Reputation and Respectability: How Competing Cultural Systems Affect Students' Performance in School

Abstract

The paper analyzes the complex interrelation of ethnicity, sex role, peer group, and social class, and the effect of these variables on school performance. Both micro‐ and macroethnographic techniques are employed. Drawing upon fieldwork in St. Croix, the paper examines the value of a cultural compatibility‐incompatibility framework for explaining school success. It treats intraethnic difference, as well as interethnic variation. SCHOOL ETHNOGRAPHY, CULTURAL DISCONTINUITIES, ETHNICITY AND EDUCATION, SEX ROLE CULTURE, PEER GROUP AND SCHOOL PERFORMANCE.