NCJ Number
165998
Date Published
1996
Length
63 pages
Annotation
This chapter provides organizational guidelines for conducting sociological inquiries of youth from the symbolic interactionist theoretical perspective; it also details the process of conducting research ethnographically and addresses the emergent study of youth subcultures within the social context of community life.
Abstract
The author advises that central to the interactionist approach is the notion that human life is community life. Researchers who work within an interactionist/interpretive tradition typically assume that human group life is intersubjective, diversified in its perspectives, reflective, activity-based, negotiable, relational, and is a process. In the discussion of ethnographic research, the author notes that ethnographers generally rely on three main sources of data: observation, participant observation, and interviews. Another section of the chapter focuses on human community and subcultural involvements. Topics considered in this section are the development of relationships, the acquisition of perspectives, doing activities, achieving identity, and making commitments. The final section details a research agenda designed to explore what it means to experience adolescence. It addresses the central activities around which the adolescent life-world revolves; the author considers these to be tentative guidelines. The activities discussed include acquiring perspectives, developing peer relationships, establishing and maintaining identities in the adolescent community, getting involved and involving others in deviance and respectability, doing things, encountering the conventional morality of the broader community, forming associations, and anticipating the future. 53 notes and 127 references