Nike identities

• Nike identities


  Meaningful working-class identities constructed by investing heavily in styles, especially through consuming branded clothing such as Nike
• Many working-class pupils


  Were conscious that society and school looked down on them, leading them to seek alternative ways of creating self-worth, status and value
• You wouldn't really expect upper-class people to come out in Nike tracksuits and stuff, we expect them to have that Gucci designer stuff. But people like us they're just we're Nike (Sean, Littleton School)
• Wearing brands


  A way of being marked: without them they would feel inauthentic
• Pupils' identities were also strongly gendered, for example, girls adopted a hyper-heterosexual feminine style
• Style performances


  • Heavily policed by peer groups
  • Not conforming was social suicide
  • The right appearance earned symbolic capital and approval from peer groups and brought safety from bullying
• The school's middle-class habitus

  Opposed 'street styles' as showing 'bad taste' or even as a threat, leading to conflict with pupils who adopted street styles
• The school's middle-class habitus stigmatises working-class pupils' identities
• Working-class pupils' performances of style

  A struggle for recognition: while the middle class see their "Nike" identities as tasteless, to the young people they are a means of generating symbolic capital and self-worth
• Nike styles


  Play a part in working-class pupils' rejection of higher education, which they saw as both unrealistic and undesirable
• Unrealistic


  Higher education was not for people like us, but for richer, posher, cleverer people, and they would not fit in
• Undesirable


  Higher education would not suit their preferred lifestyle or habitus, as they could not afford the street styles that gave them their identity
• Working-class pupils' investment in Nike identities is not only a cause of their educational marginalisation by the school, it also expresses their positive preference for a particular lifestyle
• As a result, working-class pupils may choose self-elimination or self-exclusion from education
• Working-class identity


  Inseparable from belonging to a working-class locality
• Working-class communities


  Place great emphasis on conformity, which was a particular problem for working-class boys at grammar school as they experienced a tension between the habitus of their neighbourhood and that of their middle-class school