Thorney issues

Mike Cole (mcole who-is-at weber.ucsd.edu)
Sat, 28 Aug 1999 12:18:09 -0700 (PDT)

Hi UpNorth Paul,

I have gone back to re-read Barrie Thorne's book, Gender Play,
thanks to the reminders here on XMCA. We site it in our text and I
have taught from it in the past to great effect in a class where students
spend time with pre-teens and teens in a Boys and Girls Club (if you
think things get rough on the school playground, try a real playgound!).
The data reported by Thorne plus citations to a variety of other
work, support the idea that there is more variability in game complexity,
size of group, etc. within gender/sex groups than between. According to
her argument, based on her own data, what happens is that observers are
drawn to a subgroup within the larger set of boys and girls, such that
there is "a skew toward the most visible and dominant- and a silencing
and marginalization of others" (p. 97). Thorne's "Different cultures"
chapter is especially interesting in providing evidence not only
that Lever is oversimplifying, but that she has on discipline-coated
glasses that filter out the variability that Thorne's and others'
ethnographic analyses reveal. Thorne shows that the story she is telling
is true of a subgroup which is substituted for the whole, creating the
usual dichotomy.
In effect, Lever is seeing the reflection of cultural norms, refracted
through her culturally normed practices. That, at least, is how I understand
the argument.
mike