Thoughts on Reading for Week 8

I realized I never finished my thoughts/posting from last week's readings, so here are some of my ideas about the articles "Ethnographic Insights on Social Contect and Adolescent Development among Inner-City African-American Teens" (Linda Burton et al) and "For Whom? Qualitative Reserach, Representations, and Social Responsibilities" (Michelle Fine et al):

1. I really appreciated Burton's discussion of the inadequacies of a "normative development" framework ... in much of the social science research I've come across, there does seem to be a "right" way and a "wrong" way to develop as human beings; this article has helped me clarify (and give vioce to) some of the discomfort I've had in the past with analyzing individuals within a "normative framework" -

2. I also thought it interesting, however, that Burton et al seemed to define inner city African American development in relation to "normative development - for example, suggesting that because many inner city teens seem to have "adult" experiences early (ie: pregnancy and parenting), they may be skipping adolescence and moving right into adulthood... however, I'm wondering if, eventhough thay are not having a "normative" adolescence, they are still going through some undefined stages of development that preface full-fledged adulthood (I'm thinking in particular of a group of teenage African American inner city teens with whom I worked - I was often struck by the juxtaposition of their ability to responsibly care for their children and their habit of sucking their own thumbs when they got stuck on a math problem....)


3. Lastly, I thought reading Burton et al's article with Fine at al's article was very powerful - although I realize that the authors of "Development among Inner-City Teens..." were trying to make particular points with their descriptions of individuals and choices of interviews to include, I thought these often sounded like 'sound-bites" from a news report...(ie: "....teens who are struggling to survive in challenging environments” (Buton et al, p.405)...in just discussing the extremes in teens' lives, are the authors recognizing all the parts that - according to Fine at al - "constitute much of life in poverty" ?

“…these mundane rituals of daily living – obviously made much more difficult in the presence of poverty and discrimintion, but mundane nonetheless – are typically left out of ethnographic descriptions of life in poverty. They don't make very good reading, and yet they are the stuff of daily life. We recognize how careful we need to be so that we do not construct life narratives spiked only with hot spots" (Fine et al, p.118)." (Fine at al, p.118)

Looking forward to our discussion of these pieces this afternoon.

-Sasha