Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

The Hidden Life of Girls: Games of Stance, Status and Exclusion

2008; Wiley; Volume: 22; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1111/j.1099-0860.2007.00125.x

1099-0860

Natasha Leahy,

Gender, Feminism, and Media

By Marjorie Harness Goodwin Oxford : Blackwell , 2006 ISBN 9780631234258 , 344 pp, £19.99 (pb) In The Hidden Life of Girls, Goodwin attempts to shed light on the academically obscure world of the pre-adolescent girl. She endeavours to do this by challenging the legitimacy of discourses such as those proffered by Lever (1978), which uphold the 'separate worlds' view of boys' and girls' orientations towards game playing. According to this position, girls' games are considered to be lacking in complexity and are more focused towards co-operation and the maintenance of social relationships. Goodwin contests this stance and throughout the book provides detailed accounts of how girls, through games of hopscotch and jump rope, construct, monitor, and regulate their social and moral environment. Goodwin based this book on the 3 years of ethnographic research she undertook on a clique of six girls at Hanley, a progressive primary school located within Los Angeles. The study focuses on the day-to-day playground interactions of the clique, with particular attention being paid to features of female voice, moral behaviour and aggression. Goodwin's desire was to capture 'naturally occurring' phenomena through the use of video camera and thus analyse the 'engagement[s] and orientation[s] in space of participants, whose actions are built through the deployment of a range of semiotic resources including the body, gestures, facial expressions and the built environment'. In adopting this methodological approach she has attempted to distance herself from the reliance on the post hoc rationalisations of respondents, which is a common feature of the interview method. Although Goodwin does qualify her position and provides a description of her methods of data collection, it is somewhat meagre. The book as it stands provides the audience with the impression that the research process was unproblematic and the use of the video method provided no obstacles to the field. Readers would greatly benefit from a more rigorous appraisal of the methods used, especially as the use of visual media is becoming more prevalent within the social sciences. Goodwin also failed to evaluate any ethical dilemmas that she faced in doing research with children and as part of her study examines bullying as a social practice, this would make the need for a discussion on ethics even more pertinent. Despite a few omissions, this book is a very engaging read and offers a window into the social milieu of pre-adolescent girls. Goodwin's use of the girls' voices provides a richness and depth to the study, which allows the reader to enter the field and really connect with the characters and gain an appreciation of the complex social ordering that takes place within girls' friendship groups. By analysing the talk and embodied action of the clique, Goodwin successfully demonstrates that girls' peer interactions are as likely to be defined by conflict as co-operation. Far from shying away from conflict, at times it was harnessed by the girls as an expression of agency and treated as part of the fun of game playing. In one particular incident the clique of girls engaged in open conflict with the school authorities over issues of entitlement, fairness and justice — in regard to the boys' use and dominance over space. As a consequence of the articulations of these grievances, the school adopted a zero tolerance policy towards any discriminatory practices. Girls' social organisation and game playing, therefore, is far from child's play, as it provides the opportunity to take positions and display allegiances, which when examined at the micro-level reveal the internal hierarchy and status of in-group and out-group members. Goodwin also draws our attention to the fact that female peer interactions are as much about exclusion as inclusion through the bullying of Angela, a marginal group member who was repeatedly subject to the clique's censure. The antagonism the clique displayed towards Angela sometimes made for uncomfortable reading. However, as Goodwin aptly points out, data of this nature have the real power not only to enhance insights into these types of practices but also to enable the advancement of intervention strategies. Goodwin's combined goal in this book was first to take us beyond the dualistic thinking that surrounds female interactions and secondly, to make this research accessible to a cross section of social scientists — in both these aims she succeeds.