Youth Worker Ethnography

Saturday 12 - 4

Band practice day for one group who were waiting at the door for the centre to open- these guys are uni age, just finished school and they have a nice manner about them; a good demeanour. They bring all their own gear for their practice and get on with it slightly more systematically than other younger bands or performers that come to the centre. These guys have just started to play some gigs outside of the area and in the city; they show a mature sophistication in their approach and dedication to their music practice. I am not charging this young group for their practice session because of the interest and maturity that they show, this is the one way I can show my appreciation for their efforts. I also have been trying to support this band with gaining more performance time and encouraging them to play to as many crowds as possible. 

One of the main tasks I have taken on lately within the centre has been to manage and promote the weekly performance night with young bands and performers. This night usually consists of 2 youth bands performing between 6pm and 730pm; bands are welcome to invite any family or friends of any age. The night has been developed with specific intent on supporting young musicians and performers alike by supplying a regular space and professional equipment, including a sound technician, at no cost.

I have recently begun thinking about how I might contribute to the culture found in the centre at its various stages and what effect this could have. As a researcher you find yourself considering the how’s and why’s of your own position against or in reference to the subject and how this shapes the interpretations you then take up and offer. As youth worker the position is guided by a set of terms such as, ‘professional boundaries’, ‘duty of care’, ‘mandatory reporting’ and ‘ethics’ and then it filters down into your own judgements, discretion and common practices. Trying to distance myself, as researcher at the same time as being Youth Worker is a task not for the faint hearted or easily swayed. I find youth subjects of immense interest; though at times (while being youth worker/researcher) I have to shut down, police, and intervene – staff, in the name of a harmonious centre, policing this room-to-move young people find, to some degree. Anyway to be clear, I observe (as researcher) and intervene, as my job requires me to do. This conflict of interest I face at the moment cannot be whinged about too much, for how many out there get to work in an environment they enjoy, with subjects of academic interest and get support from other members of staff to pursuit interests and get paid for the effort. My point here is, there can be difficulties found, felt and possibly overcome when working in the place of research. An insider status can be valuable on one hand and burdensome on the other.

So my role as Youth Worker enables an insider status to some degree – but this must be understood in relation to the job and the young people. For as much as I can say I have more trust and rapport with these young people than some parents, peers and authorities of any description, I am still at a distance from what the ‘essence’ of group solidarity implies. Simply by the position I hold and the job I must do. Yet I contribute to the way in which the group can respond to the centre, their culture and the wider world. In this respect Youth Workers can gain a lot from the practice of ethnography and the chronicle of theory driven investigations that has developed through the discipline of sociology. With the application or consideration of theory and the working of an alignment towards practice, a Youth Worker can activity seek out information to help manage the client, they will find key informants, aligning themselves with the group in a way similar to an ethnographer as to try and gain ‘insider’ knowledge, to better manage and interpret the group. Essentially, having a genuine care or interest in the group poses a political perspective that seeks to reveal the very appreciation one has for a subject, similarly the ethnographer must have some questions, concepts or interest worth pondering over in order to get on with the research. And in both cases (ethnographer and youth worker) having a body of knowledge, interpretations and sets of guidelines to work with, establishes a worthwhile and valuable social trajectory. Something I recently read sums this point up perfectly, it is from Clifford Geertz 1973 publication, The Interpretation of Cultures, it specifically considers the theoretical positioning of an anthropologist while articulating the disciplinary mechanics involved in knowledge making, and the importance of the interpreter and what is interpreted, in the various processes of (re-) interpretation.

Studies do build on other studies, not in the sense that they take up where the others leave off, but in the sense that better informed and better conceptualized; they plunge more deeply into the same things. Every serious cultural analysis starts from a sheer beginning and ends where it manages to get before exhausting its intellectual impulse. Previously discovered facts are mobilized, previously developed concepts used, previously formulated hypotheses tried out; but the movement is not from already proven theorems to newly proven ones, it is from an awkward fumbling for the most elementary understanding to a supported claim that one has achieved that and surpassed it. A study is an advance if it is more incisive-whatever that may mean-than those that preceded it; but it less stands on their shoulders than, challenged and challenging, runs by their side. (P.12)

The thing I enjoy most about this paragraph is the open-endedness or that air of freedom to explore it expresses. With control, by the dynamics of appropriation, insight and comparisons, a trajectory is set, theoretical frameworks are to be refer to, built on and surpassed, with some awkward fumbling, a discovery meets supported claim.