Feminine/masculine and emotionality from a marginalized childhood: A school visual ethnography

Abstract

In the context of the Law of Inclusion that promotes social mixture of Chilean students, we study a subsidized school which has always been free and without selection. We try to understand the children’s social inclusion/exclusion processes in this marginalized background. What does then mean “to include”? Which are the identity and difference boundaries in school? How do the children subjectivize in this environment? We carry out an interpretative and visual school ethnography during 7 months. The gender difference strengthfully appears in the research’s results. It is observed in the adults’ school dispositives, as in the children’s processes. The fieldwork, the children’s visual productions and the group interviews with children reveal stereotypes and conflicts between feminine and masculine. This tension is associated with a difficulty to know and express their intimate feelings and their experience related to sexed bodies. The children’s subjectivation processes are marked by ruptures and violence in adults’ relations. This experience would generate their ambivalence in front of emotionality, as a means to protect their internal world.