been focused on topics related to bullying and peer aggression in schools, yet these behaviors have proven difficult for schools to address. Using data from an ethnographic study of two rural elementary schools in the Midwestern United States, I make both methodological and theoretical contributions to the literature on this topic. Methodologically, I show that examining ‘minor’ aggressive behaviors in schools reveals the way that more serious issues are also normalized. Theoretically, I show that students and adults actively construct shared understandings in these schools regarding the normalization of aggression, increasing the frequency of these behaviors, limiting the ability of adults to effectively deal with them, and contributing to the stigmatization of students who do not accept them. These findings add to our understandings of bullying and aggression in schools and the relationship between school cultures and peer cultures.

Keywords:

• Bullying
• aggression
• school culture
• education
• ethnography

Acknowledgement

The author would like to thank Laura Backstrom, Bill Corsaro, Donna Eder, and Tim Hallett for their helpful comments on previous drafts of this work. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 2014 Annual Meeting of the Eastern Sociological Society in Baltimore, MD.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 In other work (Harger 2016a) I have discussed the similarities and differences between a broad emphasis on aggressive behaviors and research on microaggressions, defined as ‘the brief and commonplace daily verbal, behavioral, and environmental indignities, whether intentional or unintentional, that communicate hostile, derogatory, or negative racial, gender, sexual-orientation, and religious slights and insults to the target person or group’ (Sue 2010:14) but a full discussion of these similarities and differences is beyond the scope of the current paper.

2 Pseudonyms are used for all names and places.

3 See Harger (2019) for a more detailed discussion of students’ decision-making processes regarding telling.

4 See Harger (2016b) for a further discussion of the ways that adults and students defined bullying in these schools.