Bullying and social exclusion anxiety in schools

Abstract

In this article, I develop a new conceptual framework, a new thinking technology, for understanding the bullying that takes place between children in schools. In addition, I propose a new definition of bullying. This new thinking technology reflects a shift in focus from individual characteristics to the social processes that may lead to bullying. The social approach theorises bullying as one of many reactions to particular kinds of social insecurity. The concepts I develop include the necessity of belonging, social exclusion anxiety and the production of contempt and dignity by both children and adults. I also draw on Judith Butler’s concept of abjection. In the last part of the article, I employ Karen Barad’s theory of agential realism, focusing specifically on her concept of intra-acting enacting forces. The entry to the theoretical development is based on empirical data generated in Denmark during a comprehensive five-year study of bullying.

Keywords:

• school bullying
• bullying definition
• social exclusion anxiety
• production of contempt
• abjection
• agential realism

Notes

1. This article was first published in an extended Danish version in Mobning. Sociale Processer på Afveje, ed J. Kofoed and D.M Søndergaard, 2009, Hans Reitzels Forlag (Søndergaard 2009).

2. I use the term ‘thinking technology’ (Haraway 1992) here to signal something different from theory. As I will elaborate later in the paper, a thinking technology is more fluid, as it is shaped by and shapes the field of study it sets out to examine.

3. The study is part of the eXbus project: Exploring Bullying in School, which was financed by The TrygFoundation in Denmark from 2007 to 2012.

4. The conceptualisation of appropriate/inappropriate, as used by Haraway (1992), is close to Butler’s (1999) concept of the culturally intelligible.

5. The assumption that the human is a social and cultural being is present throughout a number of theoretical traditions: activity theory, cultural psychology, social anthropology, socio-cultural theory, critical psychology and post-structuralist thinking, among others. While the particular emphasis differs from theory to theory, the basic idea is constant: human beings are dependent on, and indeed become human through, societal and cultural embedment.

6. Here, Karen Barad speaks of intra-activity, instead of interactivity, to emphasise that interaction gives rise to new phenomena and not simply exchanges between discrete phenomena that remain intact. She suggests the concept material-discursive intra-actions, hyphenating materiality and discourse in her insistence that these two elements can never be understood apart from each other: Within any phenomenon, they will always already be intra-active.

7. Schott (2009) traces the concept through Kristeva to Mary Douglas’s (1966) analysis of impurity in Purity and Danger. Douglas discusses social processes, so it is Kristeva who draws inspiration from Lacan in applying the concept to individuals. Butler also traces her ideas to Douglas’s (Butler 1999, 166–169).