Tomboys, good girls and Amsterdammers: On girls, identity and multiculturalism

Linda Duits

Outline

• A bit about me

• Context of PhD project

• Ethnography of doing identity

• Axes of identity

Linda Duits

• Background in political science

• CW/ASCoR

• Ethnographic approach

• Critical, respectful, ‘whole’ culture

• Assistant professor since Jan 2009

• Qualitative methods

• Youth & subcultures

What to wear to school?

• Headscarf

• G-string

• Belly button shirt

Girl culture and popular media • Many opinions, not much research

• ‘MTV-culture’ = gangrapes, ‘breezer sluts’

One-sided perspective black/white

• Where/what is girl culture?

• How do girls position themselves in multicultural society?

6

Ethnography of doing identity

A discursively located position

Which implies directions for living

+

=Subject posistion

Judith Butler

Michel Foucault

Stuart Hall

7

Ethnography of doing identity

Distinctive act

Performatively constitutes a

subject position

+

=Performance instrument

Judith Butler

Michel Foucault

Stuart Hall

Method

• 8 months participant observation in 8th form (age 11-12)

• In-depth interviews with 31 girls of 2 schools

• Websites made by 14 of these girls

• Photo-narratives made by these 31girls

• Essays written by 21 of these girls

• Visits to 7 secondary schools

• 5 focus groups with 21 of these girls

Method

n=27 n=28

13 14 11 17

528 539(national average 536)

(scores vary between 500-550)

Popular media in daily life at school

• Media use in class

• Pop music (more ghettoblaster than MP3)

• Books

• (IM)

• Not: cell phone

Popular media in daily life at school

• Media talk in the classroom

• Film & TV

• Pop music

• Computer games

• MSN

Performing the girl

Watching and talking about soaps;

Watching and talking about rom coms;

Reading girls’ magazines;

Reading books about girls;

Playing The Sims;

Only imitating female stars.

Identity and subject positions

• Discourse spins a web of possible positions

• Individual is like the spider, navigating the web

• Different parts form different axes of identity

• Sensitized by conventional identity categories

gender, age, ethnicity, class

• Focus on girls’ experience of these positions

Gender

• The tomboy

• The girly-girl

• The good girl/virtuous subject

• The sexual subject

Gender the tomboy

Reads sports magazines Talks football

Different relationship to a more complex gender position

Not/less available at

Gunningschool

Gender the sexual subject

Through dancing as a sexual subject, one becomes a sexual subject

Age• The child

• Donald Duck

• Talking cartoons

• The mature subject

• Pimp my ride

• GTA San Andreas

• The knowing subject

• Knowledge about popculture

• Knowledge about street and hiphop culture

Play

Ethnicity

• Ethnic descent

• Experienced ethnicity

• Performed ethnicity

• The Amsterdammer

• The (non)-Muslim

Less role for popculture

Class

• The preppy girl

• The horse-crazy girl [paardenmeisje]

Class the horse-crazy girl

Financially unobtainable for Gunninggirls

Note they did perform animal-friendliness

Conclusions• Complex + diverse understandings of femininity and

ethnicity• Discourse of all/auto always-already positions girls of

non-Dutch descent as Others• Teachers• Girls themselves

• The body limits performance• Femininity• Ethnicity• Age

• Subject positions are temporary, but need for authenticity necessitates more or less stable performance

Conclusions• Girls use practices to cite conventions and (thus) to

perform subject positions• Media talk means reflecting on AND performing these

positions• Media use means performing these positions• Identification-rehearsal-performative constitution of

position e.g. dancing like a sexual subject

Implications

• For postmodern identity theory• For theory about the ‘transforming audience’• … and much, much more

• Multi-girl-culture ordinary, everyday • More than ‘just a girl’ or ‘just a Moroccan’

24

Thank you!

correspondence to:

Linda Duits

l.duits@uva.nl

http://users.fmg.uva.nl/lduits

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