TY - JOUR
T1 - Telling tales in school
T2 - Youth culture and conflict narratives
AU - Morrill, Calvin
AU - Yalda, Christine
AU - Adelman, Madelaine
AU - Musheno, Michael
AU - Bejarano, Cindy
PY - 2000
Y1 - 2000
N2 - This study departs from mainstream criminology to approach youth conflict and violence from a youth-centered perspective drawn from cultural studies of young people and sociolegal research. To access youth orientations, we analyze experiential stories of peer conflict written by students at a multiethnic, low-income high school situated in an urban core of the western United States. We argue that youth narratives of conflict offer glimpses into how young people make sense of conflict in their everyday lives, as well as insights as to how the images and decisional bases embedded in their storytelling connect to adult-centered discourses found in popular media and formal education. Our analyses identify a range of story types ("tales"), each marked by a different narrative style, that students fashion as they write about peer conflict: "action tales," "moral tales," "expressive tales," and "rational tales." In our study, students wrote a majority of stories in the action-tale narrative style. We propose three alternative explanations for this pattern using class code, moral development, and institutional resistance perspectives. Finally, we discuss the theoretical and policy implications of our work and raise questions for future research.
AB - This study departs from mainstream criminology to approach youth conflict and violence from a youth-centered perspective drawn from cultural studies of young people and sociolegal research. To access youth orientations, we analyze experiential stories of peer conflict written by students at a multiethnic, low-income high school situated in an urban core of the western United States. We argue that youth narratives of conflict offer glimpses into how young people make sense of conflict in their everyday lives, as well as insights as to how the images and decisional bases embedded in their storytelling connect to adult-centered discourses found in popular media and formal education. Our analyses identify a range of story types ("tales"), each marked by a different narrative style, that students fashion as they write about peer conflict: "action tales," "moral tales," "expressive tales," and "rational tales." In our study, students wrote a majority of stories in the action-tale narrative style. We propose three alternative explanations for this pattern using class code, moral development, and institutional resistance perspectives. Finally, we discuss the theoretical and policy implications of our work and raise questions for future research.
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U2 - 10.2307/3115137
DO - 10.2307/3115137
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:0034344522
SN - 0023-9216
VL - 34
SP - 521
EP - 565
JO - Law and Society Review
JF - Law and Society Review
IS - 3
ER -