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Library | Material Type | Call Number | Child Count | Shelf Location | Status | Item Holds |
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Searching... Science | Book | HQ784 .P43 A35 1998 | 1 | Stacks | Searching... Unknown | Searching... Unavailable |
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Summary
Summary
Peer Power seeks to explode existing myths about children's friendships, power and popularity, and the gender chasm between elementary school boys and girls. Based on eight years of intensive insider participant observation in their own children's community, Peter and Patti Adler discuss the vital components of the lives of preadolescents, popularity, friendships, cliques, social status, social isolation, loyalty, bullying, boy-girl relationships, and afterschool activities. They describe how friendships shift and change, how people are drawn into groups and excluded from them, how clique leaders maintain their power and popularity, and how individuals' social experiences and feelings about themselves differ from the top of the pecking order to the bottom. In so doing, the Adlers focus their attention on the peer culture of the children themselves and the way this culture extracts and modifies elements from adult culture. Children's peer culture, as it is nourished in those spaces where grown ups cannot penetrate, stands between individual children and the larger adult society. As such, it is a mediator and shaper, influencing the way children collectively interpret their surroundings and deal with the common problems they face.
The Adlers explore some of the patterns that develop in this social space, noting both the differences in boys' and girls' gendered cultures and the overlap in many social dynamics, afterschool activities, role behaviour, romantic inclinations and social stratification. For example, children's participation in adult-organized afterschool activities - a now-prominent feature of many American children's social experience - has profound implications for their socialization and development, moving them away from the negotiated, spontaneous character of play into the formal systems of adult norms and values at ever-younger ages. When they retreat from adults, however, they still display distinctive peer group dynamics, forging strong ingroup/outgroup differentiation, loyalty and identification. Peer culture thus contains informal social mechanisms through which children create their social order, determine their place and identity, and develop positive and negative feelings about themselves. Studying children's peer culture is thus valuable as it reveals not only how this subculture parallels the adult world but also how it differs from it.
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Choice Review
Targeting preadolescence, Adler and Adler argue this age period is a relatively recent construct that lies at the margin of childhood and adolescence. The "last age of childhood" is considered "a critical temporal midpoint" and represents a significant learning period in which the individuation process is most intense. As parent-as-researchers (PAR), the authors describe and analyze an eight-year ethnographic study in their home community. From a social psychological framework, the authors' goal is to understand both the structure and dynamics of preadolescent peer-group life. Preadolescent peer culture is described as a powerful entity insomuch as preadolescents proclaim their rights as individuals, yet "herd together like sheep." They argue that peer culture has dramatic socializing effects, which influence the way individuals construct their identities. Focusing on children's voices and issues of status, stratification and power are analyzed in relation to peer group popularity, friendship, and activities. "Clique power," self-esteem, gender segregation and integration are key points of interest. Rich in children's dialogue and vignettes, this study recasts preadolescent life as a complex, dynamic entity that informs and is informed by adult culture. All levels. P. E. Herideen Northeastern University
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments | p. ix |
Introduction | p. 1 |
Chapter 1 The Parent-As-Researcher | p. 19 |
Chapter 2 Popularity | p. 38 |
Chapter 3 Clique Dynamics | p. 56 |
Chapter 4 Clique Stratification | p. 74 |
Chapter 5 After-School Activities | p. 98 |
Chapter 6 Friendships: Close and Casual | p. 115 |
Chapter 7 Friendships: Compartmentalized | p. 136 |
Chapter 8 Cross-Gender Relations: The Early and Middle Years | p. 157 |
Chapter 9 Cross-Gender Relations: The Later Years: Cross-Gender Relations: The Later Years | p. 173 |
Chapter 10 Bringing It All Together | p. 194 |
Notes | p. 219 |
Refences | p. 231 |
Index | p. 247 |