Telling tales in school: Youth culture and conflict narratives

This study departs from mainstream criminology to approach youth conflict a nd violence from a youth-centered perspective drawn from cultural studies o f young people and sociolegal research. To access youth orientations, we an alyze experiential stories of peer conflict written by students at a multie thnic, low-income high school situated in an urban core of the western Unit ed States. We argue that youth narratives of conflict offer glimpses into h ow young people make sense of conflict in their everyday lives, as well as insights as to how the images and decisional bases embedded in their storyt elling connect to adult-centered discourses found in popular media and form al education. Our analyses identify a range of story types ("tales"), each marked by a different narrative style, that students fashion as they write about peer conflict: "action tales," "moral tales," "expressive tales," and "rational tales." In our study, students wrote a majority of stories in th e action-tale narrative style. We propose three alternative explanations fo r this pattern using class code, moral development, and institutional resis tance perspectives. Finally, we discuss the theoretical and policy implicat ions of our work and raise questions for future research.