Representing Youth: Methodological Issues in Critical Youth Studies

by Amy L. Best (Editor)

Overview

From youth culture to adolescent sexuality to the consumer purchasing power of children en masse, studies are flourishing. Yet doing research on this unquestionably more vulnerable—whether five or fifteen—population also poses a unique set of challenges and dilemmas for researchers. How should a six-year-old be approached for an interview? What questions and topics are appropriate for twelve year olds? Do parents need to give their approval for all studies?
In Representing Youth, Amy L. Best has assembled an important group of essays from some of today’s top scholars on the subject of youth that address these concerns head on, providing scholars with thoughtful and often practical answers to their many methodological concerns. These original essays range from how to conduct research on youth in ways that can be empowering for them, to issues of writing and representation, to respecting boundaries and to dealing with issues of risk and responsibility to those interviewed. For anyone doing research or working with children and young adults, Representing Youth offers an indispensable guide to many of the unique dilemmas that research with kids entails.
Contributors include: Amy L. Best, Sari Knopp Biklen, Elizabeth Chin, Susan Driver, Marc Flacks, Kathryn Gold Hadley, Madeline Leonard, C.J. Pascoe, Rebecca Raby, Alyssa Richman, Jessica Taft, Michael Ungar, Yvonne Vissing, and Stephani Etheridge Woodson.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780814709177
Publisher:	New York University Press
Publication date:	01/01/2007
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	342
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Amy L. Best is Professor of Sociology at George Mason University. She is the author of Fast-Food Kids: French Fries, Lunch Lines, and Social Ties, Fast Cars, Cool Rides: The Accelerating World of Youth and Their Cars, and the award-winning, Prom Night: Youth, Schools and Popular Culture. She also edited Representing Youth: Methodological Issues in Critical Youth Studies.

Table of Contents

AcknowledgmentsIntroductionAmy L. BestPart I Framing Youth: De?nitional Boundaries and Ambiguities1 Across a Great Gulf? Rebecca Raby2 “Label Jars Not People”Marc Flacks3 Grow ’em StrongMichael Ungar4 A Roof over Their HeadYvonne VissingPart II From the Field: Adults in Youth Worlds5 With a Capital “G”: Gatekeepers and Gatekeeping in Research with Children Madeline Leonard6 Will the Least-Adult Please Stand Up? Life as “Older Sister Katy” in a Taiwanese Elementary School Kathryn Gold Hadley7 The Outsider Lurking Online: Adults Researching Youth Cybercultures Alyssa Richman8 Racing Age: Re?ections on Antiracist Research with Teenage Girls Jessica Karen Taft9 “What If a Guy Hits on You?”: Intersections of Gender, Sexuality, and Age in Fieldwork with Adolescents C. J. PascoePart III Activating Youth: Youth Agency, Collaboration, and Representation10 Trouble on Memory Lane: Adults and Self-Retrospection in Researching Youth Sari Knopp Biklen11 Power-Puff Ethnography/Guerrilla Research: Children as Native Anthropologists Elizabeth Chin12 Performing Youth: Youth Agency and the Production of Knowledge in Community-Based Theater Stephani Etheridge Woodson13 Beyond “Straight” Interpretations: Researching Queer Youth Digital Video Susan DriverAbout the Contributors Index

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

This edited volume is a powerful and compelling reminder of the many methodological and ethical challenges that researchers face when working with youth. Firmly located within an emergent tradition of scholarship that privileges a more self-conscious and critical mode of inquiry and analysis, these thirteen contributions critically address, and also redress, the power imbalance inherent in doing qualitative research with youth by conducting non-exploitative and more reflexive researches... Reflecting provocatively on how we create knowledge with and for youth, this is a cutting-edge work that promises to open up novel and innovative avenues in theory, methodology, and representation in youth research and beyond. This is definitely a must-read for those interested in doing research with youth and equally to a wider readership committed to experimenting with novel methodologies that are more self-reflexive and less authoritative."-Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute,

“In this volume, Amy Best offers critical youth studies an epistemological compass, a collection of essays that spans across nations, methods, sexualities, ethnicities, generations and age, reflecting provocatively on how we create knowledge with, for and by youth. This book promises to be a classic for the next generation of scholars perched to engage critically, respectfully, theoretically and provocatively with youth, to inscribe a twenty-first century signature on critical youth studies.”
-Michelle Fine,co-author of Working Method: Research and Social Justice

“Should be of value to researchers doing ethnographic field studies with youth.”
-Choice

,

“A powerful and compelling book that represents cutting-edge new directions in critical youth studies. This is a passionate call for a critical moral consciousness that will create more humane spaces for today's youth in our complex global culture.”
-Norman K. Denzin,co-editor of The SAGE Handbook of Qualitative Research

Editorial Reviews

"In this volume, Amy Best offers critical youth studies an epistemological compass, a collection of essays that spans across nations, methods, sexualities, ethnicities, generations and age, reflecting provocatively on how we create knowledge with, for and by youth. This book promises to be a classic for the next generation of scholars perched to engage critically, respectfully, theoretically and provocatively with youth, to inscribe a twenty-first century signature on critical youth studies."

Michelle Fine

"Should be of value to researchers doing ethnographic field studies with youth."

Choice

"A powerful and compelling book that represents cutting-edge new directions in critical youth studies. This is a passionate call for a critical moral consciousness that will create more humane spaces for today's youth in our complex global culture."

Norman K. Denzin

Should be of value to researchers doing ethnographic field studies with youth.”
• Choice

From the Publisher