Researching girls: a post-structuralist approach

Abstract

This article focuses on recent empirical research on girls carried out from a feminist post-structuralist position. The authors consider the theoretical advantages of using this framework for understanding girls’ friendships and relationships between sisters, neglected spheres of female experience. They draw on Walkerdine’s research in schools and her focus on power relations between young children and teachers. The central part of their paper centres on a discussion and application of three key analytic concepts: power relations, language, and subjectivity, which are used to theorise the lives of young women in research. Hey took up these concepts in order to analyse multiple differences in girls’ friendship cultures and Mauthner used them to create four discourses for exploring sister ties. In the last section of the article, the authors take it in turns to describe examples of their data. They conclude with some reflections on the benefits of a feminist post-structural approach for educational practitioners’ own interpretation of the specific cultures in which they are located.