Abstract
This study works the operationalization of social norms through the institutional discourses of two secondary schools in the cities of São Paulo and Salvador. In everyday interactions, the institutional actors explain the gender rules which people rely on the construction of identity and conduct their lives. It’s a discussion about the behavioral changes of girls in the contemporary society, which places normative and value content involved in the moral constraints that permeate daily relationships between education administrators, teachers and the girls. This intricate process of regulating female behavior is conditioned by an adult-centric, alarmist view of the dynamics of the construction of gender identity among adolescents. These ethnographies also allow us to glimpse how contextual specificities can contribute to the polarization of ways of being girl or the widening of possibilities within the good-mean spectrum.
Keywords
gender; sexuality; adolescence; moral regulation; girls