Ann-Carita Evaldsson
Shifting Moral stances: Morality and Gender in
Same-Sex and Cross-Sex Game
Interaction
Ann-Carita Evaldsson is Associate Professor at the Department of Communication Studies, Linköping University, Sweden. Her research interest combines ethnography with conversation analysis of video recordings of preadolescent children’s everyday peer group activities and staff-child interaction. Her work has focused on children’s peer interaction and peer culture in educational settings, addressing topics such as the social organization of games, the accomplishment of identities (gender, class and ethnicity) in boys’ gossip and insult talk, girls’ physicality and morality-in-interaction.
"Shifting moral stances: Morality and gender in same-sex and cross-sex game interaction", looks in particular at how the production of moral actions is adjusted in game interaction in relation to the diverse configuration of players. The study draws on ethnographic research combined with video records of a foursquare game played daily among preadolescent girls (and boys) with low-income and ethnically mixed backgrounds (Syrian, Kurdish, Chilean). The analysis demonstrates that the girls (and boys) were constantly trying out what counted as acceptable behaviors by using a range of interactional resources (talk, gestures, bodily postures, spatial orientation) that shifted as the configuration of players changed across game contexts. Contrary to the widespread notion that girls’ morality is one-dimensional (mainly referring to a ”morality of responsibility”) the detailed analysis points to that girls realize multiple, contradictory and shifting (moral) stances.
