Theory and Methods

#### **Chapter 1**

## Bibliometric Applications in Social Science Research: The Social Network Context of Generosity

*Patricia Snell Herzog, Jin Ai, Una O. Osili, Chelsea Jacqueline Clark and Xiaonan Kou*

#### **Abstract**

Whether or not a person chooses to act philanthropically can seem like a personal decision. Yet, giving is inherently a social act, minimally involving a giver and a receiver. The relational aspects of giving decisions can be studied by investigating social networks. What is known about the role of social networks in charitable giving? To answer this question, this study utilizes bibliometric techniques to review existing literature in a systematic manner. Applying these tools to social science research facilitates integration of knowledge across multiple disciplines and diverse methodological approaches. Across the reviewed research, there are five central themes. First, networks can shape values of efforts to support the public good. Second, networks can informally punish people for acting too self-interestedly. Third, networks can join together or exclude, contributing to social inequality and its reproduction over time. Fourth, networks can maintain group dynamics. Fifth, networks can pattern behaviors into habits, form interdependence, situate what is considered normal, and provide stability in times of crisis. Implications of existing research are drawn toward understanding young adulthood within its networked social contexts of generosity.

**Keywords:** social networks, charitable giving, recruitment, bibliometrics, applied research

#### **1. Introduction**

This study engages the tools of bibliometrics to implement a systematic search process and integrative analysis. These techniques are applied toward understanding a specific set of social science research topics. The chapter is framed within an understanding that scientific processes should also be systematic in their literature review searching. The same tools that inform replicability in the data collection process should also guide the process of learning from existing studies. While many existing literature reviews synthesize a set of studies that is constructed by individual authors in ways that can be opaque and challenging to replicate, this study presents a set of replicable practices for how to scope relevant literature and ensure that the entire body of existing studies on a topic is sourced. The result is an integrative review of existing research that evidences how bibliometric techniques can be utilized in practice. The synthesized findings are framed within their implications for practitioners who work in the field of philanthropy, as fundraisers, strategic planners, and social change agents. The practical tips garnered for nongovernmental, nonprofit, and civil society organizations are generated within sound research that is systematically scoped and theoretically integrated. Implications are drawn for understanding the charitable giving of young people with networked contexts. As a result, this chapter showcases how social science research can utilize bibliometrics to inform applied practices.

#### **2. Topic background**

This section provides background by explaining the topics of interest to a broad set of readers who may not be experts in these areas. This section also describes how the topics were framed toward deriving a set of systematic search processes in applied bibliometrics, which are described in the subsequent, third section on methodology.

Whether or not someone chooses to act generously can seem like a personal decision. Yet, giving is inherently a social act. Existing scholarship finds that individual decisions to act generously are embedded within social contexts. This study focuses on those social contexts. More specifically, identities, networks, and norms clearly impact the ways in which individuals choose to engage in charitable giving. These social contexts provide strong rationales for prosocial behaviors. How and why people engage in generous activities is contingent on their social identity characteristics, networks of relationships, and normative group guidelines.

The overarching research question that this study seeks answers to is: What is known about the role of social contexts in charitable giving? Answering this question requires an interdisciplinary synthesis that integrates knowledge across diverse disciplines, theoretical approaches, and empirical results. To begin, this background section delineates the following stepwise process: defining the search parameters which are then in turn applied in a systematic search. The first step is to address answers to this question: How is generosity defined and measured? (Section 2.1). Second, the next step is to address answers to the question: How are social contexts defined and measured? (Section 2.2). Informed by this background, the bibliometric analysis engages in a third step of bibliometric analysis (Section 3), which in turn advances answers to the question: How do social contexts impact generous activities? (Section 4). This is followed by a discussion and implications for understanding young adulthood within its social contexts of generosity (Section 5).

#### **2.1 Generous actions**

First, bibliometric techniques are engaged to systematically scope the topic of generosity [1]. Specifically, "Generosity is giving good things to others freely and abundantly. Generous behaviors are intended to enhance the wellbeing of others. Generosity can be actualized through various forms of giving: 'Giving comes in different forms. It's not always in money'" [1–4]. This understanding of generosity as the actions of everyday people is not entirely overlapping with philanthropy, which is understood as more formal, sectoral, and organizationally embodied activities. With this definitional context, the following analysis brackets as outside the purview of its scope the sector of organizations and the professionals who are required by

employment to maintain philanthropic activities. Those domains are important and worthy of study. Instead, this analysis focuses on everyday generosity, the interpersonal dynamics of giving, and how people engage with social institutions to affect change intended to benefit others beyond the self. This theoretical background informs how the topic of generosity is scoped in the subsequent bibliometric analysis.

#### **2.2 Social contexts**

Second, bibliometric techniques are engaged to systematically scope for the social contexts in which generosity occurs. People do not always act selfishly or in their best interest; nor are behaviors in every instance purposeful [5]. Combined, these postulates highlight that actions cannot be explained by personal preferences alone and underscore the importance of social interactions in shaping behavior [6]. While those are important avenues of study, this analysis focuses instead on the role of social relationships. Specifically, attention to three social contexts: identities, networks, and norms. Identities are briefly defined as social demographic characteristics that can shape constructions of the self. Networks are briefly defined as relationships embedded within groups and organizations. Norms are briefly defined as group dynamics that affect individual actions through perceptions of what groups deem to be valuable, important, desirable, unworthy, or futile. The following sections review each of these three social contexts in further depth. This theoretical background informs how the social contexts of generosity are scoped in the subsequent bibliometric analysis.

#### *2.2.1 Identities*

Social identities include gender, marital status, race, ethnicity, age, religiosity,1 and socioeconomic status. This study focuses particularly on three social statuses most associated with marginalization: (1) gender, (2) race and ethnicity, and (3) socioeconomic status. First, gender differences are rooted in historical discrimination embedded within modern social institutions [8]. Yet, while the de-gendering of access has generally resulted in more women within education and labor force participation, women remain highly concentrated in unpaid and underpaid work. In summary, personal identities and expressions of self are often gendered.

Second, racial and ethnic differences are rooted in historical discriminations that are also ongoing in contemporary social systems. For example, generalized distrust (misanthropy) is higher for racial and ethnic minorities: such that in the U.S. whites are on average more than twice as likely to trust others [9]. The implication is that generalized social trust measures are most likely to tap into trustworthiness of whites, who compose the statistical majority in the U.S. Particular and strategic trust focus on expectations within more circumcised groups and is based on more interpersonal experiences. In summary, personal identity and expressions of trust are often raced.

Third, socioeconomic status or social class differences also structure identity relationships. The most common measures of socioeconomic status (SES) are income and educational attainment. Concern for the general welfare of others is higher for people with greater levels of educational attainment, yet benevolence and universalism are higher among those who have lower income levels [10]. Additionally, social class identities often matter most in their intersection with other identities, referred to as intersectionality [11].

1 For an overview of intersections of religiosity and generosity, see [7].

#### *2.2.2 Networks*

Social inquiry has long attended to relationships as central to explaining action and change [12]. The majority of this scholarship focused on analyzing how different network structures explain outcomes. There are two sets of approaches within overarching theories about social networks: formalism and relationalism. Formalism studies the structural configurations and patterns of network ties, such as bridging nodes (people who connect one network to another) and structural holes (gaps where no ties exist). Relationalism views those approaches as static and fixed, and instead focuses on dynamic features of relationships and what relational qualities fuel or break interconnections. Both approaches share a view of networks as an important social conduit (channeling energy, information, and motivation between people) or blockage (responsible for gaps in information flow, hoarding of resources among a small group of people, and in other ways contributing to and perpetuating inequalities).

Scholars have also studied networks for their power in explaining cultural and organizational dynamics as mechanisms for shared values, meanings, repertoires [13]. These approaches include focusing on the roles of tastes, preferences, and storytelling in creating and sustaining relational ties. A cultural approach to networks focuses on the meaning-making processes embedded in relational ties and prioritizes the role of individual and organizational agency in forming and dissolving network affiliations. Networks are both an outcome and mechanism of human cognition [14]. Social networks are crucial architectures that influence perception, storage, memory, retrieval, and interpretation of information. In turn, affiliations contribute to cognitive processes that can result in homophily (seeking likeness or sameness in relational ties), stereotyping, and other in-group and out-group behaviors.

In summary, social networks influence and are influenced by dynamics occurring within the human brain, small groups and organizations, and institutional processes of economic and political systems. Networks are often a root explanation for social actions [15]. Relational mechanisms explain how network ties pattern flows of information, trust, and other resource sharing. For example, dynamics of reciprocity include one person deeming the other to be a friend and that second person deeming the first to be a friend in return. Alternatively, unreciprocated friendship leads to the dissolution of ties. Additionally, network closure refers to the finding that mutually connected people (friends of friends knowing each other) builds stability in the persistence of ties over time. Moreover, centrality within a network has important implications for access to resources, and isolation for exclusion. In reference to altruism and other prosocial activities, networks are a central mechanism for explaining group cooperation [16]. Repeated interactions among people strengthen social bonds and facilitate trust in believing relational investments will be reciprocated.

#### *2.2.3 Norms*

Social norms are general expectations for the ways that people act within groups [17].2 These regulations communicate assumptions about what behaviors are acceptable in specific situations and among group members [19, 20]. Norms are "group-level

2 For attention to role identity and role membership, see [18].

#### *Bibliometric Applications in Social Science Research: The Social Network Context of Generosity DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.112953*

evaluations of behavior" that are "fundamental to social life," can "maintain social order, discouraging antisocial behavior and acting as 'soft guardrails' necessary for democracy," and which "catalyze positive social change, discouraging harmful behaviors such as violence and encouraging constructive behaviors such as those that improve health. Yet, norms can also cause destructive behavior, maintain inequalities, and exacerbate social conflict" [21].

Norms are a group-level dynamic.3 Norms are not laws that are enforced by nation-states, nor policies enforced by organizations. Norms are instead less formalized 'unwritten rules' of behavior that govern acceptance within groups [21]. Participation in groups forms expectations of what is considered normal [24]. Norm studies include a focus on three primary aspects: rules, reputations, and relations. Rules are most clearly evident when violated, and participants in a group let others know the expectations by rewarding desired behavior or punishing undesirable behavior. Formal sanctions include punishment, such as imprisonment. Informal sanctions can be subtle and include nonverbals, such as eye-rolling. Similarly, formal rewards can include plaques, and informal rewards can be high-fives. Reputations are the collection of expectations accrued in groups over time [24]. A person can have the reputation of repeatedly being kind, or a person can have a reputation of recurrently being irresponsible. Relations are the channels through which norms are formed, communicated, and altered.

Here is a summary of seven norms that are relevant to generosity. **Norm of Giving:** People should give for no other reason than the value of giving [25]. **Norm of Social Responsibility:** People should support reliant others [26]. **Norm of Reciprocity:** People should reciprocate favors, affection, goods, services [27]. **Norm of Indebtedness:** People should be obligated to repay for received benefit [28]. **Norm of Social Comparison:** people should want to be similar in abilities, traits, attitudes, praise, inclusiveness, likability to others within salient reference groups [29]. **Norm of Conformity:** People should yearn for status (prestige, esteem, popularity, acceptance) and conform to standards from higher-status people, groups [30, 31]. **Norm of Distribution:** People should distribute help, not concentrate it [32]. This theoretical background informs how the topic of social norms is scoped in the subsequent bibliometric analysis.

#### **3. Methodology**

This is an application of bibliometrics to the social scientific investigation of generosity within three social contexts: identities, networks, and norms. There were two phases to implementing a bibliometric process. The first phase was a discovery process that informed an initial sample that was purposefully, rather than systematically constructed. This phase was informed by expert knowledge on the social science topics. The goal of the initial phase of the project was to explicate what is often otherwise implicit in the literature review process. The initial sample then informed the second phase, which was a systematic sample utilizing bibliometric techniques.

3 To clarify what norms are, it is helpful to distinguish the boundaries of what norms are not. This analysis does not focus on broader cultural values that are reflective of national-level cultures typically discerned through cross-national comparisons (for a review, see [22]). Likewise, this analysis does not attend to differing degrees of social information (for a review, see [23]).

#### **3.1 Initial sample**

This study builds upon an initial purposeful sample to specify a systematic sampling frame. The purposeful sample spanned 70 years and more than 100 existing articles, books, chapters. The range of topics, approaches, theories, and sources provided the basis for the subsequent systematic approach, which utilizes bibliometric techniques to sample publications. Initially, the systematic sample consisted of five disciplinary journals in economics, sociology, and the social sciences that were parsed articles for with relevant topics: *Social Science Research* (SSR); *American Journal of Sociology* (AJS); *American Sociological Review* (ASR); *The Sociological Quarterly* (TSQ ); *American Economic Review* (AER). **Figure 1** visualizes the process from initial to systematic sample.

**Figure 1.**

*Search process from discovery phase initial sample to systematic phase parsed sample.*

#### *Bibliometric Applications in Social Science Research: The Social Network Context of Generosity DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.112953*

Initial keywords used to locate articles relevant to (A) generosity included: (1) charitable giving (monetary donations, donors); (2) volunteering (time volunteers); (3) political action (voting, activism, protesting); (4) blood donations; (5) organ donations; (6) estate donations (willed giving, such as property upon death); (7) lending possessions (not bank loans/borrowing, rather a neighbor sharing property); (8) sustainability/environmental giving (such as spending money on fair trade coffee); (9) relational/informal helping (such as sitting a neighbor's kids for free while working); (10) community/civic engagement (composite measures of #1–9). For (B) social contexts, the initial keywords were: (1) identities (gender, race/ethnicity, social class/ses); (2) networks; (3) norms (such as norms of reciprocity, fairness, sharing).

Articles were sampled if they included both (A) generosity and (B) social contexts. The sample does not include articles on only A or B or that: (1) focus on macrolevel explanations or outcomes (such as effects of tax incentive policy, cross-national comparisons of welfare states, characteristics of the political or economic institution alone); or (2) focus on formal meso-level explanations (such as actions taken by employed organizational actors: nonprofit management). In summary, articles were sampled if their approach: (1) focuses on individual-level outcomes (such as donor donating) and (2) focuses on informal meso-level explanations for charitable giving (specifically identities, networks, norms).

With these search parameters, and after thoroughly parsing for relevance, the initial results for five journals returned 84 articles: *American Journal of Sociology* 12; *American Sociological Review* 10; *The Sociological Quarterly* 25; *American Economic Review* 8; *Social Science Research* 29. At an average of about 17 articles per journal, for the 22 intended journals, this approach was expected to return approximately 374 articles, which was too large to reasonably read and synthesize in a single paper.

#### **3.2 Systematic sample**

To create a sample that could reasonably be synthesized, the search was refined to narrow the scope to recent studies published since 2010 and to focus only on charitable giving and composite scores of community and civic engagement that include giving. This included narrowing the keyword scope to: generosity; charitable giving; donation; religious giving; donors (parsed for monetary donation). For example, initial hits for these keywords returns 238 potential articles within the *American Journal of Sociology* (some of which overlap/duplicate hits across keywords); a smaller subset of articles are sampled for (a) charitable giving and (b) at least one of the social contexts.

The result is 22 selected journals. Of these 18 are specific to disciplines and scoped for topic relevance, and four are topic-relevant interdisciplinary journals. The 18 disciplinary journals included for social sciences: *Social Science Research*, *Journal of Marriage and Family*; for sociology: *American Journal of Sociology*, *American Sociological Review*, *Annual Review of Sociology*, *Social Forces*, *The Sociological Quarterly*; for economics: *American Economic Review, Journal of Political Economy*, *Journal of Public Economics*, *Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization*; for political science*: American Journal of Political Science*, *American Political Science Review*, *Annual Review of Political Science*, *Political Psychology*; and for social Psychology: *Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Personality and Social Psychology Review*, *Social Psychology Quarterly*. The four topic-relevant interdisciplinary journals were: *Nonprofit & Voluntary Sector Quarterly*, *Nonprofit Management & Leadership*, *Voluntary Sector Review*, *Voluntas: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations*.

The refined search parameters resulted in 22 sourced journals with initial hits of potentially related articles totaling to 3548 articles, out of which parsing returned 104 articles that were sampled as relevant for this analysis. **Figure 2** presents a word cloud visualizing the disciplinary distribution: economics 37, interdisciplinary topic 25, social sciences 18, sociology 16, political science 6, social psychology 2. This represents counts on articles that attend to both topic sets, not either in isolation. For example, social psychology studies on norms without a focus on charitable giving are not included.

**Table 1** displays 91 articles studied charitable giving, with 66 within disciplinary journals and 25 within topical journals. Additionally, 13 articles studied composite indexes that included charitable giving within a larger construct; all of these articles were within disciplinary journals.

In terms of the social contexts, 38 articles studied how race, class, and gender identities relate to charitable giving, with 22 articles in disciplinary journals and 16 in topical interdisciplinary journals (**Table 2**; **Figure 3**). Distinctly, of the total of 33 articles each that studied networks or norms in relation to charitable giving, only five of the network articles and four of the articles on norms were in topical interdisciplinary journals, whereas the majority (86%) on these topics were found within disciplinary journals. One implication of this finding is that scholars who attend only to topical journals would be more likely to find content on identities and could (erroneously) conclude that little extant scholarship attends to networks and norms in giving.

#### **Figure 2.**

*Discipline counts for systematic sample of publications.*

#### **Table 1.**

*Bibliometric data for generosity topic and source type.*

#### **Table 2.**

*Bibliometric data for social context topic and source type.*

*Bibliometric Applications in Social Science Research: The Social Network Context of Generosity DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.112953*

**Figure 3.**

*Bibliometric data for publication topic and source type.*

The following section presents the results of the systematic search and integrative analysis on the particular topic of social networks and charitable giving. The findings of charitable giving in the other two social contexts (identities and norms), are not the focus of this chapter and are thus only briefly summarized.

#### **4. Results**

Networks are an important social context in which individual decision-making occurs, and this section attends to links between social networks and charitable giving. Social networks can serve as conduits through which people exchange information and resources, and networks are how altruism becomes more broadly generalized to include giving to unknown others, or strangers [16]. Within this systematic search of journal articles, 33 studies attended to social networks and giving (e.g., see [33]). A shared theme in these studies is the notion that charitable giving is contingent on cooperation within ties of linked individuals. Group ties extend the boundaries of solidarity beyond immediate family to include wider circles of outreach. These empirical analyses are grouped within three categories based on the primary implications of their findings for practice: recruitment, retention, and participation.

#### **4.1 Recruitment**

Twelve studies attend to the power of network recruitment, of which seven pinpointed the role of asking. For instance, Beyerlein and Bergstrand [34] found that network ties increased the likelihood that people were recruited to engage in generous activities. Relatedly, Andreoni and colleagues found that asking others to give as a powerful motivator for generosity because direct communication between a solicitor and potential donor augments empathy for the altruistic purposes invited by the asker [35]. Indeed, verbal requests for donations increase the rate of givers by more than half and raise the total amount given by nearly threequarters [36].

Moreover, asking at one point in time and following up later to collect donations also appears to be effective, likely due to separating the moment of the network influence on decision-making from the actual behavior moment [37]. Conversely, Exley and Petrie [38] found that expecting forthcoming asks afforded potential donors the

opportunity to decline to give. This seeming contradiction in findings may be related to network positions, that is: how close or socially distant one is from an acquaintance. Specifically, the closest friend appears to have the greatest network strength, such that the majority of network effect found in previous studies appears to be due to the giving activities of a person's best friend [39]. Plus, observing peer giving as another key network mechanism [40], and the odds of being a donor are 1.5 greater when close friends donate [39].

In terms of practical tips related to recruitment, fundraising through online social networks was effective when donors were incentivized to post a notice to their friends that they had donated, and donors were more likely to do this when the 'nuisance cost' was low, such as when they were already logged in to the platform in which asked to post [41]. Additionally, the ordering of solicitation calls matters. Meer and Rosen [42] found that volunteers who call to recruit alumni donors to give would often proceed through an alphabetized list in order of donor names. Since solicitors would often run out of time to call every person on the list, donors at the beginning of the alphabet received more calls than those later in the list and thus ultimately were more likely to be donors than end-of-alphabet alumni.

In addition to asks alone, several additional recruitment techniques were identified. Namely, reminders were found to be a helpful donor recruitment tool [43]. However, it is worth noting that reminders increased both the rate of donation and the un-subscription rate from the mailing list. This research implies that there is an 'annoyance cost' associated with too-frequent reminders, and that it is important to strike the right balance. A second tip is that suggesting a specific donation amount can result in a 50 percent increase in giving [44]. Third, there is inconclusive evidence that charity auctions are more effective than regular charitable giving donation mechanisms [45], which implies asks may be a cost efficient and comparably effective strategy.

#### **4.2 Retention**

Another six articles attended to retention. Donors can be viewed as relational partners with recipient organizations, in this regard there can be donor-organization network effects. For example, donors were more likely to be retained when they had previous experience with an organization that was positive, thought the organization had a trustworthy reputation, and felt personal affinity with the organization's cause [46]. Similarly, beyond professional capacities, donors were more likely to give to organizations that were already part of their existing network ties [47]. Specifically, more than three-quarters of donors in one year repeat their donations the following year [48].

Yet, not all network dynamics are positive, insofar as people can also rely upon existing ties to know their generous intentions and thus feel less compelled to have to enact their goodwill. For example, Knowles and Servatka [49] found that participants in a laboratory experiment were more likely to procrastinate on giving when afforded a longer deadline, which comports with theoretical expectations that people prefer to put off non-immediate tasks.

A practical tip for retaining donors and overcoming procrastination tendencies is to provide token gifts. For example, in a natural field experiment, donors who received gifts were more loyal to the organization [50]. In a laboratory experiment, participants were more likely to share resources with a group partner who gave them gifts [51].

*Bibliometric Applications in Social Science Research: The Social Network Context of Generosity DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.112953*

#### **4.3 Participation**

A total of fourteen articles investigated participation aspects of network affiliations. As revealed in the studies on identities above, Tian and Konrath [52] found that affinity matters in donor decisions, with five types of effects within network pairs: (1) the number of shared identities; (2) the type of shared identities; (3) the salience of shared identities; (4) the social expectations of key identities; and (5) the degree of overlap between self and others in terms of shared identities. Yet, the size of social groups matters. For example, the donation rate is higher among large groups, but the amount of donations from each person is lower [53]. Moreover, groups with a high density of network ties among them have greater trust of strangers, but that generalized trust does not appear to spillover to other prosocial orientations and actions [54].

The kind of social group matters too. For example, donations based on political affiliation appear to have more of a 'tit-for-tat' expectation, in terms of strings attached for policymaker actions [55, 56], whereas donations based on sports affinity appear to be given more generally to support athletes and sports groups without reciprocity [57, 58]. Nevertheless, a 'pay-it- forward' mentality appears to undergird alumni giving, insofar as alumni were more likely to donate to their alma mater when they had received scholarship or other financial assistance as a student [59]. Peer pressure is also an effective alumni mechanism [60].

By far the social group with the greatest links between participation and charitable giving was within religious organizations. For example, people involved in religious congregation small groups were significantly more engaged in civic activities [61], and people with a greater sense of religious meaning gave more to religious causes [62]. Moreover, there appears to be a 'symbiosis effect', rather than substitution, referring to evidence that religiously engaged people were not solely giving to religious causes but also more likely than non-religious peers to donate to non-religious causes [63]. These religious participation effects appear to operate through both cognitive and emotional processes [64], and religious social networks seem to provide strong recruitment channels for donating to and volunteering for charitable causes [65].

In summary, there are five central themes in response to the research question: What is known about the role of social networks in charitable giving? First, networks can shape values of working toward the public good. Second, networks can punish people for acting too self-interestedly. Third, networks can join together or exclude, contributing to social inequality. Fourth, networks can maintain group dynamics, such as men giving more to religious groups. Fifth, networks can pattern behaviors into habits, form interdependence, situate what is considered normal, and provide stability in times of crisis. Additionally, key mechanisms identified within social networks include communication, rewards, sanctions, generalized exchange, and reciprocity. On this last point, it seems that one of the crucial ways that network dynamics emerge is through their structuring of repeated interactions, which can in turn support or inhibit other-regarding preferences such as solidarity and altruism [16].

#### **5. Discussion**

#### **5.1 Engaging young people**

Existing studies evidence the influence of social networks on shaping charitable giving behaviors, and this section outlines implications for understanding young

people within their social contexts. In terms of engagement, network aspects highlight the significance of whether and how the ties between solicitor and donor are established by the practice of asking. Simply starting from connecting a previously disconnected tie with donors will increase the probability of giving behaviors. This is important for fostering increased giving over the course of development from youth into young adulthood. Further, donor ties have the potential to promote generosity once these network connections are activated. When asks come from donor close ties, or when the giving behavior is exposed to donor peers, the likelihood of charitable giving is enhanced. In addition, the frequency and sequence of the tie connections also matter in generating a positive impact on charitable giving. For young people, who are on average more embedded in social media, online network ties are key for fostering giving.

These findings shed light on practices which are central for philanthropic practitioners. Reminders were found to be a helpful donor recruitment tool. However, it is worth noting that reminders increased both the rate of donation and the un-subscription rate from the mailing list. This research implies that there is an 'annoyance cost' associated with too-frequent reminders, and that it is important to strike the right balance. Practitioners can include this information into their strategic planning and decision-making processes in order to manage their relationships more effectively with existing and potential donors.

In recruitment-related studies, the network has been studied from both a cultural and structural approach. From the cultural perspective, individuals' agency in making the decision has been mostly studied in terms of whether or not committing to the giving behaviors. From the structural perspective, network positions have been centrally studied through examining the influence of direct connected ties on donors' giving decisions. Future research could extend the scholarship by examining the influence of other network positions, such as indirect connected ties, on charitable giving behavior.

#### **5.2 Retaining young people**

Regarding retaining young people, networks explain the relationship dynamics between donors and recipient organizations. Repeated giving behaviors are more likely to occur within existing networks, particularly between trustworthy ties and gift-encouraged connections. This implies that young people who are not already embedded within giving networks will be less likely to be retained over time.

On the other hand, network configurations also play a role in shaping the generous habits of donors. Close ties may be able to engender charitable giving behavior, but being embedded in closely connected networks may also inhibit donor ability to find gaps in need of attention. When giving ties are strong, people procrastinate on giving. Perhaps their long relationship history maintains their reputation and inhibits a need to give to demonstrate their generosity among friends. In this context, there may be opportunities to retain young people by strategies that focus on showing friends the fruits of a generous spirit, or in other ways building giving into network development.

In the retention sample, the network effect in charitable giving has been mainly examined from the relational perspective with a focus on the flow of trust and gift incentives, as well as their influence on donors' repeated behaviors. Future studies could expand this line of research by examining repeated charitable giving behaviors by studying the assortative and proximal perspectives of young people. This could develop a comparative understanding of flow pattern of trust and gift incentives in

dynamic relationships being built throughout the transition from youth into adulthood, to further understand the determinants of donor retention in the context of networked giving.

#### **5.3 Linking young people**

In terms of participation, the network aspect has been primarily examined through the ties between donors and their affiliations, from the perspective of shared identities between donors, the size, the density, and the type of affiliated groups. Future research needs to examine the role that these factors have in lining young people in giving. Specifically, these findings highlight three network factors that affect donor decisions: size, density, and affinity type. First, large groups give more on average, but the giving rate of each person is less. Second, a high density of network ties appears to foster greater trust, but not more giving. More research needs to be done to understand the role that group size and density has in young adulthood.

Third, certain affinity types expect more reciprocity from the giving behavior than other groups. For example, alumni give more to universities from which they received a scholarship, and political givers appear to expect an exchange in policymaker actions. On the other hand, sports givers appear not to expect direct reciprocity when giving to support athletics, and religious givers donate beyond religious causes only to more general causes. These findings about reciprocity expectations can help to contextualize ways that different affinity types can link young people into the cause.

#### **6. Conclusion**

In conclusion, this study contributes to an understanding of social networks and charitable giving. By providing an integrative synthesis, results of existing studies are reviewed within the nonprofit and philanthropy activites of: recruitment, retention, and participation. The application of bibliometric techniques to analyzing social science research evidences their utility in extracting information from a diverse set of disciplines, theories, and methods to form a wholistic picture of what is known on these topics. Additionally, it highlights pertinent evidence and draws implications for practice particularly focused on engaging, retaining, and linking with young people.

#### **6.1 Limitations and future studies**

Nevertheless, this study also has limitations. First, the bibliometric approach includes possible selection biases based upon studies using ambiguous terms to describe networks and charitable giving, which may cause the keyword sampling to miss relevant articles. Second, to set the parameters at feasible boundaries for humans to cognitively process, the analysis focuses on charitable giving behaviors, delimiting other prosocial behaviors such as volunteering or organ donation for future studies. There is empirical evidence indicating that determinants or contagion mechanisms are not always the same across different prosocial behaviors, such as monetary giving and volunteering. Thus, the result of this research needs to be understood within the context of the activity studied: charitable giving. Future studies need to employ similar methods to seek generalizing to other forms of generosity. Third, the network

aspects that are the focus of this study are closely related to, and can intersect with, the other social contexts: identities and norms. For example, norms are essential in influencing the group dynamics of networks, and identity is one of the significant predictors for tie connections and network structures. However, within the bounds of this single paper, it was only feasible to present the network analysis. Future papers from this project will present bibliometric analysis of identities and norms.

#### **6.2 Knowledge gaps**

This integrative analysis based upon a systematic search of ten years of contemporary empirical studies reveals two primary knowledge gaps in understanding the social contexts of giving. One, the relational dynamics embedded within network structures are important for understanding giving. Yet, identities are studied more often than are networks and norms in relation to charitable giving. Networks and norms need to be afforded greater attention, especially within studies published in interdisciplinary outlets. Particularly of interest are studies that focus on how these network and norm processes operate during the dynamic phases of development from youth into young adulthood. There is some attention to field experiments and how they shape group dynamics in childhood, and there is a focus on the natural contexts of peers in youth. A knowledge gap exists in how developing networks matter for giving in young adulthood.

Two, practitioners and researchers would be aided by more synthesis across topics, disciplines, theories, and approaches, especially with application interpretations. Even within sets of literatures relevant for practitioners, the applications for practice are often minimal and not necessarily identified in relation to specific giving activities. To rectify this, future studies can replicate the approach of this bibliometric analysis to advance integrative understanding about what is known about the other sets of generous activities, such as volunteering and political action. Also pertinent would be integrations across identities and norms. Importantly, each of these topics needs to be reviewed within the context of what is known about youth and young adulthood.

#### **Acknowledgements**

This study was conducted with financial support from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation Investment ID OPP1203825, in support of the GenerosityForLife website. The authors wish to thank participants of the 50th Annual Conference of the Association for Research on Nonprofit and Voluntary Action, November 18-20, 2021, as well as research consultant Amy Thayer and graduate students Yu Wang and Christina Eggenberger for contributions to early stages of this project. Additionally, the authors are grateful for an award from the Indiana University Emergency Equity Fund for Research, which supported the graduate assistance of Yu Wang on this project; and to Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis University Library Open Access fund.

#### **Conflict of interest**

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

*Bibliometric Applications in Social Science Research: The Social Network Context of Generosity DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.112953*

#### **Author details**

Patricia Snell Herzog1 \*, Jin Ai2 , Una O. Osili2 , Chelsea Jacqueline Clark2 and Xiaonan Kou2

1 Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy, Luddy School of Informatics, Computing, and Engineering, Indianapolis, USA

2 Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy, Indianapolis, USA

\*Address all correspondence to<EMAIL_ADDRESS>
© 2023 The Author(s). Licensee IntechOpen. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

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#### **Chapter 2**

## Perspective Chapter: Understanding Young People's Experiences – An Integrative Literature Review

*Huda Kamel Ahmed*

#### **Abstract**

A developed conceptual model to understanding experiences of young people with ethnic heritage is explored in this chapter. Through a synthesis of some of the traditional approaches to identity and personality, the author argues for the move towards a more comprehensive, extensive, and evolving approach to understanding lived experiences: the conduct of everyday life. Coupled to that is an understanding of the continuity of experiences using the concept of Personhood in Practice to articulate young people's learning and development in the context of lived experiences. Bringing together such approaches, the chapter presents an integrative review showing the development of a conceptual model. It gives an example of how such model was used in my PhD research to draw findings to understand the experiences of an under-researched and overlooked community: the British Yemenis.

**Keywords:** identity, personality, conduct of everyday life, British Yemenis, cultural hybridity

#### **1. Introduction**

Human experiences have been extensively studied in the social sciences with various theoretical traditions and fields of research addressing different areas of study. New and evolving ideas, approaches and perspectives for understanding human experiences are continuously being explored. Of particular interest to the study of young people's experiences is the move away from previously articulated cognitivist trait-based perspectives—which view human experiences as informed by information processing activity that is situated in a given mind and that is analytically and practically separated from the world [1–3]—to the belief that experiences emerge out of a relational nexus between the subject and the world [4, 5]. In other words, experiences must be understood as an emergent property that already presupposes the relational interface between the subject and the world, and cannot be conceptualised as an a priori faculty situated within an already constituted individual [6, 7]. This chapter focuses on developing a conceptual approach to understanding the experiences of British Yemeni young people, an approach that privileges the relational nexus between subject and the world.

The understanding of what young people do and why they do it, has been of continued interest in sociology and psychology, specifically in the study of identity and personality. In this chapter, I consider some of the explanatory approaches that focus on understanding young people's experiences by exploring what might be viewed as some of the dominant youth identity theories and personality paradigms. Because the particular focus of the study is young people of Yemeni heritage, ideas in and around notions of post-colonialism and intersectionality will also be explored, and these ideas will be linked to some of the traditional identity theories discussed in this chapter. I highlight the limitations of these approaches in relation to providing explanations of subject-independent truths that are tied to practical living and being. By providing an overview and synthesis of some of the main ideas around identity and personality, I explore what these ideas may suggest about the young person's living and being. I then move on to describe how the conduct of everyday life, specifically the theory of a person [8], is a manifestation of some of these ideas but in a particular form that gives primacy to actions. I show how Dreier's theory of a person generates a robust articulation of young people's lived experiences as well as the associated identities and personalities that inform those experiences. It is an approach that I argue examines the relational nexus between subject and the world, through the actions that young people undertake in their everyday lives.

#### **2. Methodology**

This chapter presents an integrative review as a distinctive form of research using existing literature to create new knowledge. I use diverse data sources to develop a holistic understanding of lived experiences, by reviewing the growing body of literature that has contributed, in the context of this research, to theory development. The publication sources and search engines utilised to find sources related to young people's experiences were mainly articles from publications outputs. Examples of such include articles scoped were from the Journal of Applied Youth Studies, Journal of Adolescence, Theory & Psychology, Culture and Psychology, Race & Class, Psychology and the Conduct of Everyday Life, Concrete Human Psychology, Youth & Society and Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies to name a few. Although these journals present areas within psychology that are interdisciplinary, the focus for this research was on those linked specifically to understanding young people, their experiences and identities linked to such experiences. For example, work by Meeus [9] focused on identity status models in longitudinal studies, work by Havnes [10] on cultural-historical activity theory and work by Kroeber & Kluckhohn [11] on culture definitions and applications, all of which are related to the research field. The scope was large and ranged from mature as well as recent articles. I also directed my reading on articles that already provided a review of the main theories for understanding youth experiences [12, 13], particularly as it provides a critical review on the existing theories and applications in understanding lived experience and identities. Other sources used were in the form of books that focused on such the use of case studies to build and test theories in social science [14] and those related handbooks on personality, theory and research.

The main produce of the research was the development of a conceptual methodological framework, integrating various paradigms and theoretical research, to understand the experience of young people. I then applied this model to an overlooked and under researched British Yemenis group of young people. The chapter *Perspective Chapter: Understanding Young People's Experiences – An Integrative Literature Review DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.113100*

also shows how such model has the potential to contribute to other future research for other ethnic minority groups in the UK because it allows the examining the dynamics and interactions between self and society where human subjectivities are a reflection of, but not determined by, the social and cultural arrangements.

The model emerged from scoping the literature and engaging with the ideas on (1) youth identity, (2) personality paradigms, (3) post-colonialism, (4) intersectionality, (5) literature on researcher's positionality within the research and from personal experiences and the advantages it brings, (6) pilot study research, (7) photography methods, (7) the conduct of everyday life, (8) longitudinal studies, (9) personhood in practice and (10) narrative portraits. Each of these 10 different approaches was applied, either theoretically or methodologically, to develop a conceptual model, forming links between them. The inclusion criteria for the sources used in such scope needed to firstly relate to be young people and their associated identities and personalities, and secondly to literature on ethnic minorities groups living in the UK. Section 3 in this chapter elaborates further on the sources of intellectual knowledge and resources used that has contributed to developing this model. The overall research is, therefore, theory-led and data-driven, enabling the research questions, literature review, methodology and analysis to be connected in a way that brings about vital information on the participants in question. This model was reviewed by a panel of supervisors from the University of Manchester, who acted as peer reviews of the information gathered, edited and developed.

The model focuses on *actions and activities*. It provides a robust articulation of lived experiences as well as the associated identities and personalities that inform such experiences, linking personality with social processes that shape people's conduct of everyday life. Thinking in such way helps researchers explain and understand social life that is continuously challenged by dynamic and evolving problems. The development of conceptual frameworks and theories, such as the one developed here, is required to get a firm understanding of both classical and contemporary theories in the context of the research.

This chapter is derived from the literature review—chapter two—of my PhD thesis1 [15] and builds off the first chapter of a larger empirical work where I explore the lived experience of six British Yemeni young people, and present data conducted over 19 months. The study of my PhD was guided by three research questions on (1) the types of everyday experiences, (2) the forms of learning and development and (3) what these experiences, learning and development suggest about the evolving social and cultural personhood of British Yemeni young people. The experiences of British Yemeni young people were documented and explored through linking and interconnecting concepts of the conduct of everyday life and personhood in practice.

The concepts in and around identity and personality have been traditionally seen as a standard way of thinking about young people's agency (self) and structure (society), and understanding what young people do, and why they do what they do. In relation to youth studies, issues of identity have been explored through different traditions that offer both psychological (subjective and behavioural properties of identity) and sociological approaches (membership and social interactions) [16, 17]. I begin this chapter by providing an overview of some of the main approaches for examining youth identity as means of explaining agency. To contextualise these with regard to the focus of my study, I then examine how post-colonial and

1 https://www.escholar.manchester.ac.uk/api/datastream?datastreamId=FULL-TEXT. PDF&publicationPid=uk-ac-man-scw.

intersectionality theories provide an additional lens through which to understand British Yemeni young people more fully. I chose these theories in particular because of the historical elements of British colonisation of Yemen, and because of the ideas which intersectionality may bring to the interactivity of social identity structures (race, class, gender, ethnicity, nationality, age and religion) in fostering life experiences. I show how these theories provide additional articulations of the interconnection of agency and structure that might be more theoretically aligned to explaining the experiences of British Yemeni young people. I then demonstrate how the theories of post-colonialism and intersectionality can be used as analytical tools to understand some of the nuances around British Yemeni young people's experiences, particularly with respect to their family histories and practices. I then move onto exploring complementary ideas that focus on some of the prominent personality psychology, showing how they have historically been built from ideas within biological, social and clinical domains.

In bringing these traditional ideas of identity, post-colonialism and intersectionality, and personality together, I show that, despite the explanatory importance of these theories, they seem to struggle in providing a justifiable understanding of some of the heterogeneity, as well as some of the homogeneity, in the everyday life experiences of British Yemeni young people. This gap was noted primarily from my undertaking of the initial study, and secondly, from my personal reflections of my own experiences that questioned an essentialised perspective of identity and personality that appears to be dominant in the field. In other words, such findings showed that, in the experiences of British Yemeni young people, there were elements of difference as well as similarities which did not seem to be accounted for in the main, by post-colonial and intersectionally inspired identity and personality theories. To avoid the pitfalls of what I argue to be dualistic (the separation of the subject from the world) and yet at the same time essentialist explanation and accounts of who British Yemeni young people are and what they do, I instead focus on the relational conduct of everyday life, with all the possibilities of both diversity and similarity, and change and reproduction in living and lived experiences. This is because the conduct of everyday life enables the connection between young people's evolving sense of themselves and the social arrangements of their lives to be explored recognising both habitual activity and the possibilities of change.

Building on such a critique, I broaden the understanding of identity and personality to encompass rationales and discourses associated with the conduct of everyday life in the experiences of daily living, in particular using Dreier's theory of a person [8]. I argue that Dreier's theory bridges the gap between psychological theorising on an individual level and a transindividual perspective, prioritising the actions of the person with others in his/her social life as a means of understanding experiences. I show how arriving at the conduct of everyday life enables a more comprehensive, extensive and evolving approach to understanding personality, which, in turn, provides a more concrete reflection of identity that yet contains elements of fluidity. I conclude the chapter by outlining an evolved conceptualisation of the conduct of everyday life in terms of the novelty of its application.

**Figure 1** provides a summary of the approaches that I will discuss in the synthesis sections of this chapter.

The study of identity and personality reflect two of the major positions and central constructs in the attempts to understand young people's agency. The major academic traditions in these fields range from the sociological studies of identity and the psychological studies of personality. The former, in the main, focus on the *Perspective Chapter: Understanding Young People's Experiences – An Integrative Literature Review DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.113100*

**Figure 1.** *Approach to the study of young people's experiences.*

structures and system of people and their relations, and how they impact one another and the individual that help to generate identity and commensurate forms of agency [18–20], while the latter focuses on self and the individual, and the related cognitive dimensions of living which have both social dimension and aspects of an inherited trait-like perspective [21, 22] that provides accounts of the individualised self. In this section, I provide an overview of some of the main theories of youth identity, including post-colonialism and intersectionality, and then some of the main traditional paradigms of personality. I then synthesise the research position with respect to each of these ideas, highlighting some of its limitations in understanding British Yemeni young people's agency and structure.

Although I start by exploring these theories individually, clarifying along the way the research position with respect to each of these concepts, I also show, later in the chapter, that there is interconnection and overlap between these theories as they might help explain the lives of British Yemeni young people. Therefore, these theories and approaches should not be seen necessarily as analytically separate and distinct entities, but connected, through the narratives of British Yemeni young people's experiences.

#### **3. Synthesis—identity**

#### **3.1 Identity scholarship**

Identity has historically been seen as complex and slippery concept. As the boundaries between disciplines dealing with identity are quite arbitrary, an

investigation of identity needs to consider multi-disciplinary approaches. Although the term originates from the Latin root 'idem', meaning the same or identical, identity can be defined as a description of who a person is and the qualities of a person that make them *different* from others.2 Hammack provides a definition that I feel in many respects resonates with my research focus because it includes the person's subjectivity and behavioural patterns, as well as their membership of societal groups [12, 23]—identity is *'ideology cognized through the individual engagement with discourse, made manifest in a personal narrative constructed and reconstructed across the life course, and scripted in and through social interaction and social practice'* ([24], p. 22). Developing an identity to associate and/or distinguish oneself from others may be crucial in establishing a stable agency and structure [25]. Whether it implies similarity or differences, uniqueness or individuality, fixed psychological traits, social facts or transitory situations [26], identity involves recognising a common cause, storage of experiences and habituated thoughts and memory (in the person), and is represented in behaviours and social activities (in interaction) [27].

Although identity can provide a general understanding of some of the features pertinent to the individual, there is also the sense that identity is likely to evolve and develop during transitional stages of life that have both physiological and emotional dimensions. Literature on young people growth and development has shown that identity can also be examined in relation to individuals going through transitional stages of development. These stages include both physiologically and emotionally. Literature on the anthropology of young people [28, 29] describes adolescence as a universal period of time, experienced by young people as they grow and develop [30, 31]. The participants—being in the age range of 16–19 during the time of this study—may have experienced (and are perhaps continuing to experience) shifts and changes during this growth period, which can be seen as a transitional stage of autonomy seeking, emotional instability and identity exploration [32]. This may involve, perhaps, becoming more independent from parents and further associating with peer groups [33]. Young people may continue to develop and construct their own identity as they move through to adulthood [29]. This delicate, yet gradual, progression continually reflects experiences that may be associated with profound life changes [34].

#### **3.2 Identity studies**

Many mainstream or traditional approaches that explore youth identity tend to focus on several areas of study. Some traditions stress the internalisation of social positions and their personal meanings as part of the self-structure [35], while others show the impact of cultural meanings and social situations on identities [36, 37], emphasising how social contexts elicit certain identities that shape meanings and actions. Other traditions centre on collective identity and group-level processes [38, 39]. Of particular importance in delineating ideas of young identity is Côté's [12] expansive and comprehensive overview of the varying perspective and approaches to youth identity. He develops his overview with ideas from his previous work with Levin [40], to produce a universal taxonomy that attends to the multidimensionality represented by the various approaches in understanding youth identity. Adapted from Côté [12], in **Table 1** I summarise some of the main theories and perspectives on youth identity.

2 https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/identity

*Perspective Chapter: Understanding Young People's Experiences – An Integrative Literature Review DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.113100*

### **Table 1.**

*Some of the major identity theories.*

These perspectives are among the leading approaches for thinking about identity and associated agency and will therefore act as a focus for exploring their relevance to young people's living experiences. However, in so doing, I will articulate some of the problematic issues that pertain to much of this thinking and yet also recognising that certain key approaches may provide important basis for my research.

#### **3.3 Synthesis of identity scholarship**

This section provides a synthesis and exploration on how studying young people's agency and structure, through the identity theories, depicted in **Table 1**, is, in the main, problematic. Although these theories may provide a contribution to understanding certain elements of the social structures and changes that pertain to the formation of a person, studying identity with regard to many of these approaches relies uniformly on methodological approaches that enable a person to generate perception of who they thinks they are based on recalled events (memory) that support such perception, and relatedly on the possible evaluation of the accuracy of feelingof-knowing experiences [66, 67]. This methodological approach is problematic for a number of reasons. Firstly, it provides an isolated description of a person, detaching him/her from ongoing social practices. This, in turn, provides an abstracted form of knowledge or an account that is partial. Furthermore, it restricts the examination of the various features of personal functioning and the features of the world in which a person lives. Secondly, studying identity in such a way entails a thinning out of the presence of the world in notions of psychological phenomena and neglects the significance of the world for psychological functioning [68]. Thirdly, the links between the historical structures and influences of the current environment, and how they affect the functioning of a person, are missing. I argue that this is the case for all the youth identity theories discussed in **Table 1**, albeit with different levels of sophistication.

Let me take the identity status paradigm as an example. Within this approach, there is an assumption that a young person, perhaps during adolescence, will experience a crisis during their development, and at this stage, must make a commitment to reach the identity achievement stage. Identity achievement is, however, relative. It is also measured differently, depending on the context of the research and there are many factors that affect identity achievement. Furthermore, the identity status paradigm suggests that some young people may fluctuate between different development stages and may not pass each stage or reach a certain level of achievement [41], and although this may be the argument in some cases, the pattern or sense of development varies for each individual, and should primarily depend on the person's evolving situation and linked practice. The dualism of agency and structure suggest that the two are separate and each have causal powers on the other. The argument here is that what young people do is both agency and structure at the same time—they do and undergo, one impacting the other continuously. Development is also influenced by different factors that are specific to the individual and the environment in which they live and participate. As such, identity formation is not static and is continuously evolving and developing with increased lived experiences, and so there is no end point. The identity status paradigm also suggests that a well-developed identity signifies a solid sense of personal uniqueness, awareness of strengths and weaknesses, high self-esteem, increased critical thinking, advanced moral reasoning and low levels of anxiety [42]. Although this may be achieved during adolescence and towards early adulthood, not only does it vary from person to person, but the living and being are constantly changing and evolving, suggesting the possibility of moving from

*Perspective Chapter: Understanding Young People's Experiences – An Integrative Literature Review DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.113100*

what appears a well-developed and stable identity to one less stable and vice versa. Additionally, the identity status paradigm does not consider the historical, ethnic and cultural dimensions of the growing and evolving person, and thus, may fall short in understanding young people with ethnic heritage.

A critical and cultural approach in understanding young people's experiences is more applicable when focusing primarily on the importance of culture in society, but as an effect, the approach produces a partial perspective of agency. Such an approach ignores the fact that a person is both a subject and subjected to the society (or culture) they live in, that therefore results in danger of essentialising what it means to have a culture, or in the context of this research a British Yemeni culture.

I now turn to two other identity approaches: postmodernism and symbolic interactionism. In the sociological variant of postmodernism, identity is located within the interactional realm and describes some of the unity in articulating identity [69] that relates to young people's interactions that are partially dominated by the rise of new media technologies [70, 71] and consumerism in society [72]. From my interactions with young people, and from reflecting on my experiences*,* I argue that these two realities may directly (or indirectly) influence the construction of young people's identity today, but this is relative to the individual and environment in which they live. Additionally, using postmodernist understanding of society also provides a simplified view of who a young person is and what they do, based on a generalised postmodern view of lived realities of how these realities influence daily activities.

There are also problems reflected in ideas within symbolic interactionism. The theory is rooted in phenomenological thought in which subjectively defined objects have meaning and so there are possibly multiple, conflicting interpretations of any situation [73]. The issue with this, in the context of this research, is that it gives the young person a mistaken sense of agency over structure, and perhaps some creative capabilities or misguided sense of control over society. This is not only relative and subjective but also leaves the person with the false sense that society, of which a person is a member, is designed to meet his/her social needs, and this is not necessarily true. Sometimes a person must change or adapt to suit the society they live in, and not necessarily the other way round. Furthermore, symbolic interactionism focuses on micro-level interactions [58] and so overlooks macro-social structures (such as norms and cultures), which makes it difficult to understand the interconnected experiences of an individual using this theory. Symbolic interactionists have been criticised in for their predominately qualitative approach to empirical inquiry and for their failure to deal adequately with social structure and power [55, 74].

However, the identity theory that relates to producing life histories and narrative approaches has a greater role in this research, primarily as an active methodological stance. This is because it provides an opportunity to focus subjectively on identity, social-life and culture, and at the same time, enables questions to be asked about some of the structuring components in a young person's daily life. Hammack's [24] definition earlier—identity '*manifest[s] in a personal narrative constructed and reconstructed across the life course'*—supports the idea of using life histories and narrative approaches, as a methodology, for studying the subjective phases of social life, as well as the historical and structural aspects of social life [51]. This makes it ideal for exploring the experiences of British Yemeni young people. Documenting participants' stories using narratives that seek to apprehend, understand and render people's stories within their personal, social, economic, political and historical contexts [75, 76] is not only salient, but also produces a personal account of the here and now, in the

narrator's own words. It also enables an analysis of the collective contextual influences in which those lives are situated [77].

Perhaps what is also deficient in some of these perspectives on identity highlighted above is the lack of full engagement with issues of ethnic and cultural heritage. To explore this deficiency, I now describe some of the identity theories that relate to British Yemenis being of an ethnic and cultural heritage, and how these theories support in the understanding young people's agency and structure.

#### **4. Synthesis—ethnic heritage**

#### **4.1 Ethnic heritage scholarship**

Having examined, and critiqued, some of the mainstream ideas of identity, there seems to be a possibility of under-emphasis in and around some of the historical, cultural, political power issues of British Yemeni young people. This means that an additional set of thinking tools is required to enable a more developed understanding of identity in an extended way. Specifically, I explore how the post-colonial and intersectionality arguments are pertinent to my study of British Yemeni young people. I show their importance, in relation to some of the standard theories of identity (mentioned in **Table 1**), in developing ideas that explicitly focus on some of the important structural, cultural, historic reasons why British Yemeni young people see their world as they do. Although there are dangers of essentialising here, it is more about orientating theories to issues of post-colonialism. I start by exploring post-colonialism as a theory and discuss its potential use in examining the ethnic and power difference between colonising powers and those that have been colonised, including the impacts on first-, second- and third-generation British Yemeni young people. I feel that this discussion has been (partially) underplayed, or perhaps forgotten in the identity theories explored in **Table 1**. In using post-colonialism, the structural imbalance, the discrimination and prejudice, and the domineering are no longer overlooked. I then explore how intersectionality aims to move towards a deeper understanding of the social identity structures which, together, may serve as an influence on the experiences of British Yemeni young people. However, I later discuss how I make more pertinent the analysis of experiences using the conduct of everyday life more sensitised to post-colonial and intersectional arguments.

#### **4.2 Post-colonialism**

Post-colonialism considers ways in which identity is constructed through the discourses of colonialism, emphasising the importance of the cultural, economic, political and military dominance of the past [78]. In the context of this research, it refers to the way British Yemenis' identity may be constructed as a direct (or indirect) effect because of the colonisation of Yemen by Britain in 1839. Presented as the extension of civilization to justify the racial and cultural superiority of Western world over others [79], colonialism has caused changes in people's cultural identity, social places and economic roles within the colonised country as well as among those migrating to the Western country [80]. This relationship of control tends to extend to social, pedagogical, economic, political and broadly cultural exchanges. This section explores some of the prominent works of scholars in the field of post-colonial studies and shows how their work is related to the diaspora and identities of Yemenis settling in Britain.

#### *Perspective Chapter: Understanding Young People's Experiences – An Integrative Literature Review DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.113100*

I begin by exploring the work of three main scholars in post-colonial studies: Said [81, 82], Spivak [83] and Bhabha [84–86]. I chose these scholars in particular because of their major contributions in documenting and providing an insight into the impacts of colonialism. Most of the literature that I have examined in, and around post-colonialism, uses certain definitions, descriptions and elements from their work, perhaps as a foundation for understanding the influences of post-colonial theory on the lived lives of those affected by it. Furthermore, each of these scholars presents different, yet connecting, ideas of how to understand and represent the colonised forces in a way that may lead to further conversations and explorations. Additionally, and in the context of this research, I explore how Said, Spivak and Bhabha's ideas, separately and collectively, provide some explanation as to the possible changes in identities and, as an effect, the experiences of British Yemeni young people.

I begin by focusing on Said's work on the representation of knowledge of the colonised. Said uses 'Orientalism' to describe a style of thought based upon distinctions made between the Occident (of the West) and Orient (or other)—a style of dominating, restructuring and having authority over the Orient [81, 82]. Said argues that magical realism, referred to the adaptation of Western realist methods of literature, is presented inaccurately and is misleading, and stereotypical of the cultural representation of the east (as exotic, enigmatic and curious) [82]. This representation may hinder a representational reality of the orient in representational ways of understanding of Middle Eastern and Asian culture [80]. He suggests that these methods of representation are used as tools, by colonisers, to dominate the colonised, at an individual and community level [82]. This view is also shared by other scholars [87, 88].

Historical writing on the British empire in Yemen is also dominated by post-colonial traditions and theories [89]. Using Said's idea of Orientalism, it is possible to identify historiographical precedents for applying certain orientalist ideas to diplomatic source material to study British rule over Yemen [90]. Writings on such colonisation offer evidence of intelligence being interpreted in a way which underestimated the strength of local agents and amplified the influence of external manipulation [91]. This is what Said refers to as a misinterpretation of truth within a colonised culture [81].

Spivak [83] addresses the problem of misrepresentation by centring attention on giving the 'Subaltern'—a colonised group of lower economic and cultural status a voice. According to Spivak, such voices were prevented by the colonised. She highlights the difficulty for an outside colonised person to represent what is truly happening in the colonised communities. Spivak is an advocate for subaltern voice, and the impact (of offering them a chance to speak) is the reduction of inherently restricted or misleading logocentric assumptions of the colonised people [92]. In this way, Spivak adopts a stance against a specifically intellectual form of oppression and marginalisation [93].

Within the context of this research, discussion around the 'other' and allowing the 'subaltern voice' resonate with the intentions of this research. By default, the British Yemeni community is a minority ethnic group and so can be considered as the 'other'. By providing a platform for their voices to be heard, through this research, assumptions or misleading statements on their living and being may be better understood. Although this research does not consider British Yemeni young people as being 'subalterns' as such, the reality is that there has been limited literature on their experiences, which may suggest a lack of attention given to their opinions and voices. Even though the occupation of Yemen by Britain of 128 years ended in 1967, the long period of colonialism has (directly or indirectly) presented some areas of misrepresentation and perhaps oppression, that may have produced a ripple effect on the lives of British

Yemenis today. This research provides an opportunity for British Yemeni young people to represent their living and being through their own words, enabling a clear understanding of their lived worlds. It is about privileging the participants as knowers of their knowledge or at least having their problems heard equally as other more dominant groups.

Bhabha [84] develops post-colonial theory on a different level and one that I feel most resonates with the British Yemeni context today. He engages with the idea that diversity is brought about by various cultural encounters and that individuals from post-colonial cultures can only be described as having 'cultural hybridity'—the mixture of cultural influences that allows the mixing of both the colonised country and pre-existing traditional customs [84]. Bhabha focuses on 'mimicry' as a means by which the colonised adapt the culture (language, clothing, food, education, etc.) of the coloniser [85, 94, 95]. A study by Hutnik and Street [96] reveals how British Indians' self-categorised differently in specific cultural contexts, while another study by Modood et al. [97] discloses the complex ways in which young British people of Caribbean and Asian origin manage to retain the aspects of older cultural practices, yet at the same time modify some to allow modification. Literature from these prominent post-colonial scholars, as well as others [79, 80, 98, 99], shows how colonisation has led to cultural, linguistic and religious differences among populations and also the possible emergence of historically constructed groups [48, 100].

Ethnicity is, thus, not simply a historical legacy of migration or conquest, rather it is constantly undergoing redefinition and reconstruction [100]. These are examples of how people from colonised countries balance between desires to root themselves in their communities of origin, while at the same time making use of the opportunities available in British culture. As a result, hybrid identity is formed with significant overlaps and mixtures of cultural practices [101, 102]. Although I do not use the term mimicry as such to explore the mixture of ethnic and national cultures of British Yemenis in my study, I understand the relevance of mimicry in the context of the desire for Yemenis, as an ethnic minority group in Britain, to produce unique cultural hybridity from a mixture of their Yemeni culture as well as their national British culture.

As a result of the British colonisation of Yemen, many Yemenis migrated to various cities in Britain [103, 104]. Dahya [105] documents the migration of some Yemenis to Sheffield and South Shields in the period of 1945–1950, and describes the history of several married men, who despite having left their wives and children behind in Yemen, continued to retain their ties with their families and villages by sending money home regularly [105]. His paper shows how the settlers carried out practices linked to their homeland. Some of the practices included using their Arabic language in their everyday conversation, dressing traditionally on special occasions, buying mutton from Yemeni butchers and making it into a stew and serving it in a huge dish according to Yemeni custom. They extend their hospitality to visitors in the same way as they would have done in Yemen [105], continuing their customs and traditions.

Yemenis also represent the first significant Muslim community to settle in Britain [106]. They projected their religious connections to Islam during the weekends, public holidays and the annual summer holidays by attending mosques that also served as a centre of social and recreational activities [107]. Most settlers continue to carry out their prescribed duties faithfully, such as prayers and fasts. This has been a continued practice throughout the generations.

Other literature on early Yemeni settlers focuses on the working and family status of Yemenis in Britain. When they first settled in Britain, Yemenis often formed a

#### *Perspective Chapter: Understanding Young People's Experiences – An Integrative Literature Review DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.113100*

distinct isolated community [108] and so were disconnected from British culture [109]. Reasons alluded to, in these articles, included the fear of a loss of culture and identity, and so like other Muslim ethnic minorities, the early Yemeni settlers may have attempted to perhaps establish an identity of difference [110]. However, such disconnections may have resulted in ethnic isolation and the congregation of Yemeni communities in specific areas in Britain [111]. The only reported efforts to marginally ameliorate Yemeni isolation was in South Shields, where prominent Yemeni community figures contributed by providing a mosque, religious education for men and women and an Arabic newspaper reporting British-related news, as well as news from Yemen [108].

Other research also shows that the integration between the Yemeni community and the British public was minimal [112], in part because the British chose to see Yemenis as different, and in part because the Yemenis chose to isolate themselves. Working in semi-skilled positions, Yemenis clustered together, lived in overcrowded houses and got by with a smattering of English [113]. To the British, the Yemenis were common labourers and not truly part of British society, and the Yemenis saw themselves as villagers whose primary focus was their homeland [112]. In effect, the Yemenis claimed to be temporary migrants, putting down only those roots, such as home ownership, that would enable them to accomplish their mission of saving for their return. The relative lack of support networks and institutions, apart from workers' unions, is indicative of Yemenis' strong belief in their eventual and inevitable return home [114]. Key political institutions in Britain were formulated by the Yemeni immigrants, that instead of being interested in workers' conditions in Britain, targeted socio-economic and political developments in Yemen [115]. Furthermore, Yemeni migration, over 30 years before the waves of post-World War II immigrants from other parts of the empire, enabled them, as a small group, to avoid notice [116]. This may provide an explanation for the minimal literature on Yemenis in Britain currently.

Living in Britain for generations now, and with the current voluntary (or enforced) migration of Yemenis from their native homeland due to its current political instability [117], the integration of Yemeni and British culture was and continues to be inevitable. The effect of this integration is the possible formation of a merging of ethnic and national cultures, or as Bhabha [84] puts it, cultural hybridity. Such cultural changes have continued to lead to a gradual shift from pre-existing roots and traditional customs to national influences of mainstream culture [118]. Within the generational changes (and with the passing of time and possibly more integration into the country of residence), findings may show the extent as to which a culture is mainstream or subculture. I also argue that cultural identity is better understood as a combination of both ethnic identity (or subculture—rooted in historical origins) and national identity (or mainstream culture—coming from the country of upbringing). The contact between two or more different cultures results in acculturation—a new, composite culture that consists of existing cultural features combined with newly generated features [119, 120].

As I have discussed in this section, post-colonial theory is one of the ways in which the agency of young people, with Yemeni heritage living in the country of the coloniser, can be explored. It may explain some elements of practices that young people experience and are experiencing, perhaps developed from their family histories and practices. I now move onto another way of exploring the interrelationship of agency and structure in the lives of young people, by considering the cross-cutting historical, ethnic and cultural dimensions, of living that has been termed intersectionality [121].

#### **4.3 Intersectionality theory**

The concept of intersectionality refers to the interactivity of social identity structures or markers (race, class, gender, ethnicity, nationality, age and religion) in fostering life experiences [121]. British Yemeni young people are not only young (age), British (nationality) and Yemeni (ethnicity), but they are also of a different skin colour to others in Britain (race), have different socio-economic and class backgrounds (class), are mostly Muslims (religion) and have many other interconnecting social identity markers. The focus of intersectionality is on the interaction of multiple identities markers and how these may suggest possible experiences of exclusion and subordination [122], privilege and oppression [121], and in possibly addressing the fundamental and pervasive concern of difference and diversity [123]. I am not suggesting that British Yemenis are either privileged or oppressed, rather this wide spectrum entails some exploration of their experiences in relation to possible power structures that may have produced certain inequalities in their lives, both as individuals and as communities. British Yemenis are different from other groups in Britain, but also to each other, and this diversity may manifest in some specific, even subtle, forms of intersecting inequalities. Instead of the idea that inequalities result simply from the accumulation of independent risk factors, intersectionality enables an understanding of the multi-dimensional relationships, modalities of social relations and subject formations [124]. It is in the interaction of those inequalities that the distinctive dynamics at their multidimensional interface can be captured [125, 126].

There are different ways in which intersectionality has been used in research. Many studies have used it as a theory to explore social practices, institutional arrangements and cultural ideologies, and the outcomes of these interactions in terms of power [122]. Other studies focus on its use in self-identification, social networks, religious affiliation, language, positive attitudes, endogamy and varied cultural traditions and practices [126]. For example, studies on different ethnic minorities in the United States showed that political attitudes are important in measuring Black identity, language is salient in Mexican-American culture, relational aspects of social identity in British studies [127] and cultural attitudes play a major role in Asian-American identity [128].

Intersectionality also addresses the dynamics within both dominant and oppressed groups, showing how each person is uniquely advantaged and disadvantaged within this matrix [129] and that the cultural patterns of oppression are not only interrelated but also bound by interlocking social locations [123]. In this way, intersectionality can be used to explore how categories of different social structures within British Yemeni identity are intertwined and mutually constitutive [122, 126]. Although there is no consensus on how an intersectional analysis should be conducted [130, 131], there is flexibility and an open-ended methodology within this approach. This can include focus group discussions, narrative interviews, action research and observations—all with the central role of giving voice, elicited through such approaches.

#### **4.4 Synthesis of ethnic heritage-related theories**

Post-colonial theory and intersectionality enhance the understanding of how British Yemeni young people's agency is influenced by their history and social identity structure. In comparison with the other more wide-ranging theories of identity highlighted in **Table 1**, their application may be more pertinent in exploring experiences of young people with an ethnic culture. However, this importance is in the context of

#### *Perspective Chapter: Understanding Young People's Experiences – An Integrative Literature Review DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.113100*

their purpose as analytical tools, rather than a theoretical framework. This is because both post-colonialism and intersectionality, as theories, assume and give, perhaps, an imprecise perception of a fixed, static, essentialist view of who British Yemeni young people are and what they do, based on historical implication or social identity structures. In this doctoral research, I move away from the stagnant conceptualization of British Yemeni identity and argue that what needs unravelling goes beyond factors related to post-colonial theory, and social identity structures of age, race, ethnicity, etc.—it is more about their lived experiences, their living and becoming as they interact with the world around them. However, what post-colonialism and intersectionality might allow is the better appreciation of the nature of the conduct of everyday life.

Furthermore, post-colonial theory specifically relates to the effect of colonialism on British Yemeni young people because of the historical background and struggles of older generations. Although there has been some documentation of this [104, 105, 107, 132, 133] it cannot be assumed that all generations of Yemeni ethnic settlers experience cultural differences or injustice, for example. Moreover, the participants in this study are from first, second and third generations and so may not be as influenced by the historical implications of their parents and grandparents, as early settlers.

Similarly, consideration of various social identity structures, that are intertwined and mutually constitutive, may be highlighted when discussing British Yemeni young people's family histories and practices. However, these social identity structures, even as intersection elements, cannot be fully used as a label or representation of what it means to be a British Yemeni young person. Linking to Said's work [81] on the true representation of the 'other', intersectionality has also been shown to contain postcolonial theoretical perspectives [134]. In this research, I use the interactions implied by post-colonialism and intersectionality to further understand some of the reasons and implications of British Yemeni young people's experiences, moving away from theorising British Yemeni young people's identity and the feeling-of-knowing experiences. In doing this, I provide a representation of their experiences in their living and being, and as Spivak suggests [83], through their own words.

Having explored these identity theories that relate to understanding young people's agency and structure, and those with ethnic heritage, and finding limitations in using these, a shift in thinking towards a different approach was needed—one that does not dwell on the abstracted realities of identity. One such approach is the exploration of personality. I now move to explore some of the traditional personality paradigms, as a different, yet related, approach to the study of young people's agency, and suggest how these ideas may indicate ways of articulating young people's experiences of everyday life.

#### **5. Synthesis—personality**

#### **5.1 Personality scholarship**

A prominent way of thinking about personality is to see it as a collection of complex and sophisticated entities one that refers to the dynamic integration of the totality of a person's subjective experience and behaviour patterns [135]. From such a perspective personality includes conscious, concrete and habitual behaviour patterns, experiences of self and of the surrounding word, and unconscious behaviour patterns, experiences and views (including perception, cognition, memory) [21, 135]. The outcome is the coordination of multiple dispositions that are built upon habitual

desires and fears, behaviour patterns and intentional states. Therefore, personality derives from the person's capacity to experience subjective states that reflect the internal condition of the body as well as the perception of the external environment within which the body functions [136]. In other words, personality is a multi-level system that is perceived as an individual's unique difference in people, expressed as a emerging pattern of dispositional traits, characteristic adaptations and self-defining life narratives, complexly and differentially located in culture and social context [137]. In this way, a person continues to shape and adapt to a changing internal and external environment [136].

Although definitions of personality vary in accordance with the theoretical perspective from which it is viewed, it can be generally defined by *the type of person you are, shown by the way you behave, think, and feel*3 . Much mainstream psychological understandings see the person as surrounded by numerous inputs, which enter and are processed internally *via* the brain, releasing outputs in the form of behaviour, thoughts and emotions [138]—hence *behave, think and feel* in the definition. Furthermore, personality is historically based upon several different widely encompassing paradigms, rooted in different sources [139]. The interplay of the behaviour settings, behavioural rules or personality traits, and the individual pursuits are essential in understanding person-environment transactions. Furthermore, the distinctive behavioural personality signature of a person may happen at different settings and situations.

I focus on personality psychology as a means of understanding young people's agency. Personality psychology has been systematically studied since the 1930s [140–143], and can be traced back in its ancestry to the ancient Greeks and Roman physicians and philosophers [144]. Historically, personality appears as a specified term with the aim of achieving a scientific understanding of individuality [145]. Many theories have been verbalised to enable the understanding of the complexity of personality—some suggest that it is biological and conceived to have genetic as well as environmental origins, others include a social dimension, and the impact of social forces on the growing person, while others view it as related to clinical aspects of personality studies, examining people who have suffered adaptive and adjustive failures. These different viewpoints are provided in **Table 2**, focusing on the different encompassing paradigms in this field.

These paradigms—in **Table 2**—are some of the important concepts in understanding personality, which provide some suggestions and insights into young people's agency. I now evaluate some of these personality paradigms within the context of the lived lives of British Yemeni young people.

#### **5.2 Synthesis of personality scholarship**

Understanding British Yemeni young people's evolving personality is, I would argue, imperative in the exploration of lived daily experiences. This is because it allows researchers to get a sense of how people's characteristics develop, change and impact their lived realities. I argue that studying personality in paradigms, such as those discussed in **Table 2**, looks at individualised outcome, rather than the process of understanding experiences in their totality, and so only partially provides direction in the study of young people's agency and lived experiences. This is because such ideas focus on individualised narrated accounts about the self, which I feel is inadequate for

3 https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/personality

#### **Table 2.**

*Some of the traditional personality paradigms.*

the focus of the research, as such, ideas underemphasise the person in their concrete relational actions in systems of activity. Human personality also matures and evolves through lived experiences [174] and so understanding the person as a unique, whole individual requires bringing together different and distinct approaches that focus on a non-essentialisation of that person, and with the passage of time.

For example, personality traits are useful in reflecting the tendency for a person to respond in certain ways under certain point in time, but it does fully consider the social context or arrangements in which these circumstances occur or how they might change, and so cannot truly account for the overall and evolving personality of a person. Other personality paradigms rely on memory of past histories and perception, and although this is not necessarily an issue, the past that is written in the present or informed by the present and the near future may be interpreted in a way that may not give a representation intended by the narrator. It also depends on the assumption that people may relate stories that are expected of them or try and 'fill in the gaps' in their stories by answering questions that relate to the paradigms discussed. Other paradigms consider a person as an agent with the ability to make and choose appropriate plans that allow them to live their daily lives with values and virtues (mental, emotional and behavioural) significant to them and others around them. Although this may be true, it does not consider the societal pressure, the cultural expectations or the heterogeneity of people in their social environments; one's values and valued capabilities are not inherently in-built, rather they are learned through relational and cultural activity.

In framing this research, I am therefore opposed to using the personality paradigms mentioned in **Table 2** in articulating experiences and so direct my attention in a different path, one that focuses on personality as an evolving phenomenon that can be understood in the context of everyday living and being. This is where the concept of the conduct of everyday life becomes a useful tool.

Having discussed the limitations of articulating experiences through certain identity approaches and traditional personality paradigm—and the notion that they all too easily provide a rather fixed, static, essentialist view of who British Yemeni young people are, and what they do—I now move on to discussing how best to explore the actions and activities of people through the concept of the conduct of everyday life. I discuss why the conduct of everyday life has been chosen as a theoretical framework and why it provides a more concrete way of understanding personality and articulating lived experiences of British Yemeni young people.

#### **6. Human experience scholarship**

#### **6.1 The conduct of everyday life**

The conduct of everyday life explores the primacy of researching human actions in the contradictory and intersubjective context of everyday life [68, 175]. The concept opposes testing subjects against abstract *a priori* theories that fail to grasp the centrality of life as lived and living. Agency is seen as inseparable from the plurality of life contexts and one's individual conduct is in constant functional ordination with others [68]. This is one of the main reasons for using the conduct of everyday life in this doctoral research. As explained in the introduction section of this chapter, the focus is on understanding British Yemeni young people's experiences that privilege the relational nexus between the subject and the world.

Human experience and activity have been studied extensively, but the question of how and why one might conduct one's life has only recently started to receive attention [176]. Studying the conduct of everyday life is multi-disciplinary and the concept can be used in various areas including child development across different institutional settings in learning and education [177, 178], therapy [179, 180], family conduct [181],

#### *Perspective Chapter: Understanding Young People's Experiences – An Integrative Literature Review DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.113100*

in studying crisis, conflict and contradictory situations [182–186], homelessness [187] and different fields in sociology [188, 189], people. These different areas of study show the diversity in using the conduct of everyday life to examine how people live as active subjects within the contexts of their daily lives, recognising the dilemmas and contradictions people face in contemporary society [190].

The conceptual relevance of exploring everyday activities of individuals enables the organisation, integration and sense-making of the multiplicity of social relations and contradictory demands in and across engagements in different contexts [191, 192]. The concept considers how people collaboratively produce and reproduce their life through daily activities, habits, routines and personal arrangements of things and social relations. It directs attention to the social conditions in and with which people act, participate, and live their everyday life and incorporates the question of how people are subjected to socio-material dispositions of power, knowledge and discourse.

The focus in the study of everyday life is in activities, situated in and across a multiplicity of spaces and context [193]. These activities are the sum total of relations, which together build up an articulation of the human experience [194]. Human activity is systematically centred around the lived experiences, agency and efforts of living and being. In studying the conduct of everyday life, I turn towards exploring how psychological phenomena and problems are given content that relates to the holistic exploration of lived experiences. In this way, I show how the concept of the conduct of everyday life opens avenues to overcome the abstract individualism of psychology that encloses subjects in isolated psychological special functions. The concept also contributes to *'a psychological epistemology, grasping the richness, complexity and connectedness of psychological phenomena as well as the interrelations between human subjects and the world'* ([191], p. 3). An individual cannot be studied in isolation, as there is a constant relationship between the individual and the society, and so is *'cocreated through the fabric of the societal world'* [191].

The choice to study the conduct of everyday life in this research is supported by the current changes in society in terms of patterns of social living, migration, globalisation, financial situations, international conflict and increasing individualism [192]. There is a greater social and cultural heterogeneity and complexity in today's times and so a variety of problems are continuously emerging. A current example is the struggles and difficulties in the recent Covid pandemic of 2019–2021. Recent literature on living in a world with Covid [195–198] shows some of the challenges people have encountered in organising and conducting their daily lives and how the period brought changes for society, significantly disrupting everyday life, albeit at different levels in different regions of the world. Such changes invite psychological studies to understand how people confront and experience local changes, in the conduct of their everyday living and being. Furthermore, looking at the conduct of everyday lives enables researchers to explore how people go through different trajectories and shifts, in relation to the social systems [199], while at the same time taking the historical, cultural, local and global conditions of living and being [200]. The conduct of everyday life also offers possibilities for collective work on the resolution of social conflicts [8, 68, 190, 201] and enables researchers to develop models or frameworks catered towards the nature and context of specific research.

There are many approaches to studying the practical applications of the conduct of everyday life. One such example is the Day Reconstruction Method [202]. This method assesses how people experience the various activities and settings of their lives, by systematically reconstructing their activities and experiences of

the preceding day, studying the person-behaviour-situation in a time sequence. Kahneman et al.'s work [202] focused on the activities and circumstances of working mothers over a full day. The participants were asked to construct a diary consisting of a sequence of episodes, revived from memories of the previous day. This was then grouped by activity or by interaction with others. They were then asked to describe each episode by answering questions about the situation and about the feelings that they experienced. This method allows the capturing of the impact of a situation on a person, and its location in the sequence of situations and activities across the day. Diaries were used to record daily experiences. The Day Reconstruction Method, however, poses some challenges. Firstly, it does not consider the impact that social arrangements may have on how people live their daily lives [8]. Secondly, it does not consider changes with time, the development of habits (perhaps through repeated actions) and the effects of other possible incidents. Thirdly, it reduced situations to behaviour, discounting how events and interpersonal relations were affected by the settings and the interplay between personality, situational and behavioural factors [203]. As a result, the understanding of the relation between behaviour, situation and person is limited and to some extent misrepresented [8].

Other methods have also been used to translate the concept of everyday life from theory into practice. Examples include Ingold's work on the maze and the labyrinth as alternative models of education [177], Hojholt's work on the ethnographic methodology on children's problems in school and their situated behaviour to understand conflictual social interplay between persons in social practice [204] and Hodgetts and colleagues' work on the ordinary as well as the extraordinary in the lives and struggles of homeless people [187]. Such studies provide an extensive description of studying the conduct of everyday life by giving primacy to actions. Although these approaches and methodologies are prodigious and provide a broad approach for the study of the conduct of everyday life, I looked for an approach that works with the participants in my research, I explored the literature on personality and identity, one that uses the concept of the day life, thereby avoiding essentialisation and one that is also manageable within the time frame of the study. Such an approach is Dreier's [8] theory of a person. I argue that this theory explores human psychological functioning, as conceptualised in relation to the overall structural nexus of social practice, and it considers the characterisation of individuals in terms of their stable and distinctive qualities, as well as the processes that cause these rationalities.

#### *6.1.1 Dreier's theory of a person*

Dreier's theory of a person [8] provides a comprehensive person-situationactivity approach to understanding personality and/or personhood. I use these terms interchangeable to mean the status of being a person that experiences life and is continuously changing and evolving with time. The theory emphasis is on actions and activities of a person across a day, throughout different settings and at different times. In this way, it examines the relationship between lived activity in those different social contexts, and the person's configuration of those strands of activity, which knot-together and give a sense of the person. As a person moves and engages with different social contexts in their daily life, they also act in specific ways as they experience day to day events and living. Such understanding enables a critique of both psychologised trait-based notions and constructivist notions of personality. Using the

#### *Perspective Chapter: Understanding Young People's Experiences – An Integrative Literature Review DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.113100*

theory of a person, I examine how people express themselves through their activities and actions, emphasising how these diverse processes evolve and become integrated to give each person a distinctive evolving personality or personhood.

Activities are affected by their social arrangements and practices, within different social contexts of which the person is a part. Dreier's theory of a person examines how a person is studied as existing in movement across time and contexts, and in several situations, as part of the social contexts and practices that take place [8]. Persons associate different concerns, purposes and histories with such different activities, relations, practices and contexts. The meaning and course of events and situations are also affected by the context and arrangements in which they occur. In this way, a person goes through life contributing to re-producing their social conditions. They also develop by expanding the degree to which they take part in having these conditions at their commands [199]. Therefore, a person is viewed as a participant involved in personal trajectories in relation to structural arrangements of social practices [199]. He/she is also theorised from the standpoint of the subject in his/her immediate life situation *vis-à-vis* an overall social structure [205].

Dreier's theory of a person focuses on three main areas: (1) order and arrangement; (2) situated participation and movement, (3) and—when coordinated, conducted and accomplished, considering the complexity of everyday life, offers insight into the conduct of everyday life. Each of these areas is interlinked, further elaborated and collectively constitute the theory of a person. **Figure 2** shows my interpretation of the theory of a person in relation to each of these strands.

#### *6.1.2 Applying Drier's theory of a person*

I now elaborate my understanding of each of these strands, relating it to the context of my research of British Yemeni young people's experiences. Having extensively read and re-read Dreier's paper on personality and the conduct of everyday life [8], I extracted some further key elements (shown here in italics) from these three main strands (bolded and italicised). These key elements became the advanced codes for analysis and thus the application of the theory of a person to the narratives of my participants.

#### *<IP_ADDRESS> Order and arrangement*

A person is viewed as being part of a society with a certain order and arrangement of social practices; these are the diverse *social contexts*, or *places*, that make up the spatial dimensions of their everyday life. These are separate from each other, yet also

**Figure 2.** *Dreier's theory of a person.*

linked to other social contexts in particular ways which channel how social practices may be pursued across them.