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“I Don’t Start a Fight; They Start my Powerful Engine”: Primary School Boys Negotiating Violence and Gendered Bullying

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Gender, Sexuality and Violence in South African Educational Spaces

Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in Gender and Education ((GED))

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Abstract

This chapter explores how masculinities are constructed and negotiated by 8–9-year-old primary school boys. The discussion foregrounds how young boys enact their masculinities through verbal and physical violence in the form of bullying which they use to claim power. Boys who fail to adhere to hegemonic masculine ideals are often victims of and easy targets for bullying, yet they, too, seek to reclaim their power by using violence as a defensive approach to protect their individual masculine identity. This illustrates the fluid ways through which masculinities are negotiated. The chapter contributes to the developing research on young masculinities by situating young boys as active agents who construct, contest, and negotiate violent masculinities in the primary school. I conclude by arguing that interventions within the early years of schooling is the ideal time to work with young boys to encourage alternative, non-violent masculinities, based on mutual respect, in order to mitigate the prevalence of violence in primary schools and beyond.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    In South Africa schools are categorised by quintiles, with one being the most disadvantaged, and subsidised by the state, and five the most advantaged.

  2. 2.

    The African concept of ubuntu translates to “humanity towards others”– it is a philosophy that emphasises the values of dignity, kindness, respect, and unity (Piper, 2016). The values of ubuntu are fundamental to the re-construction of post-colonial South Africa suggesting that we are one in diversity.

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Acknowledgement

This work was based on research supported by the South African Research Chairs’ Initiative of the Department of Science and Innovation and National Research Foundation of South Africa (Grant No 98407).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Education, University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, South Africa

    Diloshini Govender

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  1. Diloshini Govender
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. School of Education, University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, South Africa

    Deevia Bhana

  2. School of Education, University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, South Africa

    Shakila Singh

  3. School of Education, University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, South Africa

    Thabo Msibi

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Govender, D. (2021). “I Don’t Start a Fight; They Start my Powerful Engine”: Primary School Boys Negotiating Violence and Gendered Bullying. In: Bhana, D., Singh, S., Msibi, T. (eds) Gender, Sexuality and Violence in South African Educational Spaces. Palgrave Studies in Gender and Education. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-69988-8_4

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