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ABSTRACT
Drawing on 39 in-depth interviews with young people experiencing homelessness in a large Canadian city this paper explores the identity processes at the heart of how young people make decisions about getting by on the street. The paper integrates insights from cognitive sociology and narrative theories of identity to highlight an active, complex, and socially situated decision-making process. In particular, it explores the role played by three types of dispositional processes identified in the dual process and cognitive sociology literature: cultured capacities, dispositions, and cultural scripts. The analysis shows how the young people in the sample used their identity narratives to engage with and underwrite these dispositional influences and connect them back to an internalized sense of self.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1 The cross-disciplinary alignment between social and psychological dual process theories is encouraging, but caution needs to be taken in drawing direct relationships between the two. At present, there is a large empirical gap between the evidence that exists about the automatic nature of some discrete cognitive tasks, and the broad cognitive and behavioural patterns implied in sociological discussions of things like moral dispositions, cultural scripts, and cultural schemas.