CONTESTED DISCOURSE - EXPLORATION OF 2 DISCOURSES IN YOUTH WORK TRAINING

A training program for youths and community workers in the United Kingdom provides the setting for an analysis of two contrasting discourses. The account draws on the work of Bataille and Lyotard to explore the relationship between discourse and the multiple readings of an event that an ethnographer might make. Two discourses are identified within a corpus of ethnographic data. A contest discourse that provides students with a means of redefining the conditions they seek in the training setting acts as a challenge to a discourse of managerialism. The latter provides a bureaucratic framework for course organization and student assessment. The article examines two key events to illustrate the emergence of the two discourses and to explore the interrelationships between them. Specific types of field note data are used to explore the operation of the discourses. In the final section, the account explores ways by which an ethnographer can avoid producing a unitary narrative from a single point of view that denies the multiplicity of meanings within a setting.