Development as a Social Process

Contributions of Gerard Duveen

Serge Moscovici, Sandra Jovchelovitch, Brady Wagoner

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781135070298
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: History & Theory in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

This volume discusses the interface between human development and socio-cultural processes by exploring the writings of Gerard Duveen, an internationally renowned figure, whose untimely death left a void in the fields of socio-developmental psychology, cultural psychology, and research into social representations. Duveen's original and comprehensiv

Part I

Piaget

A view from afar

1 Children's understanding of friendship

Gerard Duveen

Introduction

Conceptions of friendship as an object for psychological research seem to refer to a variety of issues and topics. A pilot study was undertaken in order to clarify some aspects of this conceptual development. One of the most sensitive techniques for exploring these issues is to allow the child to develop his ideas within the context of a semi-structured interview. Thus interviews were conducted on the basis of a series of questions covering the area of friends and friendships although each particular interview proceeded according to the child's responses to these questions. The interviewer's role was to enable the child to elucidate as clearly as possible his thinking about these issues rather than attempting to extract definitions of particular concepts from each and every child.

The great advantage of this method is the freedom of expression which it gives the child, whose responses are not constrained to fit any set of categories predetermined by the interviewer's questioning. This benefit is obtained, however, at the cost of certain problems.

In the first place the concepts articulated in the interviews are not given clear and definite criteria (one hesitates to describe such criteria as ‘objective’), as would be the case for a standardized questionnaire. This objection is trivial in so far as it is precisely these criteria which the study aimed to explore.

A more serious objection is that this method discriminates against the younger children in so far as it demands a verbal fluency which is beyond their capacity. The substance of this objection is that this method, related as it is to Piaget's clinical interviews, shares with Piaget's work the consistent risk of underestimating the actual capabilities of young children. In so far as the present study is intended as a pilot study it is not necessary to enter into a theoretical refutation of this objection. It will suffice to note that this study aims to explore conceptual development and that if its expression in language is slower to develop than at the level of action, or the demand characteristics of an interview inhibit a young child's linguistic fluency, these do not invalidate an analysis of the interviews themselves.

Subjects and method

21 children from a primary school in Lewes were interviewed, their ages ranged from 4 yrs 8 mths to 11 yrs 5 mths, with 3 or 4 children from each year being interviewed. There were 11 boys and 10 girls in the sample.

Each child was seen individually by the interviewer for a session which lasted approximately half an hour.

3. The Interview Outline

(i) Aspects of Friendship

Do you know what a friend is? What can you tell me about being a friend? Do you have to be any kind of a special person to be a friend?
How do you make friends with someone?
How do you know if someone is your friend?
How do you think someone knows if you are their friend?

(ii) Being Friends

Can you be a friend with anyone? A brother? A cousin? A parent? A teacher! If you're a friend of someone do you have to be anything special for them? Or them for you?

If a friend asks you to do something do you have to do it? What if you ask him/her to do something?

If a parent or teacher asks you to do something do you have to do it? What would happen if you didn't?

How many friends do you have? Are any of them special friends? Why are they special? When you are with them what kinds of things do you do together?

(iii) Development of Friendships

If you make friends with someone is that forever? Why/Why not? Could you stop being friends with someone? How? Why? Could someone stop being friends with you?

(iv) Contrast: the Category of Not-Friends

What about people who aren't your friends? What kind of people are they? Why aren't they your friends?
Do you play with them?
Could you stop being friends with someone you didn't like?

(v) The Necessity of Friendship

Do you have to have friends? What would happen if you didn't have friends?

(vi) Relations with Adults

Could you be friends with a grown-up? Which ones? How do you make friends with a grown-up?
Could you stop being friends with a grown-up?
Do you have to make friends with your mother/father/teacher? Could you stop being friends with them?
How do grown-ups make friends with each other?
Do they ever stop being friends with each other?

Analysis

The analysis of material produced through interviews such as these usually begins with the attempt to identify different types of responses to the questions. Subsequently the conceptual structures underlying these different types are sought. From a cognitive developmental point of view a successful analysis yields a progressive logical sequence of conceptual structures, which may be regarded as stages. Each stage is assumed to have some overall characteristics which determine the type of responses to the various questions. Examination of individual protocols may, however, reveal inconsistencies within any one child's answers (horizontal decalages) such that responses of varying types may be found for different questions.

In the present case such a unified stage-theoretical analysis was not attempted. In part this was a consequence of the interviews being a pilot study, but in part also recognition that, although different types of responses were found, the inconsistencies in individual children's answers were too great to be subordinated within such a stage analysis. No doubt one source of this problem was the difficulty which the interview presented for the younger children. In addition the style and phrasing of the questions was not directed towards such an analysis, the identification of stages is not an arbitrary process, but relies on asking questions which elicit such organisation. The present study had the more limited aim of exploring the child's thinking about friendship as a preliminary to a more structured investigation.

What did emerge from the analysis of the interviews were two broad orientations towards friendship; that is friendship was considered by the subjects either from the point of view simply of the actions which either partner might perform or, alternatively, from the point of view of a more complex conceptual model of social relationships between persons. These two orientations, which were apparent in responses to the whole range of questions in the interview schedule, are presented in some detail below. Following this discussion some of the themes and issues which emerged in the responses to particular sections of the interview schedule are reviewed (choice of friends, necessity of friends and relations with adults). Finally two particularly interesting examples from individual interview scripts are presented in some detail.

Two orientations to friendship

The basic results of the analysis of the interview materials are presented here as a distinction between two orientations to friendship. Each of these is described as a set of ideas and attitudes. The limitations of the analysis noted above precluded any attempt to expound them as structured conceptual systems, although these orientations can indeed be seen in responses to every section of the interview schedule. They do, therefore, appear to have some degree of generality. In addition it was also noted that the first orientation (friendship as action) was prevalent among, although not restricted to, the younger children; whilst the second (friendship as concept) was more common among the older children. There is thus some suggestion that these orientations also have a developmental character, and indeed some sense of logical progression can be seen in moving from the first to the second orientation.

Although these orientations do show some of the characteristics of cognitive stages they are not yet descriptions of the structured conceptual systems (structures d'ensemble) through which stages are defined (what they lack above all else is an analysis of the structuring principles underlying each set of attitudes and ideas). They are intended, rather, as a first attempt at abstracting a general scheme from the material, at identifying what seem to be the significant conceptual distinctions in the different types of responses.

(a) ‘Friendship as action’:

In this orientation, prevalent but not exclusive to the younger children (5–7 or 8 years), the child is immersed in the practical activity of doing and being. To be friends means to play with or to do something with another. ‘Friends’ are the other children with whom the child is engaged in these practical pursuits; the other children at his worktable, or in the playground. Personal qualities are not mentioned in descriptions of friends or friendship formation. Indeed the process of making friends with other children does not seem to involve anything other than ‘being with’ other children; and similarly the breaking of friendships is the consequence of the interruption of this activity (whether through disputes or simply through the physical removal of the other). There is therefore a great sense of the fluidity of personal relationships in the descriptions given by the subjects. They do not report specific strategies for making friends, and although they may use terms such as ‘nice’, ‘kind’, ‘good’ or ‘like’ these refer to an undifferentiated positive evaluation of friends. There is no subtlety or ambiguity in the child's descriptions and evaluations of personal relationships. It is almost as though there is here a conceptual absence, a noticeable lack of ideas. Consider this example:

No. 9. A boy of 4 yrs 8 mths.

Q.	We'll just have a talk about being friends.
A.	Some people aren't friends in my class.
Q.	Aren't they? Whynot?
A.	‘Cos two of them always kicking people
Q.	Is that friendly?
A.	No
Q.	What's a friendly thing to do?
A.	Be nice, sometimes they're friends and sometimes they're not
Q.	Do you know when they are and when they aren't?
A.	Yes ‘cos they kick people and be horrible
Q.	Are you ever like that?
A.	No
Q.	What can you tell me about being friends, what's a friend?
A.	A friend you play with
Q.	Can you stop being friends with someone?
A.	I do sometimes ‘cos they have to go in their house

Yet these young children do not seem to be as completely indiscriminate in their practical social relationships as this suggests. It should be recalled that these interviews deal only with the conscious contents of the child's thinking; at a practical level there may indeed be a greater sophistication in their social relations. Thus the conceptual absence can be seen as an expression of a vertical decalage, in the sense that the regulation of the child's interactions with others is not yet separated from the activity itself so that the child's conceptual apparatus does not match his practical capacity.

(b) ‘Friendship as concept’

In this orientation (more common among the older children, 7 or 8 to 11 years) the child appears capable of reflecting upon himself and others as well as the relations between them. A friend is now someone of definite personal qualities, who is liked for these qualities, who may be called upon for help in times of distress and to whom a reciprocal obligation is recognised. The formation of friendships is understood as a process extending beyond the temporal horizon of immediate joint activity. Mixed feelings and ambiguities toward others appear to have replaced the undifferentiated responses of the first orientation. Referring to this orientation as ‘friendship as concept’ is intended to emphasise that the child's social relations have now become a definite object of theoretical knowing for the child. He is aware of himself and others as independent subjects engaged in mutual relations. Here is an example:

No. 1. A boy of 11 yrs 3 mths

Q.	What can you tell me about being a friend? When you say someone is a friend of yours what do you mean?
A.	Well, someone who'd help you when you're in distress, if you fall over they'd pick you up, they'd play games with you
Q.	Do you have to be any kind of a special person to be a friend?
A.	No
Q.	Anyone can be a friend to anyone else?
A.	Yes
Q.	How do you know if someone is your friend?
A.	Well, you just know it. If they play friends with you, if they're friends with you, you can play games with them, and they work with you, that's virtually being a friend.
Q.	How do you go about making friends with someone?
A.	Well virtually sticking to them, that's how I find it, sticking to them, and working with them and playing games with them
Q.	How do you go about deciding which people you want to be friends with?
A.	You don't really
Q.	You don't decide that you want to be friends with this person or that person?
A.	No
Q.	How do you think someone knows if you're their friend?
A.	I'm not sure, some people in the school would say it's giving sweets to somebody, but that's not really being friends
Q.	Why's that?
A.	Well you can give away as many sweets as you like to a person but they may not like you
Q.	Can you know if someone likes you?
A.	Yes I think you can. They'd play with you, keep with you, walk home with you sometimes.

This extract is particularly interesting as it shows so clearly some of the dilemmas involved in trying to analyse the interviews. In defining the term ‘friend’, for example, this child first of all argues that a friend is someon...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Series editor’s foreword
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction: The context and development of ideas Sandra Jovchelovitch and Brady Wagoner
• PART I Piaget: A view from afar
• PART II Development as decentration
• PART III Thinking through social representations
• Bibliography: The published papers of Gerard Duveen
• Index