Interpreting the tales - from ethnography to a theoretically informed analysis

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organizational aspects of the context in the descriptions as they play a role in the general pedagogical framework.

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The first finding is the way the job training dimension as a material basis so to say plays a major role in structuring the program. The hard labor, and the constant focus on the relation between responsibility and performance that is seen in ‘increase your pace’ and in the increased expectation and invitation from staff to youth to show more leadership, often in the sense of being responsible towards the finishing of tasks and a consciousness of how one’s work ethic impacts both the group of co-workers and the shared interest in getting the job done. In the more theoretical and reflexive spaces of the workshops the job training dimension is clear in the way the program has clear learning goals in relation to initiating youth into how to ‘play the game’ and meet the expectations of the outside job world in the process from assessing one’s resume, to writing an application, to navigating in an interview as well as to navigate as an employee. Here an important factor is the overall meaning of using the Standard Movements Chart as both a non-negotiable expression of the outside labor market’s demands but also as an interesting tool that is intended to help youth to learn to meet these demands by allowing for stepping besides it.

A second finding that was emerging especially during the summer was the interrelatedness between the different ways the program with the emic term of ‘finding one’s voice’ in different ways was seeking to push for a learning that was connected to self-reflection and self-expression, not only on an individual level but with consequences for the whole group dynamics and in this way came to be a central element in a community- or team-building. It appears that a central factor in the dynamic construction of the program as a ‘safe space’ is the way specific communicative methods are used in a way that contributes to a social contract where youth find themselves invited or increasingly motivated to share personal experiences that in other educational contexts would be considered

‘private’.

A third finding is the way tales presented show how a food systems and food justice framework is evolving as a main frame of reference and construction of meaning that takes place in the program.

This framework can be interpreted as a way of inviting youth to critically reflect on specific aspects of their own life situations, possibilities, constraints and choices and then connect this reflexivity to wider historical and political events and processes where the concepts of social justice and food justice are central. An important part of this process of reflection and identification is the invitation to identify with the social movement around this and an identity as an activist.

A fourth finding that permeates the interaction between staff and youth, the way the farm work is used as a central element in job training as well as the way youth is encouraged to dare to share more of themselves in the different frameworks for feed-back and self-expression is the way youth

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are challenged – physically and mentally - to overcome different limitations of what they see themselves capable of. One might say that it appears to be a central element in the pedagogical practice and how youth individually experience this ‘push’ shall be analyzed shortly.

A fifth finding that is integrated in the findings above is the way the relation between staff and youth is evolving as a mentor-mentee relation. In this relation a dynamic increase in presenting, meeting and overcoming different challenges is a central pattern. This appears not only to be central to the defining the space as safe, but also through the way different conflicts are approached as something that youth are encouraged to solve – and thus making the creation of a safe space an active and socially integrated process, that might starts as a rhetoric expected/demanded by staff but very quickly through the way staff interacts in different situations becomes socially established, or one might say, achieved or owned.

Finally, the fall tales draw a picture of how the youth now are re-positioned as co-managers and the staff’s aspirations, as reflected in the shout-outs at the end of this phase, is to see youth take over and exert the professionalism and responsibility learned through the spring and the summer. What is characteristic about this phase, is that the intense and more community oriented summer schedule with cooking and shared meals as well as the weekly straight talk now is changed for a more fragmented schedule with no cooking and shared meals and the straight talk more applied in the situations right after a task has been finished.

How these preliminary findings relate to youth’s agency, learning and identity formation as explored in the individual ethnographic interviews will be presented and analyzed shortly. How the research focus was directed towards how agents make meaning, especially how the pedagogy framed the agency of the youth – the part and the whole – with a basic and continuous alertness towards dialogue in different situations and contexts – that also is visible in the examples presented here in the ethnography.

Interpreting the ethnography and the tales from a critical realist perspective will be continued in the upcoming more formal analysis and discussion, but a this place it can be useful make a few points from such a perspective. A starting question for such an interpretation could be what the program is constructing as ‘wholes’ or in other words, what is constructed as material – and thus main legitimizing – factors towards which specific activities and strategies are directed. A preliminary suggestion here could be the following material factors:

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A) The outside labor market – to which youth are in one way trained to adapt to and in another way through the program experience also trained to change in the sense that a food justice and social justice agenda can provide changes. The Standard Movements Chart (SMC) introduced in the tale above is one example of several features in the program where a vast number of actions are explicitly framed as contributing to ‘job training’. Among different things it will be relevant to analyze and discuss how the practice around SMC – from the introduction through the everyday practice of the 7 weeks of the summer program - was experienced and verbalized by the youth in the series of interviews, where a clear empirical pattern is that the youth in general finds the SMC a helpful tool which relevance not is questioned. Basically the SMC contributes to a construction of youth as not only participants in a job training program but also as potential workers/employees in their future work life. The SMC is positioned and justified as a) a tool to learn from, b) as an incentive, c) as directing behavior that is considered a prerequisite if youth is to succeed in other jobs. The way it is practiced in the program with the system of ‘earning-back’ opportunities can also be seen as an example of how a ‘safe space’ is constructed around the youth – the implications of this construction of space will be discussed more thoroughly in the analysis.

B) The broken food system – to which youth are trained to engage in relation to as conscious consumers, as farmers as well as activists with a more political agenda of change.

C) The program curriculum and the structure of the program – the argument to label this as a material factor connects to the way this was a relatively non-negotiable element. What speaks pro this is the fact that this area is not put in motion as something that should be reflected upon in itself and thus it can be argued that though the program strongly supports a critical self-reflexivity among the youth the limit for this is to invite youth to reflect on the change – the empowerment process as a process where they are gradually invited to inhabit more and more responsibility and – power.

What speaks against is that on several occasions staff actually acknowledged youth for challenging their authority. One example was when Byron credited Arun at the final dinner for not ‘playing the game’ at the summer job interviews but instead made Byron ‘sell’ the program to him. Another example was at the same situation when Astrid credited Luis for challenging her in expressing his reflection of an experience to lack opportunities to ‘lead’ in spite of the program’s repeated emphasis on ‘leadership’.

The shift about to be made reflects the shift that took place when withdrawing from the field and to enter into a more formalized level of analysis. In this process that happened over a longer time span an intellectual distancing from what Davies calls the ‘minutiae of ethnographic observations’ (Davies

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2008:231) to pursue more structured and theoretically informed analyses where the data to a higher degree becomes text.

Photo: Working in the field

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