NCJ Number
212458
Journal
Journal of School Violence Volume: 4 Issue: 1 Dated: 2005 Pages: 91-118
Date Published
2005
Length
28 pages
Annotation
This article critiques research and popular conceptions of bullying.
Abstract
The research literature and popular discourse has exploded with research on bullying in school settings. The author analyzes the key themes within the contemporary literature on bullying, which variously focuses on individual behaviors, power relations among children, gender distinctions, and school culture. Despite the plethora of research on school bullying, the author charges that the definition of bullying is never confronted and that most researchers seem more interested in the causes of and solutions to bullying rather than in the concept of bullying itself. By focusing solely on programs and policies designed to curb school bullying, the study of the broader issues of violence within communities is left unexamined. Moreover, the studies that focus on the influence of school culture on bullying tend to only focus on the student body, ignoring broader issues of educational administration and social oppression. This omission casts bullying and its solution squarely as a problem of the individual. The author charges that bullying is a social and political construction grounded in ideological relations of power. In order to reduce bullying in school settings, school violence must be reconceptualized within the research literature as an outcome of social and political power struggles rather than as a psychological, behavioral, or individualistic problem. Notes, references