Youth Development as Subjectified Subjectivity – a Dialectical-Ecological Model of Analysis

Abstract

The aim of this article is to shed light on how environmental standards in the life of youths influence the development of self. We propose the concept of 'subjectified subjectivity' to grasp these person-environment dialectics in a general form. By elaborating on these conceptual understandings of youth life, the article also seeks to understand young people from their own perspectives on life and from their developing life-perspectives, rather than from general categories. Based on one of the author's data from her study of young people in their transition to (and through the first year of) high school, we carry out an analysis of a 16-year old high school student and how her approach to beer, to beer drinking as a part of Danish high school life-style, and to herself changes over time. We suggest a dialectical-ecological model to analyze the dialectical and synthetic movements over time of the girl and her environments.

Historicizing affordance theory: A rendezvous between ecological psychology and cultural-historical activity theory

“… 1. In this paper the term “young people” is employed specifically to refer to high school-aged persons. This relates to a current research interest of ours; for elaboration see Pedersen (2015) and Pedersen and Bang (2016). …”

“…Being young (and, e.g., starting high school) is not merely a matter of biological maturation or adaptation to societal values, rather, it is about navigation through—and negotiation of—myriad invitations and possible self-understanding and self-realization options in concrete practices. Standards 2 as such are, however, not one-dimensional determinant conditions; they are created and recreated by people participating in practice and they come to work as standardization processes, by which they stabilize, generalize, and sanction subjectivity across contexts and practices (for an elaboration of standards and subjectification, see Pedersen & Bang, 2016). In other words, the interrelationship between the young person and the specific environment becomes a dynamic unity with developmental potentialities.…”

Psychology as a Science of Subject and Comportment, beyond the Mind and Behavior

“…There is always a core dimension of importance; there is no such thing as a neutral situation indifferent to values in a person’s life . (Pedersen and Bang 2016 , p. 473, emphasis in original). Without denying that there are real facts, what is affirmed is that they are real facts for something and someone, not exempt or indifferent.…”

“…There is always a core dimension of importance; there is no such thing as a neutral situation indifferent to values in a person’s life . (Pedersen and Bang 2016 , p. 473, emphasis in original).…”

“…Along this line, the notion of affordance can be extended to “affording of social standards” related to collective practices and in gerund form indicative of the dynamic process of person-environment transactions. Affording of standards refers to the point where a person meets and deals with society through a great variation of standards, which guide collective practices as well as a person’s sense-making and development (Pedersen and Bang 2016 , p. 474). Affording of standards leads to the process of subjectification.…”