The courts' role in educational disputes is much researched, but while the legal and socio-political implications of judicial decisions are often scrutinised, judges' pedagogical assumptions have generally been overlooked. This paper focuses on educational competency by considering judges' understandings of the pedagogical effect of religious…

This article examines the relationship between skill acquisition and the constitution of economic selfhood in Trinidad. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork among garment workers in a context of industrial decline, I show how their formal, informal, and illicit means of acquiring sewing skills are inextricably linked to the fragmented and unstable…

This article outlines the ways in which clothing is one important medium for the presentation of self, on the basis of interviews and group discussions with young people in a qualitative study. In the process of leaving their childhood behind, young people have to present themselves as individuals; the self has to be indicated in an individualized…

The adolescent peer group constitutes a vital component of the institutional culture of the contemporary secondary school. Formed among students and reinforced by administrators and teachers, it takes the form of a structured status hierarchy whose membership and boundaries are clearly understood within the school community. Individual students'…