Social Space, Gender Inequalities and Educational Differentiation

The spatial dimensions of social interaction and reproduction have received increasing attention from sociologists in recent years. However, these issues remain largely implicit in most studies of classrooms, schools and the education system. In this paper, I argue that the study of social space should be integral to analyses of the relationship between educational differentiation and social reproduction. After examining the position of space in Giddens's theory of structuration, I focus on how space is used in schools as a resource in the production of unequal gender relations. Space is viewed not simply as a context in which interaction occurs, but as a phenomenon which both produces, and is produced by, gendered power relations.