This ethnography describes how a group of girls navigate this territory in school. It explores the effects of the personal, group and institutional habitus that mediate the girls’ everyday interactions. The girls’ peer interactions and contextual experiences serve as an explanatory framework, which references how power is shared, wielded and resisted among the myriad of relationships within the school.

The school life of the girls is described at an individual and group level with themes such as friendship, conformity, resistance and alienation discussed, within the framework of school life. Findings related to youth culture and identities elicit challenges for the girls as they manage the duality of adolescence and scholarly endeavour.