Dr. C.J. Pascoe: “The Politics of Protection: Inequality and Change in High School”


DATE
Tuesday March 2, 2021
TIME
11:00 AM - 12:30 PM

UBC Sociology’s Distinguished Speaker Series hosts Dr. C.J. Pascoe for her talk titled, “The Politics of Protection: Inequality and Change in High School.”

Abstract: This talk investigates how social inequalities are reproduced or challenged in a progressive high school. At American High School, principles of social justice are primarily expressed through practices of kindness promotion and explicit avoidance of topics considered “political,” in a way that obfuscates existing race, class, gender and sexual inequalities while seeming to address them. Drawing on two years of ethnographic observations and over 50 interviews with students, staff, parents and community members, I suggest that two dynamics, the production of a “student citizen” as well a deployment of a “politics of protection” are central to the reproduction of inequality. Pedagogical practices, extracurricular events, rituals and school policies promote a “student citizen” that embodies a  norm of whiteness, middle-classness, and sexual and gender appropriateness. This talk investigates the way that departures from and challenges to this norm are both tolerated and muted by a discourse of tolerance, kindness and embrace of benign diversity, such that even in a mode of “tolerance” this school cannot absorb any serious challenges to this regime of the normal. Instead, these challenges are characterized by a “politics of protection,” in which the needs of marginalized groups of young people are met with a focus on identities and feelings rather than structural changes.


Dr. C.J. Pascoe

More about C.J. Pascoe

C.J. Pascoe is am a sociologist who studies young people, inequality and education. Her book about sexuality and gender in high school, Dude, You’re a Fag:  Masculinity and Sexuality in High School is available from the University of California Press. Currently, she is writing a book examining gendered, classed, sexual and racial inequality at a progressive high school entitled American High School: Coming of Age in an Unequal Time.  This book builds on her previous research projects on GLBTQ youth, young people’s new media use, and bullying.