Community For Now: An Analysis of Contingent Communality among Urban High School Students in Quebec

The authors describe the evolution of relationships within a group of adolescents girls in their last year (Secondary V)at Montreal's Royal Haven High School. Unlike the many flamboyant or deviant groups described in the literature on youth subculture, the Royal Haveners were conventional. It was at school, rather than the street corner or the nightclub that they were most involved in a peer group and culture. As graduation and the prospect of entering post-secondary CEGEPs became more imminent, attachment to Royal Haven and fellow students became more pronounced. Royal Haven and its student population were characterized as being "different" from the atmosphere and pupils at other schools. But at the same time as the communality of the school peer group was being defined its members were mourning its inevitable loss. After graduation it was assumed, each would go their own way. The authors found that unlike local or ethnic communities which are usually perceived as ongoing, this youthful collectivity was regarded as intrinsically temporary and contingent upon involvement with a particular institution - Royal Haven High School. The authors argues that this type of contingent communality is a common basis for belonging within industrialized and urbanized societies. They conclude that the Royal Haven group alerts us not so much to the peculiarities of adolescence as it reminds us of the capacity of people to transform the necessity of interaction in work or education into valued associations and social groupings.

Urban Anthropology and Studies of Cultural Systems and World Economic Development

Vol. 19

no. 3

233-253

Fall 1990

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