Striking poses : an investigation into the constitution of gendered identity as process, in the worlds of Australian teenage girls / Geraldine F. Bloustien.

Abstract

Explores the intricacies of girls' micro-social lived realities within larger macro-social contexts and the notion of identity as process by centring on the process of 'self-making' by ten teenage girls, living in Adelaide, South Australia in the mid 1990s. The main hypothesis argues for the strategic role of play in the constitution of 'self-making'. This is contextualised within an analytical framework of 'social praxeology', highlighting the importance of social networks to the ways the teenage participants themselves perceived and negotiated subjectivities. Argues that the young participants in this study acquired their sense of cultural (self) identities through three aspects of 'bodily praxis' - place, space and play. While the understandings of the girls and their familial and social groupings provides the focal point to the analysis, these were framed within the perspectives of sixty-five other young people and over fifty significant adults in various social institutions and wider social networks and further contextualised by a reflexive analysis of the research process itself.