On social categories in peer interaction

The study focuses on the mobilization of membership categories in children’s and adolescents’ everyday social interaction. Setting out from Ann-Carita Evaldsson’s work, the article explores how young people resort to both adult and peer-constructed social categories to re-negotiate their social selves and the overall order of the peer group. Specifically, a brief empirical illustration highlights the theoretical and methodological relevance of a praxis-oriented approach to social categories. An effective account of children’s and adolescents’ sociality should consider the nexus of broader discourses, ideologies, culturally-shaped categories, norms and expectations that play a role in their life-worlds. This theoretical stance is bound to a methodological posture that combines the micro-analysis of video recorded interaction with an ethnographic perspective, allowing the analyst to take into account the non-local entities that young people rely on to manage and make sense of mundane activities.