Disclosures to a Stranger: Adolescent Values in an Advanced Industrial Society

302 Pages·2022·15.964 MB·English

by  Tom Kitwood

ROUTLEDGE LIBRARY EDITIONS:
THE ADOLESCENT
Volume 9
DISCLOSURES TO A
STRANGER

DISCLOSURES TO A
STRANGER
Adolescent Values in an
Advanced Industrial Society
TOM KITWOOD
First published in 1980 by Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd
This edition first published in 2023
by Routledge
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© 1980 Tom Kitwood
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ISBN: 978-1-032-37655-4 (Set)
ISBN: 978-1-032-38128-2 (Volume 9) (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-032-38140-4 (Volume 9) (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-003-34365-3 (Volume 9) (ebk)
DOI: 10.4324/9781003343653
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Disclosures to a Stranger
Adolescent Values in an Advanced
Industrial Society
Tom Kitwood
Routledge & Kegan Paul
London, Boston and Henley
First published in 1980
by Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd
39 Store Street, London WC1E 7DD,
Broadway House, Newtown Road,
Henley-on-Thames, Oxon RG9 1EN and
2 Park Street, Boston, Mass. 02108, USA
Set in 10 on llpt Times by
Rowland Phototypesetting Ltd
Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk
and printed in Great Britain by
Redwood Burn Ltd
Trowbridge & Esher
© Tom Kitwood 1980
No part of this book may be reproduced in
any form without permission from the
publisher, except for the quotation of brief
passages in criticism
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Kitwood, Thomas Morris
Disclosures to a stranger. - (Social worlds
of childhood).
1. Social values
2. Adolescence
I. Title II. Series
310.43'15'0941 HQ799.2.S/ 79-41253
ISBN 0 7100 0463 X
Contents
Acknowledgments vi
General Editor's Preface vii
Introduction 1
1 Background 9
2 The Design and Conduct of the Research 43
3 Evidence from Interaction 65
4 A Survey of the Data 90
5 Relationships in the Family 121
6 The Social Life-Worlds of Adolescence 160
7 Formal and Informal Work 199
8 The Development of 'Self-Values' 243
9 Appraisal 277
Appendix Notes on the Conventions used in
Transcripts 283
Bibliography 285
Index 289
Acknowledgments
I wish to express my thanks to all those who contributed to the
formation of this book:
to Rom Harre, Ralph Ruddock, and Alan Smithers for their
advice and encouragement;
to Steve Holtzman for his very thorough reading of the type-
script, and many detailed suggestions;
to Sylvia Pilling and Sheila Clark for their work when the research
was in its early stages;
to Carol Borrill for her assistance given in many ways; had
chapters 5 and 8 been published as papers, this would have been
under our joint authorship;
to those who facilitated the carrying out of interviews in youth
clubs, schools, and elsewhere;
and especially to the boys and girls who took part in the research.
The research project of which this book is a part is financed by a
grant from the Leverhulme Trust Fund.
T.K.
General Editors Preface
For most of us childhood is a forgotten and even a rejected time.
The aim of this series is to recover the flavour of childhood and
adolescence in a systematic and sympathetic way. The frame of
mind cultivated by the authors as investigators is that of anthro-
pologists who glimpse a strange tribe across a space of forest and
millennia of time. The huddled group on the other side of the
school playground and the thumping of feet in the upstairs rooms
mark the presence of a strange tribe. This frame of mind is
deliberately different from that of the classical investigators of child
psychology, who have brought adult concepts to bear upon the
understanding of children's thoughts and actions, and have looked
at childhood primarily as a passage towards the skills and ac-
complishments and distortions of adults. In these studies the
authors try to look upon the activities of children as autonomous
and complete in themselves. Of course, not all the activities of
childhood could be treated in this way. Rather than being in
opposition to the traditional kind of study, the work upon which
this series is based aims to amplify our understanding by bringing
to light aspects of childhood which usually remain invisible when it
is looked at in the traditional way. The ethogenic method is in use
throughout the studies represented in this series, that is the
children themselves are the prime sources of theories about their
actions and thoughts and of explanations of the inwardness of their
otherwise mysterious activities.