| This thesis examines a friendship network as the site of informal learning that fosters both companionship and contention as eleven young men learn, in light of one another, their own interests and goals in the face of their uncertain futures. Using the methods of participant-observation and network analysis, this thesis traces the structural and interactional contours of a friendship network as the young men exchange, from their partial and fragmented experiences and knowledge, from both the past and the present, key ideas about knowledge, authority and time.; Over the course of a summer, I conducted participant-observation among a network of friends in a town in Southern Ontario. As friends, the eleven “guys” were connected to one another through high school, work, music and travel. Throughout the summer, their interactions with one another waxed and waned as they each, in their own ways, struggled to achieve personal autonomy. For the guys, autonomy had to do with their personal “me-time” and their abilities to maintain it. Me-time was, for them, their free time away from work, school and the demands of their families. It included both leisure and work and it constituted, for the most part, a fundamental part of the guys' identities. Thus, over the course of three months, I observed the many ways in which their collective struggles together reflected their individual desires to be the person they each hoped to become. |
