From rakhi to romance: negotiating ‘acceptable’ relationships in co-educational secondary schools in New Delhi, India

Abstract

Based on a multi-method study conducted with middle-class young people (aged 15–17) in three secondary schools in New Delhi, India, this paper focuses on heterosocial dynamics within school peer cultures as an important site of learning about gender and sexuality. Findings indicate that young people negotiate and adapt rakhi (brother-sister) relationships to form less strictly platonic heterosocial friendships, which leave open the possibility of romance. Students’ preferences for certain heterosocial relationships are considered within the context of wider cultural narratives. For example, students often rejected rakhi relationships, tied to traditional, conservative values, in favour of heterosocial friendships associated with more modern and desirable social patterns. Moreover, students’ own definitions of acceptable heterosocial interactions within peer cultures suggest that they are adept at negotiating norms of gender segregation that are enforced in co-educational schools. In contrast to other formal and informal sources of sexual learning available to them, experiences and stories of romances circulating in schools seemed to offer students alternative, more positive ways of understanding teenage intimacy and sexuality.