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7 - Becoming a Member by Following the Rules

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 January 2010

Alain Coulon
Affiliation:
Department of Education, Université Paris 8 at Saint-Denis, Saint-Denis Cedex 02, France
Anne-Nelly Perret-Clermont
Affiliation:
Université de Neuchâtel, Switzerland
Clotilde Pontecorvo
Affiliation:
Università degli Studi di Roma 'La Sapienza', Italy
Lauren B. Resnick
Affiliation:
University of Pittsburgh
Tania Zittoun
Affiliation:
Université de Neuchâtel, Switzerland
Barbara Burge
Affiliation:
University of Pittsburgh
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Summary

Karsten Hundeide's chapter (this volume) raises the questions of why and by which mechanisms – particularly psychological – some marginalized, delinquent young people are converted to sectarian, violent, or extremist groups that are much more demanding than is society in general. What can we learn from these ways of life, these alternative lifestyles? How can we think of rehabilitating the young people involved in a manner that could be congruent with their new identities?

For me, a sociologist of education and an ethnomethodologist, these questions raised two issues:

  • What does it mean to be a member of a social group?

  • What is involved in following a rule?

What Is Becoming a Member?

In the language of ethnomethodology, being a member is a technical term meaning sharing the language of the group in question. It means sharing a common world, common perspectives, and ways of categorizing reality. It conveys the impression of living in a unified and uniform culture when its members are at ease in the following senses: They have naturalized and incorporated the innumerable details of daily life, including minute details of behavior, clothing, and talk that allow the members to recognize each other instantly. This community of schemes of thought and action, which Pierre Bourdieu (1987) calls habitus, generates nonreflective actions and always shapes agents' practices, but it can be discussed.

Type
Chapter
Information
Joining Society
Social Interaction and Learning in Adolescence and Youth
, pp. 109 - 116
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2003

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References

Becker, H. (1963). Outsiders: Studies in the sociology of deviance. New York: Free Press
Blumer, H. (1969). Symbolic interactionism. Perspective and method. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall
Bourdieu, P. (1987). Choses dites [In other words: Essays toward a reflexive sociology]. (M. Adamson, Trans.). Paris: Minuit
Coulon, A. (1997). Le métier d'étudiant. L'entrée dans la vie universitaire. [The job of being a student: Enrolling at a university]. Paris: PUF
Garfinkel, H. (1967). Studies in ethnomethodology. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall
Katz, J. (1988). Seductions of crime: Moral and sensual attractions in doing evil. New York: Basic Books
Sacks, H. (1992). Lectures on conversation (Vol. 1). Cambridge, MA: Blackwell
Thrasher, F. (1963). The gang: A study of 1313 gangs in Chicago (2nd ed., shortened). Chicago: University of Chicago Press. (Original work published in 1927)
Van Gennep, A. (1981). Les rites de passage [The rites of passage]. (M. B. Vizedom & G. L. Caffee, Trans.). Paris: Picard. (Original work published in 1909)
Zimmerman, D. H. (1970). The practicalities of rule use. In J. D. Douglas (Ed.), Understanding everyday life (pp. 221–238). London: Routledge and Kegan Paul

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