tomboys, good girls and amsterdammers
DESCRIPTION
Presentation on parts of PhD researchTRANSCRIPT
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Tomboys, good girls and Amsterdammers: On girls, identity and multiculturalism
Linda Duits
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Outline
• A bit about me
• Context of PhD project
• Ethnography of doing identity
• Axes of identity
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Linda Duits
• Background in political science
• CW/ASCoR
• Ethnographic approach
• Critical, respectful, ‘whole’ culture
• Assistant professor since Jan 2009
• Qualitative methods
• Youth & subcultures
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What to wear to school?
• Headscarf
• G-string
• Belly button shirt
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Girl culture and popular media • Many opinions, not much research
• ‘MTV-culture’ = gangrapes, ‘breezer sluts’
One-sided perspective black/white
• Where/what is girl culture?
• How do girls position themselves in multicultural society?
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Ethnography of doing identity
A discursively located position
Which implies directions for living
+
=Subject posistion
Judith Butler
Michel Foucault
Stuart Hall
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Ethnography of doing identity
Distinctive act
Performatively constitutes a
subject position
+
=Performance instrument
Judith Butler
Michel Foucault
Stuart Hall
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Method
• 8 months participant observation in 8th form (age 11-12)
• In-depth interviews with 31 girls of 2 schools
• Websites made by 14 of these girls
• Photo-narratives made by these 31girls
• Essays written by 21 of these girls
• Visits to 7 secondary schools
• 5 focus groups with 21 of these girls
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Method
n=27 n=28
13 14 11 17
528 539(national average 536)
(scores vary between 500-550)
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Popular media in daily life at school
• Media use in class
• Pop music (more ghettoblaster than MP3)
• Books
• (IM)
• Not: cell phone
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Popular media in daily life at school
• Media talk in the classroom
• Film & TV
• Pop music
• Computer games
• MSN
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Performing the girl
Watching and talking about soaps;
Watching and talking about rom coms;
Reading girls’ magazines;
Reading books about girls;
Playing The Sims;
Only imitating female stars.
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Identity and subject positions
• Discourse spins a web of possible positions
• Individual is like the spider, navigating the web
• Different parts form different axes of identity
• Sensitized by conventional identity categories
gender, age, ethnicity, class
• Focus on girls’ experience of these positions
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Gender
• The tomboy
• The girly-girl
• The good girl/virtuous subject
• The sexual subject
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Gender the tomboy
Reads sports magazines Talks football
Different relationship to a more complex gender position
Not/less available at
Gunningschool
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Gender the sexual subject
Through dancing as a sexual subject, one becomes a sexual subject
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Age• The child
• Donald Duck
• Talking cartoons
• The mature subject
• Pimp my ride
• GTA San Andreas
• The knowing subject
• Knowledge about popculture
• Knowledge about street and hiphop culture
Play
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Ethnicity
• Ethnic descent
• Experienced ethnicity
• Performed ethnicity
• The Amsterdammer
• The (non)-Muslim
Less role for popculture
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Class
• The preppy girl
• The horse-crazy girl [paardenmeisje]
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Class the horse-crazy girl
Financially unobtainable for Gunninggirls
Note they did perform animal-friendliness
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Conclusions• Complex + diverse understandings of femininity and
ethnicity• Discourse of all/auto always-already positions girls of
non-Dutch descent as Others• Teachers• Girls themselves
• The body limits performance• Femininity• Ethnicity• Age
• Subject positions are temporary, but need for authenticity necessitates more or less stable performance
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Conclusions• Girls use practices to cite conventions and (thus) to
perform subject positions• Media talk means reflecting on AND performing these
positions• Media use means performing these positions• Identification-rehearsal-performative constitution of
position e.g. dancing like a sexual subject
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Implications
• For postmodern identity theory• For theory about the ‘transforming audience’• … and much, much more
• Multi-girl-culture ordinary, everyday • More than ‘just a girl’ or ‘just a Moroccan’
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Thank you!
correspondence to:
Linda Duits
http://users.fmg.uva.nl/lduits
lalalalinder