Moral order among members of a friendship group of preschool boys

Abstract

The making of assessment descriptions can be key processes in children's negotiations of the social and moral orders of their peer groups. This paper examines how a friendship group of preschool boys followed through a year-long video-ethnography construct their local social and moral order, through use of a particular interactional resource, membership categorizations. A collection of clips of the boys' use of membership categorizations was created and analysed. Overall, the boys frequently described their own (or pretend play characters') behaviours as 'fixing' and 'helping', and reacted positively to these descriptions, by agreeing to do the actions, carrying out the actions and including group members so described in play. Likewise, if one of the peers' behaviours was described as 'destroying', 'smashing' or a similarly aggressive action, the boys oriented to these named qualities as negative, through changing the play topic, moving away or sanctioning the person so described. We argue that the ways in which the boys use and respond to the referenced activities and index them as 'positively' or 'negatively' bound to the relationship category of being a good friend or peer group member determine what counts to the participants themselves as acceptable moral behaviour.