Rules Of The Game #12: Jocks And Burnouts

[koganbot]

My latest column, where I try to justify my nonstandard use of the word "class."

The Rules Of The Game #12: Jocks and Burnouts

I'm curious if you think the social map that Eckert provides and the social dynamic that I identify (the basic form being "jocks vs. burnouts" [w/ different category names in different times and places], but there being an unsettled effect when a third group, the "freaks," appears in strength) have anything to do with the situation at the high school you went to. If not, what was the social map? Also what sort of map(s) would you apply to situations you've been in after high school?

Oh yeah, and here's another chance for you to help me figure out what the hell it is I'm trying to say about Elvis.

EDIT: Here are links to all but three of my other Rules Of The Game columns (LVW's search results for "Rules of the Game"). Links for the other three (which for some reason didn't get "Rules Of The Game" in their titles), are here: #4, #5, and #8.

UPDATE: I've got all the links here now:

http://koganbot.livejournal.com/179531.html

Comments

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

I don't recognise this map at all from my own experience but I kept having to remind myself of that because I recognise it from so many US high school movies! (MEAN GIRLS.) There was a social map at my school - I couldn't delineate it very clearly because I've forgotten an alarming amount of the lines and cliques involved; it wasn't a very usual map b/c of the school's specialist music school status.

A lot of the time, these maps exist more in people's psyches than in reality; eg I'd always thought of certain people as located in certain places on it, but talking to them years later they hadn't had that impression at all. Essentially everyone thought they were less popular than they were, and that everyone else was more popular than they were.

[koganbot]

Well one thing Eckert says in her book is that almost all the students would state adamently that they were against categorizing people, but then it would be the students themselves who brought up time and again the jock vs. burnout split (which apparently was quite visible to anyone who looked at lunchtime, since the jocks always sat in the school cafeteria and the burnouts always hung out in the courtyard, even in cold weather). What I think is that the students are recognizing that the categories are real enough to have power in the school environment, but that no one necessarily "fits" a category completely (i.e., no one is devoid of characteristics beyond and potentially at odds with their social category).

cis made an interesting point in one of the Department Of Dilettante Research threads, which is that the roles themselves are somewhat expected (maybe owing to their appearance in movies and TV shows, though my experience is that the movies/shows don't match up very well with actual school life; but this doesn't mean they can't influence actual school life).