This paper explores the importance of 'place' in the experiences of girls and young women from an inner city public housing estate. Where they live is perceived by the girls as a key determinant of image, reputation, and opportunities. The girls' forging of their own identity occurs within spatial and social contexts which contain a diversity of influences which they must negotiate in their everyday lives. Living in a 'bad' suburb delimits what and how they can be.

The eight girls' stories derive from interviews and fieldnotes, part of a larger ethnographic study. Three of the girls are Aboriginal, four are Anglo-Australian and one is Pacific Islander, with ages ranging from sixteen to twenty. They are all from low income families, marginalised by the lack of 'cultural capital' (Apple, 1997) accruing with their social positioning. Their relations to the 'centre,' where cultural capital is defined primarily as middle class whiteness (Fordham, 1996), are the interactive effects of race, class, gender and youth. Experiences of marginalisation are both cause and effect of the girls' resistances, here defined broadly as oppositional behaviour both in and out of school. As resisters, they are both marginalised and are involved in marginalising others as well as themselves. Resistances are not posited as expressions of class consciousness, as theorised in subcultural studies of the 1970s (Hall & Jefferson, 1976; McRobbie & Garber, 1976; Willis, 1977). Rather, resistances are here represented as necessary practices of girls' identity work (Hey, 1997), involving contestation of norms of femininity, images of youth and conventional pathways to the rewards of the centre. Anger and frustration are typical responses to limited options and the injustice of sanctions for overstepping the boundaries of 'appropriate' behaviour for girls (Brown, 1998, p.9). Girls express their resistances "to challenge conventional meanings and expectations" (Ibid., p. 9).

Patterns of conformity are evident alongside patterns of resistance, indicating the girls' desires for the promises of the centre. To follow conventions of being 'good', working hard at school and securing a satisfying job is a pathway fraught with obstacles, particularly the conflicting expectations of the girls' local network, schools and neighbourhood. Their responses to the mixed messages of their community constitute a complex of strategies, at times informed by (necessarily) contradictory logics. Resistance in one context represents conformity in another. Moreover, the girls' positive resistances (Robinson & Ward, 1991) to marginalisation, difficult circumstances and competing demands, may be reframed as resilience, particularly in attempts to counter negative images and to create new 'centres' for themselves. How they see themselves and want to be seen by others are central to the production of behaviour and strategies which may be interpreted as resistant or resilient.

The first section of the paper examines the centrality of the suburb as a 'bad' place, in girls' concerns with image and reputation. The problem of reputation pertains to the suburb and girls' places in it. In an area where drugs and crime are prevalent, illicit activities are both the 'ordinary' recreations of young people and a source of 'moral panics' (Cohen, 1980). While the girls themselves critique the degeneration of the community, they also defend their friendships which implicate them in the very practices they resist. Whether it is from direct participation or by association, being in trouble is seen as inevitable. Girls' identity work in the local context necessitates resistances, as a means of cultural management.

In the next section, the nature and function of the local 'network' is discussed. The network functions as a 'place' to be and as a viable alternative to school, when truancy is seen as the solution to problems at school. Girls' resistances in and out of school constitute a critique of classroom and peer relations and school practices, including those which reinforce reputation by suburb and status. From the girls' perspectives, the network offers more rewards than school and they invest themselves in this alternative prestige system (Hey, op. cit.). The resistances entailed here belie the girls' valuing of education and are at odds with other aspirations they hold.

The layering of girls' resistances and conformities are discussed in the next section as cultural management strategies which articulate their social positioning. The hegemonic nature of centre-marginal relations is lived out at the local level. The concept of local hegemony attempts to explicate subjective mediation of dominant culture, in terms of values and ideology as well as material practices. Attempting to unravel the apparent contradictions within girls' identity work is complicated by their relations to competing local systems of values and ideology, and what is described as an hegemony of values within the network. The pull of the network may be understood as the force and appeal of normative, hegemonic values contained therein, over more conventional trajectories.

The concluding section of the paper discusses multiple meanings of success and the girls' various strategies and identity work towards success in their own terms. Resistances are reframed as indicators of resilience, in the social context of marginalisation, local hegemonies and limited cultural options. The contradictory logics informing girls' resistances and conformities find no unity of resolution. Nevertheless, the learning which accrues from living out these logics is the basis for some resolution through individual and group identity.

The girls have grown up in homes just a few streets from the main shopping area, with the main street of restaurants, cafes, gift and bookshops attracting tourists and out of area visitors. Their playgrounds of childhood and 'hang-outs' of adolescence overlap with the busy commercial centre. In this location, young people's visibility is both cause and effect of community perceptions of local problems. Additionally, the suburb is a mix of low income families (and some no-income homeless) and the affluent. There are distinctions of 'public' and 'private' not only in housing, but in conflicting conceptions of space and behaviour. In other suburbs, a group of friends may meet outside one of their homes unnoticed. Here, however, the proximity of homes to the commercial centre blurs boundaries between private and public, and makes what is ostensibly private behaviour vulnerable to surveillance by businesses, security, police and 'the public'. While there may be justified concerns about the behaviour of some young people, generalisations about 'problem youth' and 'youth crime waves' slip into the local vernacular, creating a stereotyped image of youth, which itself becomes an object of resistance. Patterns of control are thus intertwined with patterns of resistance (Haney, 1996).

Image is closely associated with place. While the girls describe the suburb as a small and closeknit community where "everyone knows everyone...we've grown up together", they are also unanimous that theirs is a "bad" suburb.

Sarah : There's the good half and then there's sort of what everybody says is the bad

The girls share outsiders' concerns about drugs and crime in the community but reject outsiders' generalisations which see nothing beyond the 'bad'. They also reject the outsider view in defence of their own reputations - they do not want to be "put into a category" based on public perception of their home place and their neighborhood friends.

about it.

The girls attempt to counter 'bad' images contained within local discourse. Distinctions are made between illicit activities as the 'ordinary' recreations of adolescents and those which have more serious consequences. For example, drinking and smoking 'pot' are not seen as serious problems whereas heroin use is. Sixteen year old Nola describes a typical Friday night: "go to the bottleo, get alcohol and go find somewhere to drink and - get blind". Echoing Ogilvie's (1996) findings, drinking, smoking pot and "cruising in cars" are seen as just "something to do to have fun". While the level of participation varies amongst the group, the older girls and young women who drink more occasionally, typically a night out with girlfriends, describe their earlier teens in similar terms to the younger girls. The general view is that there is nothing else to do and the only alternative to drinking with friends is a boring night at home watching videos.

Nightclubs, parks and cars are all places for getting together with friends. Being with friends and finding where everyone else is and what's going on offers the promise of adventure. Something might happen. Often the something is simply talk and skylarking; occasionally it escalates into altercations with outsiders. When brawls erupt, they are big news in the community and may gain media attention. The history of events such as riots, fights, car chases and other encounters with police, is a key theme of local youth cultural narratives. Such oral traditions combine with imagination and anticipation to create a sense of drama out of an ordinary Friday or Saturday night.

The young women's positions are more aligned with the 'outsider' critique when they describe changes in the area since they were in their early teens. While they readily recall their own involvement in illicit dramas, they claim, nevertheless, that the area is worse now, due to increased drug problems, crime and the degeneration of community.

It's not a community any more. Because... back then, everyone was like, everyone

Here Nancy is referring to the increasing availability and use of drugs, and drug related crime. Heroin dealing and use is singled out (and by most of the girls), as the major problem. Users are "doped all day, they're wrong. They don't give a fuck any more...That's why [this place is] fucked. I just seen it go down and down". Only a few are implicated, but the presence of heroin in the community is seen to damage the quality of the community itself. The facts of drug use and crime, regardless of the extent, make everyone wary so that "lookin out for number one" becomes a survival strategy.

Both Rebecca and Nancy claim that young people now in their early teens, and younger, are being negatively influenced by drug and crime culture. They claim that behaviours are far worse than they were five or six years ago:

Rebecca: ...all the kids... now are like dead-set little bastards, mate. They've

Their explanations of this deterioration include reference to some parents' lack of control because of their own substance abuse. Moreover, they regard parents' attempts to control their children as futile - they cannot counter negative influences of the culture that their children are growing into.

environment and they've gotta know what's right and what's wrong.

Rebecca: ...with the kids these days... I dunno, they need to seem older, older, I dunno.

Offending is primarily a male domain. While girls are often on the edge of it, by participation in recreational illicit activities and by virtue of the company they keep, they are much less likely to end up in the 'revolving door' system of juvenile justice. Two of the girls in the present group have been convicted of offences and another two discussed their and their friends' involvement in minor offending in the past. All have male friends who have been convicted. Stigma attaches to serious drug use, however, and young people who use heroin are generally marginalised by their non-using peers. Even those who may have been long-term friends, once caught in addiction, may be ostracised. Young offenders, mostly boys, do not incur marginalisation to the same extent. Being in trouble is asserted as an inevitability of local cultural context. Tolerance of offending is based on friendship and/or acknowledgement of disadvantages which are seen as legitimising 'survival' offences such as theft. Tolerance may indirectly support participation in offending where it is seen as a cultural ideal providing status and power.

Jodi: I can't change my friends for, just because they do bad things. You gotta accept

Maybe they've got very low self-esteem and they think, oh if we do this we'll be right,

Girls' identity work occurs within in this local context. The prevalence of 'crime culture' and 'drug culture' is seen as contributing to the demise of community. As some young people are involved in them, they are established, for others, as cultural options. This situation is simultaneously justification for resistances and an object of resistance, especially for the protection of reputation against stereotyped images resulting from young people's involvement.

Girls may be depicted as resisters by alliance, and by their own, selective, participation in illicit culture. Their peripheral involvement is a conflicting mix of conformity and resistances. They reject more serious offending as an option for themselves but remain loyal to (mostly male) friends who are involved more deeply. On the one hand they conform to dominant behavioural norms; at the same time, they are implicated, by alliance and support, in perpetuation of the crime culture they resist (Bordo, 1993; Pastor, McCormick & Fine, 1996). The girls' role in this is partly out of loyalty. They are generally not with the boys when they are doing crime, though they share illicit recreations and have friends in common.

Nola: ...all the boys and us...hang out together anyways... cruising round in cars...we

To some extent they must support crime culture because it provides, around its edges, a network they can attach to which serves their own needs and interests.

The local network of friends and acquaintances is not a single cohesive group, rather, a more fluid collective of smaller friendship groups who seek others to 'hang out' together, catch up on the latest and find out about what's coming up. The network functions as a 'place' to be, in the variety of locations its members frequent, including individual homes during the school/work day. Participation in the network varies from day to day as individuals move in and out of school, jobs, courses and in and out of the area for stays with relatives or other friends. But there is always someone around to 'hang out' with. This network becomes, for some, a preferred option to other more conformist activities and occupations. As long as there is 'always someone to hang around with', there is a viable alternative to schooling.

Jodi: You always know someone won't be at school [here], you can always find

Nancy: ...there's always somewhere where you'll hang around all together...

This situation creates and supports options for truanting, a principal form of girls' school resistances. Three of the young women were regular truants, from year eight or nine. Two others have recently dropped out of school and one truants regularly. The stories of those who have left school indicate similar patterns of being in trouble, escalating truancy and early school leaving.

The girls' resistances in school include disruptive behaviour in class, insolence to teachers and fighting. Talk gets them into trouble because of their swearing and rudeness and because their alternative agenda disrupts the legitimate pursuits of the classroom. Teachers who are seen as not being able to control the class are targeted - in their classes, compliance is minimal and resistances take on the air of performance. Disrespect, cheekiness and 'stirring' teachers can escalate into arguments and angry outbursts with hurled abuse as well as books or chairs. Several of the girls had been suspended for such behaviours.

Experiences of perceived unfair treatment are explained as cumulative personal conflicts between students and teachers. Some believe that their teachers only care about the high achievers, so students give up trying. Those who have made it to year ten or further complain of the pressures they experience in dealing with the workload, standards of achievement expected and pressures they experience outside the classroom.

On the other hand, too little pressure is interpreted as an indication of teachers not caring about them or their learning.

Linda: I just don't feel motivated enough to always be there because like I don't think

It is openly acknowledged by the girls that they get themselves into trouble by not attending or, when they do go, by breaking school rules, behaving 'badly' and provoking teachers. They describe themselves as and believe they are seen as troublesome girls who are to blame for their own situation.

Nola: I'd get in trouble. Only if like, only a couple of times, if I get pissed off then I'll

Stevenson and Ellsworth (1993) suggest that early leavers, or 'dropouts' blame themselves for failing because rejecting the associated labelling requires appreciation of the structural constraints in their lives. The girls in the present study may not articulate their positioning as so determining, but they do not blame themselves entirely. They are critical of their experiences in school as much as out of school, of stereotyping, by negative images associated with where they live. Resentment is expressed about being not worth bothering about because of this. With reference to local image and distinctions between 'good' and 'bad' students, Carol comments,

Two of the girls feel generally respected and supported by teachers; the others all relate experiences of being made to feel inferior. The two who do feel respected by teachers are, however, aware of peers judging them according to where they live. Like the working-class girls' in Brown's (1998) study, Jodi parodies the snobbery of 'the ones that have the money", who play squash and go to drama schools on the weekends, who look down their noses at her when they find out where she's from. Others have similar experiences.

Countering 'low' status sometimes leads to fights. The girls don't always start them, but they are willing participants, as a matter of defending reputation. Fighting back is necessary resistance to the sexualised labels (Lees, 1993) they incur from being identified with a 'bad' locale. They are not 'sluts' or 'chats' and resent the insinuations of promiscuity, for it is strongly opposed within their 'code' (Campbell,1987) of acceptable behaviour for girls.

The girls' school resistances are more than interpersonal conflicts. They represent a critique of irrelevant, boring curriculum, teachers who don't care, and processes of labelling by both teachers and peers, all of which the girls see as limiting not only their educational outcomes, but their scope for being who they are. The girls are not simply anti-school. In fact, their truancy belies their unanimous valuing of education (also Walker, 1993). In the day-to-day, they all have reasons for resisting school, but they are well aware of the importance of education, especially its instrumental value through credentialling and subsequent impact on work opportunities.

Nola: Education is way important.

Nancy: You know, you've gotta have a basic education to survive in the world, there's

Sarah: If I want to have a good job when I'm older...you have to keep on going.

Girls from the 'bad' end of town have "real difficulties in securing the 'preferred' place of schooling" (Hey, op. cit.,p. 127). As Sarah observes,

it's all about like social stuff at school.

Marginalised girls do not possess the cultural capital privileged by the school. However, this does not mean that their desire to succeed is "simply liquidated" (Ibid.). Alternative 'centres' may be generated, both as subversion of official discourses and as other means of gratification.

Hey (op. cit.) argues that girls' friendships provide immediate practical and social rewards "which could not be conferred by the school" (Hey, op. cit., p. 127). The "unofficial measures of social 'success'" (Ibid.) are the rewards of an alternative 'prestige system' for those whose cultural capital is not privileged by schools and, equally importantly for these girls, in the local community. The network operates similarly. Thus, despite their resistances to aspects of the network culture, the girls find ways of empowering themselves by involving themselves in it - empowerment which is unavailable at school.

Because the network exists the girls can vote with their feet. It is a vote for the network as well as against school. "It is by drawing boundaries and placing others outside those boundaries that we establish our identities." (Epstein, 1993, p.18). The network may be a source of further trouble, but offers a sense of belonging. Acceptance and loyalty amongst friends are important values within the network, and the necessary conditions for finding oneself by losing oneself in the group (Rotheram-Borus, Dopkins, Sabate & Lightfoot,1996). It also affords status, even though the girls may be concerned about their image and reputation as a result of such affiliation. And the network offers something more immediate, the possibility of a good time.

As school is so problematic and because the network is known as a 'place' where a better time is available, to resist the network is to risk missing out.

Sarah: It's like, you want to work and then someone's like, oh no, come out here, this

Participation in the network, for those who want to complete their schooling, is a process of negotiating competing demands.

The girls' everyday practices are a contradictory mix of resistances and conformity. On the one hand, they claim the importance of education; on the other, they refuse to go to school. At the same time as they take pride in belonging to the network, they criticise its function in distracting them from school. They defend friends who are involved in offending, yet keep their distance from the action, though continue to participate in 'lighter' illicit recreations. They describe their suburb as a 'hole' and a bad place, and resist outsiders who adopt similar depictions. This 'layering' of resistances and conformity is necessary for girls' identity work, in part because they must manage the available cultural options as they negotiate their way across varying local contexts, especially those of schools, the network and the neighborhood.

Living in the margins: local hegemonies and alternative centres

Social positioning is arguably a key determinant of life opportunities and constraints. Centre- marginal relations are produced and reproduced hegemonically for the maintenance of material and ideological domination and subordination. The cultures of specific groups (gender, class, race, youth, family; and institutions and communities) are always in part the contestation and mediation of dominant culture. Understanding subjective experience involves shifts in perspective, for the interpretation of broader social influences, and global influences, particularly information, styles and trends communicated through music, media, recreational technologies, and as consumers. The everyday practices of local culture inform, sanction and interact with outside influences to produce touchstone for girls' logics. On the one hand, the girls are aware of and accept certain tenets of dominant ideology and desire the rewards of conforming. This is evident in discussions of their personal aspirations, for gaining educational qualifications and employment. On the other hand, the promises of the centre cannot be trusted when local evidence is the reality test. The skeptical view from the margins is expressed in Carol's question, referring to young people at the centre of the network: "Do you see them goin' anywhere?"

Some of the girls are aware not only of the odds against them in the local context, but also in broader social terms.

Rebecca: I hate people who walk past, you know, look like at us kids like scum when

Rebecca resists the social labelling she experiences, in part rationalising that "there's no set class for anyone":

In the next sentence, however, she suggests that social positioning and image are determining and delimiting factors in who she can be:

If I like won the lottery today, I wouldn't be looked at any different as I did the other

Rebecca is aware that 'society' differentiates people by class. However, her lived experience of class is at the local level. She experiences the looks in the street which label her 'scum' and believes the label would not change even if her fortunes did. Rebecca's personal status is determined by more than class. Her physicality on the street carries four other important identity markers: she is young, female, Aboriginal and, in the local neighbourhood, known to associate with the network. Marginalisation is also a manifestation of an hegemony of values which underpin and reinforce in the everyday, the material, power and social relations of local hegemony. Dominant values underpin the vernacular expression of status distinctions, in looks and labels and the ways in which young people are talked about in the area.

"In actuality, hegemonic power can only be understood in its specificity, in its constant attempt to restructure and refigure its strengths and weaknesses, and in its continual attempt to recuperate forms of resistance that are as ongoing as they are different" (Giroux, 1996, p 37). The hegemonic nature of centre-marginal relations is lived out at the local level. The concept of 'local' hegemony may help to explain how social positioning is experienced in the everyday at local level and, specifically, the subjectivities of the girls and contradictions in their patterns of resistance and conformity. The girls' constructions of identity, including resistances to personal labelling and attempts to counter local images and reputations, are fundamentally associated with place; and their place in it. Awareness of the scrutiny of the local community elicits ambivalent responses when preferred practices may result in damage to reputation. In this sense, the network is problematic.

Both coercive and consensual practices maintain local relations of marginalisation and privilege.

In the present study, local hegemony may be depicted as the struggle between two competing systems of values and ideologies. While exceptions and overlaps may be found, in broad terms, one system is aligned with the centre and is represented by schools, businesses and the middle-class neighborhood. A competing system is situated on the margins and represented by the 'network' and public housing neighborhood. While the girls, and their male peers, are actively involved in the production of local culture, there are established norms and values with which they interact. On the one hand, they encounter the centre's conventional values and norms. On the other hand, they experience norms and values which derive from the blending of environmental influences on the margins: of drug culture, crime culture, home and network-based culture. For example, dominant values here include toughness, coolness and anti-authoritarianism. These values are manifest in resistant behaviours, such as illicit activities, 'hanging around' and truancy, and represent an inversion of values which underpin the centre's norms of appropriate behaviour for young people, including notions of acceptable femininities. Having adopted certain values which are privileged within their local (marginal) culture, girls' "toughness, boldness, and straightforwardness often label them as difficult and disruptive girls at school, even while they connect them with one another, their families, and their community" (Brown, op. cit., p.128).

Explaining girls' subjectivities in terms of social positioning and local hegemony is further complicated by what seems to be a more specific form of hegemony operating within the network itself. Positioning at the centre or margins of the network is marked by differential status and privilege. The centre of the network is male dominated and overlaps with other networks based in crime and drug cultures. Status is largely determined by how 'bad' an individual (or group of friends) is (are). In this context, bad reputation, as the girls have suggested, is powerful and desirable and is the key factor which enables the boys at the centre to predominate. Despite their criticisms of the network, girls desire the (male) privileges of its centre, including being with the boys and obtaining power and status. The network is the object of their desire in part for what it offers and also because those rewards are seen as unavailable, or unlikely to be obtained, elsewhere.

Those at the centre are dominant by reputation but in terms of the girls' relations to the boys, corresponding patterns of subordination such as those claimed (Hall & Jefferson, op. cit.) and critiqued (McRobbie and Garber, op. cit.) within the subcultural studies are generally not evident. The girls in this study are neither invisible nor adjuncts to focal (male) preoccupations of the group. As discussed above, the girls position themselves in the network, limiting their participation based on an assessment of the risks, of being caught and locked up, of risks to reputation and to opportunities for conventional rewards. Specific girl-boy relationships have not been a key theme of the data of this study, however, and subordination may well be constitutive of girls' subjectivities in that personal context. Thus, a girl's self-positioning in the network may be partly based on that experience, even while as 'one of the girls' she asserts her will, her choice and her critique.

There is, moreover, some evidence of girls' parallel (to boys') dominance in relation to their reputations as fighters. Amongst themselves, fighting is sometimes a means of quickly settling disputes, mainly to clarify relationship rights or to end squabbles ensuing from someone's "running off at the mouth". Fighting as girls from their suburb against girls from other areas may have similar bases and establishes or confirms dominance over other girls - and other suburbs by representation of place. The best fighters are admired by girls and boys alike. While girls' dominance in this regard takes place at the margins of the network, it may be accorded temporary centre stage as a focus of girls' and boys' talk and pleasure.

Girls are not dependent on the boys' approval, however. When girls get together there is huge enjoyment and humour in their storytelling, embellishments and bragging - even when the incident is between girls within the group, for friendships are typically reconciled after a fight, restoring both good humour and status. This separate (from boys) sociality may explain why girls are able to stand back from the network and critique its practices (as outlined above) and specific boys' behaviours. For example, several of the girls narrate experiences of "dropping" friendships with boys and harassing them about their drug use. These and other instances of girls' dominance and autonomy, alongside their involvement in the network and desires for the privileges at its centre, are problems for theorising the empirical relations of hegemony at the intra-network level.

Hegemonic relations are more overt and visible at the local level, as are the network's disruptions of these relations; but within the network individual behaviours, expectations and opportunities appear to be more circumscribed by an hegemony of values (though values are produced within given relations). Loyalty, respect for reputation, anti-authoritarianism, 'beating the system', solidarity as residents of the 'bad end' of the suburb; these are dominant and shared values. The problem for the girls (and some boys) is that these values, conflict with other values they hold, or want to hold, and which are more aligned with the competing local system which holds the promise of conventional rewards. Nancy's comment points to more than restricted opportunities:

They don't take drugs, they don't... I coulda been like that... if I was just shown the

Hegemony of values refers to the pull of one value system over the other; and generally the value system of the network is a stronger force and has stronger appeal. "[T]here are more 'places to be desired' than those guaranteed at the 'centre'" (Hey, op. cit., p. 126). Patterns of girls' resistances and conformities may thus be understood as adherence to normative, hegemonic values, where those values constitute an alternative system to others which are ultimately perceived as denigrating.

"Struggling to acquire the means to represent themselves to self and others is part of growing up. However, this active work always occurs under socially given conditions which include structures of power and social relations, institutional constraints and possibilities but also available cultural repertoires" (Epstein & Johnson, 1998, p. 116). Local hegemonies exert a powerful containment of cultural options. The girls typically 'resolve' the struggle to manage conflicting pressures and desires by advocating staying away from the network or getting out of the suburb altogether. But these 'solutions' remain largely unexplored, suggesting that the pull of the network is experienced as more liberating than oppressive.

Conclusions: successes against the odds

Success may be seen as a struggle against the odds, but the individual might prevail. As Nola says, "It's down to me." The power of the individual is a learned (ideological) 'solution' to individual circumstances. It is a desirable conviction. The strength of conviction of individual girls' beliefs in individual power is indicative of their positioning within the local network, that is, their affiliation with and proximity to its centre or margins. Some on the outer margins of the network have already started to 'get away' and are the most optimistic about succeeding in conventional terms. Jodi, for example, does not think that growing up in her suburb "decreases my like opportunities to reach my goals." She has more reasons than most of the others for such conviction. Formerly immersed in the machinations of the network, certain incidents which left her fearful of being caught and locked up coincided with a change of school to one out of the area. Despite her various criticisms of the school, she is aware that it is "a good school" which presents opportunities she otherwise would not have had and is determined to succeed. Those who remain more closely involved with the network speak with tentativeness even as they claim the 'solution'. Linda's truanting and, reliance on family to harass her into attending, suggest that her categorical, "It's up to yourself if you want to reach where you want to go", may be more theoretical than practical. Similarly, it may be reasonable to interpret Carol's question (above) as really asking, 'Do you see me going anywhere?' Desiring conventional success is tempered by a wariness of expecting too much, both materially and of themselves. For some, the need to self-protect against expected failure may mean a retreat to the comforts of the network is more likely.

The girls' tentativeness (with only the one exception) is also indicative of their specific circumstances. Poverty, abuse, violence and substance abuse are all identified by the girls in accounting for why some young people get into trouble and others don't. Five girls indicate that family issues as disrupting their own school attendance. Some girls have had to deal with multiple family and social problems during their teenage years.

Nancy: That's one thing I miss. I didn't get a childhood, kinda thing... I dunno.

Living where they do, witnessing or involved in the daily dramas, knowing how they spend their time and seeing how "the other half" live are ubiquitous reminders of what they have already learned in their community and at school: "you come from [here], you go nowhere". "Dominant hegemonic discourses, always classed and racialized, are deployed to identify 'who' different...students are in the collective (school) imagination" (Epstein & Johnson, op cit., p. 128). The girls walk their markers of difference. Their identity is always raced, classed and, in the local context, labelled as certain kinds of girls, those who are different from the centre's cultural ideals.

In this context, the network is a place of refuge providing friendship, support and escape from problems. Such alliances may be analysed as self-defeating because they are part of the reproduction of oppressive social positioning (Willis, 1977; Hutchings, 1993). Giroux (op. cit.) argues, however, that the there is an alternative to the binary framework which, applied here, would interpret the girls' resistances as either reproductive of, or ineffectual in challenging, given dominances. Instead, the girls practices may be seen to entail "complex and often contradictory set of ideological and material processes through which the transformation of knowledge, identities and values takes place" (Giroux, op. cit., p. 38). The girls' understanding of their own experiences and their selection for themselves (and rejection of other) those practices and strategies which work for them and (for those with) their children are important aspects of identity work.

The network is also a healthier choice than others readily accessible in the area, such as the self-destructive pathway through hard drug culture. Participation in the network entails certain resistances which prohibit conventional options, but, expecting the girls to take this pathway is tantamount to expecting them to forgo friendships and other rewards and to become 'other' than what they are - in short, "an identity makeover" (Fordham, op. cit., p. 92). While opting for these resistances and alliances may not fit with conventional (middle-class, white) notions of a path to success, these forms of self-empowerment may be indicators of resilience and steps towards success in their terms. Rebecca's equating of success and happiness suggests that finding her own equilibrium is a milestone.

Gaining some sense of control and support out of what are often chaotic (family/care) situations, and within a community that is experienced as disintegrating and conflictual may be judged a significant achievement.

Nancy's definition of success is also about being happy, on one's own terms:

Identity work is important for knowing oneself and developing a value system which 'fits':

Girls' resistances may also be seen as alternatives to accepting subordinate status assigned to them on the margins. In their explication of the dynamics of classroom, schoolyard, network and neighborhood, the girls present themselves as commentators and critics, and active agents in the reworking of assigned status at the margins, through their experiences of the network, to more positive self-representation, even within the web of local oppressions. The girls' repertoire of cultural management practices do not and cannot resolve the problematics of material conditions and hegemonic relations which contain their cultural constructions.

However, their active disputations of the official discourses of school and neighborhood are integral processes toward self-knowledge, empowerment and alternative 'centres' for themselves.

Linda: I'm me. I like to be who I am.

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