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~Article 3: “‘You could just ignore me’: Situating peer exclusion within the contingencies of girls’ everyday interactional practices” By Svahn and Evaldsson (2011)
1. What are the basic assumptions that inform the reading?
-The processes of social exclusion for pre-adolescent girls, created with covert, subtle interpersonal behaviours is indirect bullying. Individuals use this practice to “reconstruct” their peer groups and organize the social hierarchy within the group, typically resulting in someone being excluded. This kind of relational aggression is prevalent in the everyday lives of adolescents, all of whom are seeking group acceptance. Ethnographical methodologies are used to work with children’s peer groups to examine their practices and interactions. This study focuses on pre-adolescent girls.
2. What are the major organizing ideas?
-Social exclusion, relational aggression and manipulation are more common among young girls rather than physical harm. The organization of social exclusion, peer alignments and social hierarchies shows that the girls rely on a variety of embodied practices that have subtle meanings in the girls’ everyday lives. Ethnographic research, along with documenting conversations paired with body positioning sketches, displays the situational findings for the peer group.
3. What serious questions does the reading raise regarding the fields of child and youth study?
-Relational aggression can appear as : ignoring, disqualifying, insulting, blaming, and creating new rules that effectually exclude others. Often times, victims of this kind of aggression are described to “bring it on themselves”. The nature of how this kind of bullying happens within social peer groups is important, but the behaviour that underpins these actions, where do they come from? Are these examples of social hierarchy within peer groups reflective of familial hierarchies that these children are familiar with? The behaviour examples collected in the research show that girls are “tearing [each other] down” in order for someone else to gain a higher status within the group. Can we intervene this kind of behaviour to support uplifting positive traits?
4. What serious omissions are left out of the article or reading (if any)?
-This study focuses on the pre-adolescent female population. This study of peer relations and social inclusion should be considered from an earlier age, and focus equally on both sexes, in early childhood contexts. Perhaps, from Pre-school contexts to Grade 2. The author states that this kind of social organization occurs naturally in peer group interactions, it would be useful to know when this type of behaviour begins to emerge; around what age to children begin to develop peer groups and how do they refine them. The sample population is Swedish, it is acknowledged that differences between cultures like fictional characters and nicknames could be influenced by ethnic background. Multiple cultural populations should be considered in future research.
5. In what ways does this article reinforce, extend, challenge, or oppose your own views on child and youth study/research/practice?
-This article presented a new lens for me to consider peer interactions between youth and the nature of their practices. The study demonstrated that youth are “proficien[t] in aligning and disaligning” with their peers’ actions to “establish different forms of [group] participation” and build exclusive social circles. (505) “Peer exclusion is deeply embedded in ordinary and everyday interactional peer group practices, making it very difficult to discern for an outsider” (506). The findings in this article raise more questions for me as a child and youth care practitioner, as to how this behaviour develops in children. Children may see this kind of interaction in their peer group as “normal” or acceptable because their peers participate. How do we intervene this kind of behaviour; can we?
6. What do you take away from the reading in terms of your own child and youth practice?
-This study gave me the opportunity to reflect on the kinds of actions me and my peers participated in during junior and senior high school, and which of those behaviours acted to exclude or include others. The covert forms of indirect bullying mention ignoring, disqualifying, insulting, or creating new rules... Amplifying someone else’s challenges to others or to the victim is also social exclusion. There are many different ways that children can bring each other down, and even when they are searching for acceptance or a sense of belonging to a group or friendship, others can “intensify and escalate” interactions and practices to produce the social exclusion of another. With this in mind, I will be more mindful of the kinds of conversations peers have amongst each other, and pay attention to the details children provide of the exclusion they experience. From this study, it is clear that children can be excluded in a variety of ways that can be obvious or cumulative over time. The child’s story about this experience is valuable and needs to be heard and appreciated.