Everyday Hyphens: Exploring Youth Identities with Methodological and Analytic Pluralism

Abstract

Taking seriously the call for methodological and analytic pluralism, we advance three key assumptions of theory and method: 1) young people develop "hyphenated selves" in shifting social and political contexts and in everyday circumstances; 2) pluralistic methods and research designs have the potential to capture identity movement across time and space; and 3) a pluralistic approach to analysis, specifically using a dialogical framework, allows hyphenated selves to be heard and interpreted in a way that neither pathologizes contradiction nor privileges coherence but presents a skillfully woven narrative about the self. To take up these questions, we draw upon the visual and textual narratives produced by three adolescents participating in a longitudinal, multimethod study designed to document social and academic engagement among urban youth.Critical youth researchers have documented the psychological imprint of oppression on youth identities and the resultant embodiment of contradiction, complexity and multiplicity as narrated by marginalized youth under siege, including immigrants, undocumented students, Muslim or Arab adolescents, youth of color, children in poverty, lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) or otherwise marginalized young people (Abu El-Haj bodies lived in conflict often speak through multiplicity, conflict, and splitting -what W.E.B. Du Bois called double consciousness (1903). These narratives, if social scientists are willing to hear their complexity, can teach us much about the dynamic multiplicity by which young people embody and reflect upon the multifaceted development of their lives. With this article we explore a palette of methods that invite narratives of multiplicity -what we have called hyphenated selves -in times of trauma and the everyday . That is, we explore methodological pluralism as a strategy of data collection and analysis to document how change and discontinuity, braided with a desire for narrative coherence and consistency, shape the stories young people tell about themselves, over time and space.

Exploring young people's and youth workers' experiences of spaces for ‘youth development’: creating cultures of participation

“…[contact] space' (Cohen & Ainley 2000) in which to engage young people as social actors who negotiate their identities across a multiplicity of political landscapes (Katsiaficas et al 2011). In this respect, the research enacted some of the practices of radical youth work by creating meaningful contact between young people, and their communities, who were supported to intervene in the politics of their everyday lives.…”

Mapping as a Method: History and Theoretical Commitments

“…Finally, we have found that maps can sit in dialogue with other pieces of data and thus change the traditional shape or course of research participation (Katsiaficas et al 2011). Our observation of the pluralistic advantage of maps is most likely directly related to our continual use of this tool in a mixed-method context such that it never stands alone, and also that it does much more than simply complement the other methods.…”

“…The maps "texturized" the interview and survey data of the participants to show that development is rarely linear or unidirectional. They also provided a way of contesting and contending with other sources of data; seeking contradictions that we considered essential to discussions of validity in our analysis (for further discussion, see Katsiaficas et al 2011). With regard to theory, the maps elucidated processes of multiplicity, mechanisms by which people and experiences travel with an individual while acknowledging the contextual considerations that allow that individual to flourish or flee.…”

Divided Selves: Professional Role Distancing Among Law Students and New Lawyers in a Period of Market Crisis

“…This technique draws on a rich tradition of mapping methodologies in cognitive science and social psychology, which traces its roots to classic studies in “topological psychology” (Lewin ). I follow Katsiaficas et al () in extending these methodologies from spatial analyses to a focus on representations of the “visual narrative of self” (2011, 123). In their investigation of how immigrant adolescents experience multiple identities, Katsiaficas et al employ identity mapping in order to “make visible [the adolescents’] selves across place, relations and time” (2011, 123).…”