A more ‘livable’ school? A diffractive analysis of the performative enactments of girls' ill-/well-being with(in) school environments

Abstract

School girls in Sweden are reported to develop psychological (ill)health in relation to their school behaviour and over-achievements. The methods offered as prevention and treatments are aimed at the individual girl's self-management of stress, health and psychological state, putting the responsibility on the girls themselves. This feminist agential realist study aims to explore how the material-discursive school environment, that is, the entanglement of architecture, materialities, bodies, discourses and discursive practices – including the discourses on girls' health in research and media texts – are collectively responsible for, co-constitutive of and enacting female students' ill- and well-being. Doing a diffractive analysis, we register how we as researchers are involved and co-productive of this complex apparatus of knowing of school-related ill-/well-being. A diffractive analysis aims to not only analyse how this apparatus is made and what it produces, but also how it can be productive of new possible realities that might produce more livable school environments.

Keywords:

• girls
• health
• school environment
• agential realism
• diffractive methodology
• Karen Barad

Acknowledgements

We would like to sincerely thank Alice and Emma who agreed to participate in this pilot study.

Notes

1. National School Agency (2009) concludes that almost 50% of the girls and 20% of the boys claim to feel stressed frequently in school. Figures show that 24% of the girls and 10% of the boys aged 16−24 claim to feel moderate or strong stress. Forty-six per cent of the girls and 25% of the boys feel anxiety and/or panic attacks regularly. Fifty-eight per cent of the girls and 42% of the boys have problems with feeling tired and 27% of the girls and 19% of the boys have sleeping problems. See also Bragée (2009).

2. Emma and Alice are not the girls' real names.

3. Since Emma and Alice are under 18 we first contacted their parents and informed them about the study and asked for their permission to contact the girls. We made clear that the participation was voluntary, we described how the data would be used (as data in a research article), and that they would have access to our writing throughout the process. We also said that they could read the article before it was published and that the article would be written in English. However, the talk was carried out in Swedish and the data that were produced were translated to English by us. After giving this information we asked if they would consider participating in the study.

4. Fifteen per cent of school children in Stockholm state that they often suffer from bodily pain in the stomach, head, back and shoulders, and 4% or 5% have severe pains almost every day. One per cent of the school children develop chronic pain syndromes like fibromyalgia and irritable colon syndrome. This makes them physically and psychologically impaired to study and work, sometimes for life: chronic pain syndromes that cost the Swedish society ten million Swedish crowns per year (Mlik 2010).