Coming of Age in U.S. High Schools

Coming of Age in U.S. High Schools: Economic, Kinship, Religious, and Political Crosscurrents takes readers into the lives of urban and suburban adolescents for a close-up look at how they navigate the conflicting discourses and disciplinary practices of American cultural crosscurrents that flow through economic, kinship, religious, and political domains of American life. The book is distinctive in how it combines classic anthropological theory and contemporary post-anthropological perspectives into an innovative framework for understanding adolescent coming of age processes in U.S. public high schools. Coming of age is conceived as a dual process of community integration and identity formation.

In this expansive multi-site ethnography of high school students representing diverse racial, ethnic, social class, gender, and sexual backgrounds, coming of age is described and analyzed as it unfolded in the classrooms and corridors of three high schools: a racially desegregated urban school; a suburban school serving middle class students; and a school with a majority of Black youth living in impoverished inner-city neighborhoods. The study goes well beyond issues of academic achievement to recognize and explore the function of U.S. high schools in smoothing adolescent transitions into the multiple domains of American life. Graduating seniors in the final analyses are heralded as absorbers of traditions, barometers of trends, and harbingers of change.

Of interest to a broad range of researchers, teachers, and educational policymakers, this book is particularly relevant for scholars, faculty, and graduate students in social foundations of education, educational anthropology, secondary teacher education, qualitative educational research, and related fields.