Wieso ‘Being Bad’ ein ganz natuerliches

Phaenomen ist: 13-jaehrige Jungen zum

Thema: ‘Was Maedchen wollen’

clark university

department of psychology

worcester, ma, usa

michael bamberg

kurz-geschichte 1 kurz-geschichte 2‘Small story’: “Kevin, how

disgusting!” --- gestern war ‘SGAD’ – und ich hab Kevin reingelegt

POSITIONIERUNG (a) gegenüber Mädchen und

Kevin(b) gegenüber Vic und

Moderator(c) gegenüber ---‘normativer Heterosexualität’---‘political correctness’ (‘fine

tuning’ zwischen ‘obnoxious’ + ‘okay’)

---‘being bad’ (was es heisst ein ‘schlimmer Junge’ zu sein)

‘Small Story’: “My Mom was like: ‘Do I know you?’” --- wie ich mich aus der Affäre ziehen konnte

POSITIONIERUNG(a) gegenüber Judy + Mom

(Mädchen + Lehrer)(b) gegenüber V und M(c) gegenüber ---Heteronormativität---‘political correctness’ (‘fine

tuning’ dessen ‘was erlaubt ist’)

---normativer männlicher Sexualität (durchaus ambivalent)

“Kevin, how disgusting!”

• Gestern war ‘SGAD’• Ich hab nem

Maedchen in den Po gekniffen und Kevin die Schuld in die Schuh geschoben

• Was fuer ein Wimp Kevin ist!

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My Mom was like: ‘Do I know you?’

• Judy tried to challenge me and my Mom came

• Girls say ‘don’t do it’, but they want it done

• The whole school did it

• Teachers approve• What if girls turned

the tables on us?

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The Project• 5-year-long pilot project of 10-15-year-old males

<lower class children> <3rd year> <300h of audio + video of 54 boys in the first year>

• Cross-sectional + longitudinal data <10-, 12-, & 15-years of age>

• DATA: • Observational• Writing• Interview• Group discussions• After-school non-adult guided interactions

• TOPICS: -friends, -girls, -emotions/body, -future

Maedchen + Jungen im Vergleich

Three Kinds of Narrative Approaches to the

Study of Self and Identity

• Life-Story Approaches• Life-Event Approaches• “Small” Stories

– Short narrative accounts– Embedded in every-day interactions– Unnoticed as ‘stories’ by the participants– Unnoticed as ‘narratives’ by researchers– But highly relevant for identity formation processes

Life-Stories + Life-Events

• Life-Stories– Dan McAdams (1993)

+ Gabi Rosenthal (1998)

– Elicitation Technique

– Analysis of lives

– Focus on coherence + health

• Life-Events– Most narrative research

– Elicitation is focused on particular events or experiences

– Analysis of focused area

– Meaning of event in one’s life

Merits of narrative ‘life research’life-history + life-event approaches

• Accentuates and brings to light lived experience • Forces participants to focus on the meaning of

THAT event in their lives• Accentuates the continuity of experience

• And sheds light on aspects that appear discontinuous

• Assumes a unified sense of personal identity -- against which ‘experience’ is constantly sorted out

potential shortcomingsor open questions

• How does this ‘unified sense of self’ come to existence?– How does the person ‘learn’ to “sort out”

events against what is called ‘life’?

• Overemphasis of stories about the ‘self’– Cutting out all those stories about others

• Overemphasis of ‘long’ stories– Cutting out everyday, “small” stories

why?

• Influences of ‘traditional’ psychological inquiry– Interests in selves + self-coherence

• Influences of traditional narratology – Work with texts (written texts)– Assuming authors as behind the texts– Assuming criteria of goodness for narratives

• Interviews as windows into selves

Narrative Dimensions(Ochs & Capps, 2001)

• Tellership• one active teller vs. many

• Tellability• high vs. low

• Embeddedness• detached from surrounding talk vs. situational embeddedness

• Moral stance• one moral message vs. different + conflicting messages

• Linearity & Temporality• closed temporal + causal order vs. open + spatial

Stories about others:the Davie Hogan story

Positioning with Davie Hogan. Stories, Tellings & Identities.

Chapter in: C. Daiute & C. Lightfoot (Eds.), Narrative analysis: Studying the development of individuals in society.  London: Sage. (2003)

Characteristics of “SMALL” stories

• Short• Conversationally Embedded + Negotiated

• before• during• after

• Fine tuned positioning strategies– fine-tuned vis-à-vis the audience– fine-tuned vis-à-vis dominant + counter narratives– multiple moral stances (testing out and experimenting with

identity projections)

• Low in tellability, linearity, temporality + causality

Kurz-geschichte 1

“Kevin, how disgusting!”

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Kurz-geschichte 2

“My Mom was like: ‘Do I know you?’”

Functions of “SMALL” stories

• Practice in doing identity work• Continuous editing of experience

– Retelling of experience

– Re-tuning these tellings according to• different audiences

• Different master-narratives

• different (developing) senses of ‘who-I-am’

• Resulting in some sense of coherence• though one that is constantly reworked

conclusion

• So, rather than assuming the existence of identity + sense of self – and viewing narratives as reflections thereof, I am suggesting to study the emergence of a sense of self by way of exploring the SMALL stories people tell in their EVERYDAY interactions