The Hidden Life of Girls
Games of Stance, Status, and Exclusion
By Majorie Harness Goodwin
(Wiley-Blackwell, Paperback, 9780631234258, 344pp.)
Publication Date: December 2006
Other Editions of This Title: Hardcover
Categories: Children's Studies, Developmental - Child, Peer Pressure
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Winner of the Best Book of 2008 from The International Gender and Language Association
In this ground-breaking ethnography of girls on a playground, Goodwin offers a window into their complex social worlds.
- Combats stereotypes that have dominated theories on female moral development by challenging the notion that girls are inherently supportive of each other
- Examines the stances that girls on a playground in a multicultural school setting assume and shows how they position themselves in their peer groups
- Documents the language practices and degradation rituals used to sanction friends and to bully others
Marjorie Harness Goodwin is Professor of Anthropology in the Department of Anthropology at UCLA. She is the author of the now-classic He-Said, She-Said: Talk as Social Organization among Black Children (1991). Her primary research interests are on the ethnography of communication, human interaction, conversation analysis, language and gender, workplace ethnography, and children's social organization.












