Everyday Courage

The Lives and Stories of Urban Teenagers

Niobe Way

• Publisher: NYU Press
• Year: 1998
• ISBN:
  9780814794876
• Topic: Ciencias sociales
• Subtopic: Sociología urbana

What does it mean to be a teenager in an American city at the close of the twentieth century? How do urban surroundings affect the ways in which teens grow up, and what do their stories tell us about human development? In particular, how do the negative images of themselves on television and in the newspaper affect their perspectives about themselves? Psychologists typically have shown little interest in urban youth, preferring instead to generalize about adolescent development from studies of their middle-class, suburban counterparts. In Everyday Courage Niobe Way, a developmental psychologist, looks beyond the stereotypes to reveal how the personal worldviews of inner-city poor and working-class adolescents develop over time. In the process, she challenges much conventional wisdom about inner-city youth and about adolescents more generally.

She introduces us to Malcolm, a sensitive and proud young man full of contradictions. We follow him as he makes the honor roll, becomes a teenage father, and falls into depression as his younger sister is dying of cancer. We meet Eva, an intelligent and confident young women full of questions, who grows increasingly alienated from her mother and comes to rely on her best friends for support. We watch her blossom as a ball player and a poet. We share her triumph when she receives a scholarship to the college of her choice.

In these 24 adolescents, Way finds a cross-section of youngsters who want to make positive changes in their lives and communities while struggling with concerns about betrayal, trust, racism, violence, and death. Each adolescent wants most of all to "be somebody," to have her or his voice heard.

1

Interpreting Narratives

AS I RODE the subway each week to the school during the first year of the study, my mind was filled with questions about the validity, motivation, and limits of my project. What am I doing studying urban youth? Who am I to study them? What are they telling me? How will I represent their stories? Will I get it “right,” and what is the truth? During the same time, I was a doctoral student in psychology, passionately immersed in the academic worlds of feminist, postmodernist, and hermeneutic theory. The perspectives advanced in these theories, loosely representing what Paul Rabinow and William Sullivan term “the interpretive turn in the social sciences,”¹ allowed me to eventually answer my gnawing questions. They offered me a window of clarity in the midst of my confusion. Feminist theory and postmodern thought, in particular, provided me with ways to make sense of my research project that resonated with my own perspectives on the world. They influenced not only how I conceived the project, but also how I analyzed the interview data, and ultimately, depicted the teens in this book. For this reason, it is critical for me to describe, over the next few pages, the beliefs held within this interpretive turn that shaped both the form and content of my study. Laying out the theoretical framework of my study is essential for understanding the teens’ stories that follow.

Form

Objectivity?

Criticizing the objective ideal in the social sciences, Rabinow and Sullivan write:

There is no outside, detached standpoint from which to gather and present brute data. When we try to understand the cultural world, we are dealing with interpretations, and interpretations of interpretations. Culture—the shared meanings, practices, and symbols that constitute the human world—does not present itself neutrally or with one voice, it is always multi-vocal … and both the observer and the observed are always enmeshed in it. … There is no privileged position, no absolute perspective, no final recounting.²

Like all other researchers, I came into my research on urban teens with a set of expectations and beliefs—a history, a gender, a race, a language, and a culture—that influenced how I understood and interpreted their stories. My stance as a researcher could not have been objective because I was not able to withdraw from my own perspective. In contrast to the beliefs characteristic of a more positivistic scientific tradition, the beliefs maintained within the interpretive turn assert that reality is not fixed and cannot be observed uninfluenced by the observer.³

Beginning with Schleiermacher in the early nineteenth century, various philosophers and psychologists have put forth theories making reference to a “hermeneutic circle.” This “hermeneutic circle” centers on the idea that “understanding inevitably involves reference to that which is already known.”⁴ My study rests on the assumption, for better or worse, that we can never escape such a circle of interpretation. When we try to understand a new phenomenon, we are always coming into it with expectations and preconceptions. Furthermore, what we already know, or our pre-understanding, is itself not an unmediated knowledge of the empirical world but determined by the traditions and symbolic codes within which we live and which shape our lives and ways of making sense of it. Once this dialectical nature of understanding has been recognized, the illusion of a completely detached stance as a researcher is exposed as such. The belief in an absolutely blank mind—a mind without any biases, prejudices, or pre-understandings—is a powerful trope or figure for scientific research but an untenable research tool.

One outcome of this questioning of objectivity is that generalizations and universals that surpass the boundaries of culture, time, and region become suspect. As the feminist psychologists Carol Gilligan, Lyn Mikel Brown, and Annie Rogers have pointed out: “How can sex [or class, race, or culture] be a difference that makes no difference?”⁵ Experience, perception, or ways of speaking cannot be decontextualized, taken out of culture, time, and place. To discuss how a person speaks about her or his world means to take into account and understand that these experiences are intimately connected to her or his specific location in the world.

One of the problems in the existing research literature on various populations of adolescents is that researchers frequently infer or explicitly state that what they have discovered from their data is the “objective truth” and that their findings can, therefore, be generalized to larger populations. The implicit and explicit denials by researchers of their lenses and biases often lead to distorted and misguided conclusions about the researched population. A striking example of such problematic conclusions is the “deficit model” of development used by many social scientists, which assumes deficiency or pathology when a particular population is different from what is typically a middle-class norm.⁶ For example, ethnic-minority parents are often blamed for not instilling in their children the “right” (i.e., white, middle-class) educational values.⁷ This deficit belief system, however, is rarely made explicit in the actual description of the research, and consequently the findings appear “objective.” Employing this stance of objectivity, social science researchers have been able to maintain that urban populations are deficient or pathological because these populations appear deficient or pathological according to these unacknowledged biases. The alternative hypothesis has only recently begun to be explored—namely, that researchers have obtained certain results because they have worked within a deficit framework rather than within a culturally specific normative framework.

Biases and Expectations: What Do We Do with Them ?

Recognizing that research always reflects the perspectives, ideals, and biases of the researchers need not lead to chaos or nihilistic indeterminacy. Biases allow researchers to maintain order and structure and gain access to meaning. In short, they allow us to avoid chaos. Prejudices are commonly perceived to inhibit truth-finding rather than to enhance it.⁸ However, biases and prejudices are necessary for understanding. They allow us to take in and engage with the world.⁹ Biases offer a perspective, and only through having a perspective can we see and possibly understand the vantage points of others.

But what are the implications of such beliefs? Since we always have biases, and, in fact, need biases to perceive different perspectives, what does this mean for researchers? I believe, along with many feminist researchers, that researchers should constantly evaluate and reevaluate their biases, assumptions, and expectations.¹⁰ It is when prejudices are not reflected upon, and as far as possible, acknowledged in research that one is likely to end up with findings that do not accurately represent the research participants’ views or perspectives.¹¹ Hans-Georg Gadamer, holding similar views, states: “Every textual interpretation must begin then with the interpreter’s reflection on the preconceptions which result from the ’hermeneutical situation’ in which he finds himself. He must legitimate them, that is, look, for their origin and adequacy.”¹² Instead of trying to “forget” one’s biases, prejudices, or expectations, one should engage with and challenge such biases and assumptions and determine their validity and limitations. In order to assess the “adequacy” of one’s biases, it is critical to maintain an openness toward the views held by the participants. Such an openness involves raising questions such as: Are the views held by the interviewee consistent or inconsistent with my expectations? If they are inconsistent, what are the implications for my own preconceptions or understandings? Gadamer warns us:

When we listen to someone or read a text, we discriminate from our own standpoint, among the different possible meanings—namely, what we consider possible—and we reject the remainder which seems to us unquestionably absurd. … We are naturally tempted to sacrifice, in the name of “impossibility,” everything that we totally fail to integrate into our system of anticipations. … [However] the essence of questioning is to lay bare and keep alert for possibilities.¹³

For sound and meaningful interpretations, it is necessary for the “open” reader to remain receptive to interpretations that at first glance seem “impossible,” “absurd,” or unexpected.

In my own research, I attempted to remain alert to the unexpected. I took note when I was quick to dismiss an element of an interview as unimportant, uninformative, or “wrong,” or when I was confused by an interviewee’s statement. I sought to recognize, question, and challenge my own expectations and assumptions. The purpose of such a process is, once again, not to rid myself of such expectations or pretend that they can be left behind once they have been acknowledged, but to come to the edge of my own knowledge—to ask myself what did I know that, in fact, I did not know? What did I expect that did not appear in the interview? How far does the interview take me into territory that I have not yet charted?

Examples of my own biases include those that stem from my experiences of being a white, middle-class woman in the United States. These biases have led me to perceive the world as one in which power differentials exist between men and women, white people and people of color, and rich and poor people; in each case, the former has more power than the latter. Because of these power differentials, I believe that white women struggle more than white men on both a professional and personal level; that women of color struggle more than white women; and that poor or working-class people, especially those who are women of color, have a particularly difficult time surviving in the world relative to those who are more affluent. Nevertheless, as I listened to urban poor and working-class teenagers speak about their lives and the ways in which they do and do not struggle, I realized that my vision of the world did not include many of their views. Indeed, my understanding of surviving was challenged by various adolescents who had contrasting ideas of what it means to “survive.” Some of the adolescents told me they do struggle but in ways in which I did not expect; others stated that they do not find themselves struggling either in or out of school. Some did not even know why I would expect them to be “struggling.” My expectations that the adolescents in this study, particularly the ethnic-minority adolescents, would speak about struggling to survive, about having to make conscious and strenuous efforts to simply get through each day, were simplistic. Their lives were more varied than I predicted—my biases were not “adequate.”

Throughout my analyses, I reflected upon my expectations and my interpretations. What was I not hearing? What was I not taking into consideration as I made an interpretation? I tried to maintain this reflective stance during my analyses to keep myself open to what I did not know or what my expectations prevented me from seeing. Having an awareness of and an openness to “the possibility that the situation may not fit any pattern of understanding in [my] repertoire”¹⁴ led me to more perceptive research findings than would have resulted if I had limited my understanding to those theories and ideas that were familiar to me. This process of continual reflection, I believe, enhanced my ability to understand more fully those to whom I was listening.

Biases in Developmental Psychology

Although biases based on one’s history, lived experiences, and present situation differ from researcher to researcher, there are certain biases or assumptions shared by many in the field of developmental psychology—the field in which I have been trained. In my study, I responded to three types of “professional” biases: (1) toward theory testing; (2) toward universal theories; and (3) toward specific theories of adolescence. My responses were, once again, influenced by the values maintained by the interpretive turn that I have been describing. Because these biases were both incorporated into my study and implicitly and explicitly challenged, I will elaborate briefly their content.

Theory Testing

The developmental theories of Sigmund Freud, Jean Piaget, Harry Stack Sullivan, John Bowlby, Mary Ainsworth, and Erik Erikson form the very meaning of “development” in the field of psychology. It is largely within these particular theoretical frameworks or several others depending on one’s question or population of interest that researchers are expected to work when they conduct developmental research.¹⁵ Developmental researchers are expected by others in the field to use a preestablished developmental theory—a theory that has been validated as representing a “real” phenomenon in development—to frame their research questions or to make sense of their data. To proceed without such a theoretical framework is frequently regarded as “unscientific,” “atheoretical,” or “not theoretically grounded.”

While social scientists over the past thirty years have emphasized the importance of data-driven or grounded theory—theory that is built upon what is perceived in the data rather than theory that drives the interpretation of the data—developmental psychologists have typically continued to believe that the only valid knowledge is knowledge generated by testing theories. There has been a general neglect of “discovery research”—research that aims to discover rather than to test, prove, or explain. If one’s intention is to test a specific theory, using a particular theory to frame one’s research is clearly the appropriate path to take. However, if one’s intention is to listen for developmental patterns, especially among a population that has rarely been studied by researchers, using a preestablished developmental theory to examine one’s data does not make sense.¹⁶

Theory or hypothesis testing hinders researchers’ abilities to perceive the unique experiences of those in their study and makes it harder for them to see the complexities and contradictions in lived experience. A researcher may, in fact, become all but blind to such complexities by looking only for data that fit a theory rather than a theory that fits the data. In a compelling and convincing critique of the social sciences, Albert Hirschman lashes out at the “the compulsive and mindless” theorizing. He emphasizes that connections must come from the material itself and not from a presupposed theory of explanation:

[I recommend] a little more reverence for life, a little less strait jacketing of the future, a little more allowance for the unexpected—and a little less wishful thinking. … I am of course not unaware that without models, paradigms, ideal types and similar abstractions we cannot even start to think. But the kinds of paradigms we search for, the way we put them together, and the ambitions we nurture for their powers—all this can make a great deal of difference.¹⁷

While I sought, in my own study, to create theories from my data, I do not claim, following Hirschman, to begin my research from an atheoretical position. Given that my position as a researcher is bound up with the theories of my particular field, to claim such a starting point would clearly be naive. However, instead of deciding in advance which developmental theory would be most useful, I adopt a stance of theoretical openness. I am not looking for an assumption-free discovery, nor am I rejecting the usefulness of theory or hypothesis testing research; I am attempting to expand our theories to include context-sensitive and data-driven models of adolescent processes.

Martin Heidegger, whose work has greatly influenced and provoked much of the current interest in the interpretive turn, writes:

[The hermeneutic circle] is not to be reduced to the level of a vicious circle or even a circle which is merely tolerated. In the circle is hidden a positive possibility of the most primordial kind of knowing. To be sure, we genuinely take hold of this possibility when, in our interpretation, we have understood that our first, last, and constant task is never to allow our fore-having, foresight, and fore-conceptions to be presented to us by fancies and popular conc...