The Uses of Sex at School, or How the School Field Deepens the Patriarchal Habitus

Abstract

The aim of this article is to analyze the relationships established between teachers and students, among students, and between male and female students, on the basis of the influence exerted by their habitus of origin on the bonds established within the school field.

These relationships, which take place within the microspace of the classroom and the social space of the school, often come into conflict because they are guided by habitus originated and prepared to act in social fields different from the school field. This generates practices that may contribute to producing, resisting, or reproducing the characteristics of school culture and social culture, making the school a field of power in tension.

Such practice is not devoid of violence and enables the reproduction of patriarchal masculinity within the institution. It also facilitates the constitution of a subjectivity that produces a male-chauvinist agent and bodies marked by a certain aesthetic, which in turn translates into a certain ethics of young people’s behavior.

The results form part of an ongoing research project. The setting in which the fieldwork is being carried out is a secondary school in San Pedro de Jujuy. The methodology used is ethnography, which made it possible to generate data of different kinds. This paper considers the data produced in the spontaneous encounters held with informants during the first four-month period of fieldwork.