'Cool Boys', 'Party Animals', 'Squids' and 'Poofters': Interrogating the dynamics and politics of adolescent masculinities in school

Abstract

In this paper, a Foucauldian interpretive framework for analysing the production of subjectivity serves as a basis for investigating the ways in which boys fashion their masculinities at one particular school. Interviews conducted with a group of adolescent boys, aged 15-16, in a catholic co-educational high school are drawn on the document certain social practices and behaviours, which become identifiable as particularised instances of masculinity. Data are used to investigate how these boys learn to relate to themselves and to others within the context of peer-group relations and dynamics at this particular school. Possible implications of this research for educational in schools are indicated.