Good kids, bad behavior: A study of bullying among fifth -grade school children.

Abstract

This dissertation develops out of a four month long ethnographic study of fifth grade school children and their bullying exchanges. Through sociological inquiries, bullying is substantiated as a normative social process indelibly connected to the complexly organized world of children at school. Central to this study is the documentation of the children's friendship associations and status hierarchies. This dissertation demonstrates that these social relationships shape the content of bullying exchanges as well as structuring which children become involved in bullying. Bullying, for the fifth graders in this study, served as a multifaceted process of social control. The majority of observed bullying occurred among children of different friendship associations, with most bullying carried out by bullies who had higher social status than their victims. Moreover, this dissertation provides evidence that it is a relatively small percentage of children, those with the highest status among their peers, who carry out a disproportionate amount of bullying. Status is also significant for structuring the dynamics and content of bullying exchanges. Bullying episodes develop out of children's status concerns, result from status violations, and act as status reminders within social interactions. What gets accomplished when children bully is the demonstration, negotiation, affirmation, and defense of the existing status hierarchies that structure their social world. This dissertation contributes to bullying research by presenting real world bullying exchanges within their situational context. Particular attention is given to demonstrating the role of peer observers, connecting bullying behavior to daily routines, and incorporating children's bullying narratives. The analyses within this dissertation show bullying to be a powerful process of social control. Bullying serves to reify the system of rights and obligations that exists within status hierarchies. Observations of, and conversations with, these fifth graders suggest that the status hierarchies among children develop out of and reflect beliefs in socially created scripts about masculinity and femininity. Therefore, bullying exchanges may serve to justify the 'rightness' of these socio-cultural gender scripts while maintaining and enforcing the status hierarchies that exist in the social world of children.