| dc.description.abstract | This thesis aims to explore the constitution of fellowship and identity amongst pupils in the Norwegian Folk High Schools, in order to generate an understanding of these schools as social institutions. Utilizing an approach known as interactionist ethnography, I explore a variety of social practices that pupils engage in during their everyday life in the Folk High School through participating observation, as well as a plurality of stories that constitute the narratives attached to the school itself through in-depth interviews. The analytical framework surrounding this approach, inspired by everything from conversation analysis and ethnomethodology, to orthodox constructivism and symbolic interactionism, allows me to explore the Folk High School as a scientific field by taking a closer look at premonitions of fellowship, liminality, legitimization and the objectification of social reality through an externalization and internalization of a specific social order: All of which grounded in an interactionist understanding of both fellowship and identity.
My findings, illustrated through the use of a metaphor of the “Folk High School Bubble” uncovers an objectification of a liberalization process within the school’s institutional frames, both allowing and causing the pupils and teachers of the school to be liberated from society as a whole, along with the commitments and expectations attached to their social position within society itself. Although a temporary liberation, for many of the pupils fresh out of Upper Secondary Education, it is a long sought-after liberation from an otherwise prestigious and result-oriented educational system. | nb_NO |
