clark university department of psychology worcester, ma, usa

1. 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

2. ‘Small story’: “Kevin, how disgusting!” --- gestern war ‘SGAD’ – und ich hab Kevin reingelegt POSITIONIERUNG gegenüber Mädchen und Kevin gegenüber Vic und Moderator 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 gegenüber Judy + Mom (Mädchen + Lehrer) gegenüber V und M gegenüber ---Heteronormativität ---‘political correctness’ (‘fine tuning’ dessen ‘was erlaubt ist’) ---normativer männlicher Sexualität (durchaus ambivalent) kurz-geschichte 1 kurz-geschichte 2

3. “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!

4. 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?

5. 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

6. Maedchen + Jungen im Vergleich

7. 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

8. 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 Life-Stories + Life-Events

9. 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

10. 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

11. 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

12. 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

13. 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)

14. 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

15. Kurz-geschichte 2 “My Mom was like: ‘Do I know you?’” Kurz-geschichte 1“Kevin, how disgusting!”

16. 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

17. 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