ENCULTURATION INTO SECRECY AMONG JUNIOR HIGH SCHOOL GIRLS

Abstract

Secrecy has long been recognized as an important, and at times problematic, aspect of social life. While much has been written about the functions that secrets play in society, how individuals learn to use secrets remains relatively unexplored. Girls' accounts of their enculturation into secrecy reveal how they treated secrets as social objects and often depersonalized secrets when using them as social currency. Also, the absence of a well-developed concept of privacy contributed to the instrumental use of secrets. Moreover, using secrets to shape friendship and enhance social position was part of the larger process whereby secrecy became a vehicle for developing subjective reason and an exchange perspective among these girls. Thus, enculturation into secrecy involved much more than learning whom to tell which secrets under what circumstance. Girls were also learning fundamental, but largely tacit, aspects of mainstream American culture as they learned to use and interpret the meaning of secrets.