Conference:
ECER 2009
Format:
Paper
Session Information
Contribution
This paper focuses on one of the most important theme of social pedagogy – socialization. It is aimed at socialization into subcultures and describes how young people become members of subcultures in the framework of social milieu. Research is based on subculture theories developed by Chicago School and Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies, socialisation theories, and identity construction theories. I inquire members of skinheads subculture. The skinheads originated in Britain in the early 1970s and promptly spread across the world. I do not punctuate specifics of this subculture but I try to find general interrogation of socialisation into subculture and resocialisation into other subculture or majority. The research question was: "How does a young man become member of a subculture"? To answer this question I used qualitative inquiry. Findings show socialisations into subculture as a process with recurrent construction and reconstruction of identity. Socialisation factors are presented from the microsocial to macrosocial milieu. Identity, divided into two partition a) internal – which represents mind and b) external – which represents image, changes within the framework of milieu.
Among others, I also discuss analysis of semi-structured interview. First, it is number of participants and validity/reliability. Second, it is author where I take a close look at a) subjectivism and open coding process and b) prior knowledge and interpretation. Third, it is triangulation. Finally, I resume qualitative research strategies and their strong and week sides in gaining evidence and making theory.
Method
To find participants I used snowball technique. Number of participants was given by theoretical saturation, which means that no new dimensions emerged from the data after adding new individual participants. I used one of grounded theory techniques to analyse data - open coding. Codes were clustered together into categories and categories were clustered together into main categories. Main categories became a starting point for creating analytic story. Findings are presented as a set of explanatory relational statements. This statements represent an interpretation of phenomenon and show how main categories are interrelated. Based on this methodology, I proposed substantive theory of socialisation into subculture. Finally I discuss validity and reliability in qualitative research according to criteria defined by Lincoln and Guba.
Expected Outcomes
There are many interesting findings. I will mention constructing subculture identity as recurrent process influenced by factors of microsocial and macrosocial milieu. There I would like to accentuate one factor from microsocial milieu. It is concept of significant others, transformed from primary socialisation into secondary socialisation. Another new concept is concept of secondary subculture. The way of resocialisation into second subculture includes two antagonistic items: cooperation with primary subculture and also negotiation of this subculture.
I discuss contribution of qualitative research for visualization of processes in human mind, for exploring unique experience and perspective of an individual. I look at opportunity to ask participants and let them space to talk in the process of constructing theories of social reality. I perceive these theories as perspectives to social reality. Perspectives based on deep understanding one man to a few others. Perspectives based on evidence grounded in human life.
References
Socializace do subkultury skinheads. Sborník prací filozofické fakulty brněnské univerzity. Řada pedagogická, U 13. Brno: Masarykova univerzita, 2008.
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