The article is about student associations ? so-called school societies ? and the formation
of social hierarchies in the Swedish upper secondary school. The aim is to analyse the
ways in which the school societies are significant in the formation of the school as a field
of symbolic struggle. The empirical material consists of interviews with 18 students ?
ten women and eight men.The main conclusion is that these school societies function
as an elite culture within the upper secondary school. They dominate the school both
socially and spatially. By recruiting popular and successful students they reproduce the
status attributed to society members, but at the same time they reproduce the distinctions
and hierarchies of gender, class and educational aspirations within a school that
was created to be equal for all. |