Tarja Tolonen

The purpose of this article is to analyse young people’s cultural practices and style seeking by utilizing certain notions of a theory promoted in the 1970s at CCCS (the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies in Birmingham), and especially the notions of ‘new studies’ on social class that refer to Pierre Bourdieu’s concepts. The article takes as its focus the lifestyles of young people in certain localities in Finland. Although the qualitative data from 39 interviews were collected in the Finnish cities of Helsinki and Kajaani, the main focus in this article is on different localities in Helsinki (33 interviews). It is suggested that young people’s styles vary within locations and the formation of (life)styles takes place partly within groups, which are connected to the local culture (area, school) as well as to social class (family, school). I argue that no one can, will or is able to manifest any kind of style wherever they wish. One’s (life)style is attached to locality, class,...

Feminist ethnography in education has in so-called Western countries developed in the late 1900s into a research approach with its own identifiable characteristics. Starting points are in feminist theorizations that draw from perspectives of different marginal groups, raised in the context of cultural radicalization of the 1960s and 1970s. In Finland, feminist ethnography took the first steps in the 1990s and achieved a stable position in educational research in the early 2000s. This emerging research has provided possibilities for subtle analysis in educational institutions on gendered, spatial and embodied practices, which have impact on intersectional inequalities. A theoretical and methodological invention developed by the first Finnish feminist ethnographers in the 1990s is differentiation between the official, informal, and physical layers of the school. Teaching and learning, the curriculum, pedagogy, and formal hierarchies belong to the official layer. Interaction among teac...

Nuorten koulutusvalintoja lähestytään julkisessa keskustelussa usein uusliberalistisesti eli yksilöllisinä prosesseina, vailla rakenteellista näkökulmaa. Nuoret tekevät kuitenkin koulutusvalintansa erilaisiin kulttuurisiin ja sosiaalisiin pääomiin tukeutuen tietyissä paikallisissa konteksteissa. Nuoret ”kirjataan” yhteiskuntaan ja sen kerrostumiin koulutusvalintojen kautta. Nuorten kouluarvosanat materialisoituvat valintatilanteissa mahdollisuuksina erilaisiin koulutustulevaisuuksiin ja valintakehyksiin, joiden kautta heitä arvotetaan yhteiskunnallisesti. Siten nuoret valitsevat tietyn koulutuspaikan ja sen myötä yhteiskunnallisesti määritellyn arvoaseman, josta he valintaprosessin kuluessa tulevat itsekin tietoisiksi. Analysoimme artikkelissamme 66 eri puolilla Suomea asuvan peruskoulun yhdeksäsluokkalaisen nuoren haastattelupuhetta koulutusvalinnoista. Löysimme nuorten kuvauksista kuusi valintakehystä, jotka liittyivät joko varmasti lukioon tai ammattioppilaitokseen suuntautuviin ...

In this article, we analyse the narratives of Finnish young people regarding their educational choices for upper secondary education in a theoretical framework inspired by Bourdieu’s forms of capital and Skeggs’ concept of the classed value of self. Our data consist of interviews with 66 ninth-graders, produced in the Youth in Time research project. In the narratives, we identified six frames of choice between general upper secondary and vocational education and outside formal education. We also recognized that there was hesitation and various strategies that young people utilized in making their educational choices, based on their social and cultural capitals. Young people become aware of their value in the educational market through this process of making their choice. Their educational choices are complex and intertwined with gender, social class, social relations, racialization and locality.

ABSTRACT Education systems are expected to enhance both social regulation and emancipation of school students. The contradictions between these aims are visible in the everyday life at school in tensions between control and agency. These tensions are explored in this article by analysing the first two weeks in secondary school, on the basis of ethnographic data collected in the project "Citizenship, Difference and Marginalization in Schools: with Special Reference to Gender." Multilayered processes and practices are involved in the induction of new students. Banal instructions in the "official school," the construction of differences and continuities in the "informal" school, and the ways in which bodies of students are placed in the time-space paths in the "physical" school are explored. The authors ask how school students are taught to become "professional pupils" routinized in the everyday life of their new schools, and how students themselves construct competences through negotiation, withdrawal, or resistance.

In this methodological article we discuss ways in which researchers observe girls and boys in the classroom. The article is based on a comparative cross-cultural, collective ethnographic study, ‘Citizenship, Difference and Marginality in Schools: With Special Reference to Gender’, which was conducted in secondary schools in Helsinki and London. When we analysed our own actions, we realized that educational researchers – like teachers – tend to concentrate on events taking place in the classroom, particularly visible and audible action. They are less likely to direct their gaze on stillness and silence. In most of the classes that we followed, boys used more voice, time, space and movement than girls, although there were also differences among girls and among boys. In the early stages of our study, noisy and physically active boys drew our attention. But in our practice as the research continued, and in this article, we turn our gaze onto non-events, and ask reflexive researchers to ...

In this article I will discuss the relationship of youth research to concepts of social and cultural capital. Firstly, I will critically examine the much-used concept of social capital, which, I suggest, not only functions as a concept but as a strong metaphor for interpreting young people’s lives (cf.

... Page 2. June 14, 2008, Saturday, 16:45-18:15 Parallel session #III: Young Motherhood and Partnerships Session Leader: Barter, Christine Discussant: Kuhar Metka Papers: 1. Kelhä, Minna S. ... Discussant: Ana Cristina Papers: 1. Kuhar, Metka. ...

... Elina Lahelma ja Tuula Gordon No, koulu on aina koulu. Eihän kouluu oo tarkotettu mikskään hauskan-pidoks. Koulu on tarkotettu sen takii, että siellä opiskeltaisiin (...) ja opittais asioita. Ja ei mun mielestä pitäis ollakaan mitään muuta (...) En mä ajatellukaan et koulun pitäis ...

In the urban public spaces of Helsinki, Finland, the pluralistic cultural and social practices of young people and the authorities repeatedly take place. This chapter looks at a selected area of Helsinki, one where the population varies and where questions of social class, ethnicity and gender are not just intertwined but are made visible through a contested use of public spaces, in which different ‘power geometries’ (Massey, Space, place and gender. Polity Press, Cambridge UK, 1994) are traced. As well as contextualizing these cases within the formal state, such as Government Acts on education, youth work, gender equality and the current political atmosphere, I assume that the building of respectable and active citizenship takes place in informal social relations. These processes of building ‘urban citizenship’ (Gordon, Urban citizenship. In: Pink WT, Noblit GW (eds), International handbook of urban education Springer, Dordrecht, p 447–462, 2007) are here investigated through the power geometries, and balances formed in different urban spaces, including schools, youth clubs, shopping centre and the streets in one specific area of Helsinki. The belonging to, or marginalization from, urban space is closely connected to social, ethnic and gendered orders. The everyday social orders of who is who, and who is respected and valued, are built into these different urban sites, orders that intertwine with gender, ethnicity and social class.

Using analytical concepts of success, coping and social exclusion, this article attempts to describe young people's life histories and various ways of transition into adulthood; transitions that I claim to be classed, gendered and culturally diverse. This article draws from several research projects, mainly Social and Spatial Transitions in Young People's Life Course. In this study, 61 young people around 20 years old were interviewed. Pierre Bourdieu's notions of social and cultural capital are applied in the reading of young people's life histories. Also their sense of agency and strategies of coping are examined. Bourdieu's theory of capitals has been developed further in the context of youth studies. In the article I introduce the notion of subcultural social capital, which refers to social networks and groupings and resources in certain youth cultural fields. In this article, five cases of young people are examined through narratives of success, coping and social exclusion. I suggest that these stories are embedded in specific cultures, which are classed and gendered.

... until feminist researchers questioned this bias, and included girls and their lives as subjects of study (see for example Mc Robbie and Garber ... Bowling or fighting were important means of testing, changing or confirming the order between the boys: 'The [bowling, TT] records of the ...