Tarja Tolonen

Gazing with intent: ethnographic practice in classrooms

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 problematize their categories of active and passive. Drawing from our own observations, we discuss how activity, passivity and agency are conceptualized and gendered in educational research.

Locality and gendered capital of working-class youth

This article is based on a study of social and spatial transitions of about 20-year-old young people in four different sites in Finland. The data consist of 61 interviews, and in this article four case studies are presented. I analyse young people’s social class and family background, as well as the cultural and social capitals (Bourdieu, 1986), which I assume to be mediated through gender and locality (Skeggs, 1998). Also I will inspect Coleman’s argument (1988) that social capital and cultural (i.e. human) capital are strongly connected with each other. The data agree with many previous studies and indicate that working-class young people tend to choose similar types of occupation as their parents, many are likely to stay in the local community in future, and social capital is very important while achieving cultural capital and education. However, there are great differences in the ways working-class youth make use of their cultural and social capitals, so we must analyse carefully the emotional, social, local and material conditions of young women and men in order to understand their gendered life histories and educational choices.

Youth Cultures, Lifestyles and Social Class in Finnish Contexts:

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, gender and ethnicity.

Success, Coping and Social Exclusion in Transitions of Young Finns.

Using analytical concepts of success, coping and social exclusion, this article attempts to describe young peoples 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 Peoples Life Course. In this study, 61 young people around 20 years old were interviewed. Pierre Bourdieus notions of social and cultural capital are applied in the reading of young peoples life histories. Also their sense of agency and strategies of coping are examined. Bourdieus 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.

Young People and Local Power Geometries in Helsinki. The Intertwining of Social Class, Gender and Ethnicity in Public Spaces

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.

Minority young men’s gendered tactics for making space in the city and at school

ABSTRACT This article draws on ethnographic fieldwork and interviews to explore young minority men’s relation to school and city space in Helsinki from the perspective of their everyday experiences of racialisation in public spaces. The article uses the concept of ‘power geometrical’ relations of space by drawing on several research traditions, including youth and masculinity studies, studies on social space, racialisation and ethnicity, and human geography. The evidence shows the school to be an important site of local and national power geometry (Massey, D. [1994]. Space, Place and Gender. Cambridge: Polity Press), in which ‘informal’ and ‘physical’ spheres are dominated by peers and connect to streets and public spheres (Gordon, T., J. Holland, and E. Lahelma. [2000]. Making Spaces: Citizenship and Difference in Schools. Houndsmills et al. London: MacMillan Press Ltd). The article shows how young minority men knew their place both in narrow local power geometries, and within the wider city and school spaces, exploring how they formed their own lived spaces (Lefebvre, H. [1991]. The Production of Space. Oxford: Blackwell), claimed their spaces and marked their spaces with diverse tactics. Some tactics were socially open, such as making friends; some were very mobile, such as claiming their own urban spaces by mobility, or marking and ‘hanging around’; and some involved big groups of friends, crowds, defence and embodied accounts.