One of the challenges of sociology is to unmask daily happenings and to attempt to discover what they reveal by what they occult. This is possible by researching the uses that are made of masks. This is the challenge which we set ourselves taking as our empirical framework different scenes in which masks are used, beginning with acts of naming which mask the reality from the moment in which they are named. Attention is also given to masks which characterize youth styles and to the intricate web of meanings which these styles hide. Finally, we question the existence of masks in the setting of schools portrayed as "schools of the devil". In the latter case, the hypothesis suggests that the violence which some young people are at the centre of in such schools is also a mask, given to hide subtle forms of violence to which these young people are daily subjected.
youth; school violence; identities; masks