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Bodies At Home And At School: Toward A Theory Of Embodied Social Class Status, Sue Ellen Henry

Sue Ellen Henry

Sociology has long recognized the centrality of the body in the reciprocal construction of individuals and society, and recent research has explored the influence of a variety of social institutions on the body. Significant research has established the influence of social class and child rearing practices and variable language forms in families and children. Less well understood is the influence of children’s social class status on their gestures, comportment, and other bodily techniques. This paper brings these two areas of study together to explore how working class children’s bodies are shaped by the child-rearing practices associated with their social class …

'I Can Never Turn My Back On That': Liminality And The Impact Of Class On Service0learning Experience, Sue Ellen Henry

Sue Ellen Henry

Service-learning is often framed as a pedagogical perspective and instructional tool that can help “privileged” students gain greater insight into the life experience and perspectives of “others,” namely those “served” in the service-learning arrangement. Central to this positive conception of service-learning is a binary between “privileged server” and “underprivileged recipient” or an “us/them” dichotomy. Recently, this dichotomy has been questioned by some researchers as problematic to a transformative understanding of service-learning (Hourigan 1998; Flower 2002; Novek 2000).

Central to the critique of the binary of “server/served” is its overly simplistic approach to understanding those involved in the service-learning relationship. Rather …