School bullying and social classification: stigmatization, hierarchies, and the production of inequalities in everyday school life

Abstract

This study aims to analyze school bullying as an everyday mechanism of social classification in public schools. Drawing on the Sociology of Education and the sociology of social inequalities, it critiques approaches that reduce the phenomenon to interpersonal conflicts or individual deviance, seeking instead to understand it as a social practice shaped by power relations, stigmatization, and the production of hierarchies among students. The study adopts a qualitative approach based on semi-structured interviews conducted with teachers from public schools in Campina Grande, Paraíba, Brazil. The empirical material was analyzed through content analysis following Bardin (2002), drawing on theoretical perspectives from the Sociology of Education and the sociology of social inequalities to understand how specific bodily, behavioral, and relational attributes are associated with bullying practices in everyday school life. The findings indicate that teachers' narratives reveal processes of social classification that transform differences into unequal positions among students, producing asymmetric power relations. It is concluded that bullying extends beyond the interpersonal dimension, constituting a social practice linked to the production and reproduction of inequalities within the school setting, while also revealing the naturalization of everyday forms of violence in school interactions.