ABSTRACT
Since then many researchers, especially those working within ethnomethodology, have aimed to address this complaint extending it to the notions of ‘development’ within psychology and ‘enculturation’ within anthropology They have done this not just in the interests of the development of more fully self-conscious and equitable communities; the fact is that this complaint leads us directly to two serious paradoxes within the social sciences. The first of these applies to the social-interpretive work that young people need to do in order to ‘develop’, or become ‘socialized’ or ‘acculturated’. To do this (or have it done to and with them), children need to have interpretive competence with respect to the understandings of adults, specifically those understandings that relate to children’s competences. To take part competently in adult-orchestrated events designed to acculturate them into particular cognitions, attitudes, social displays and ‘identities’, children need to have an actionable idea of those (apparently to be learned) cognitions, attitudes, social displays and ‘identities’ in the first place.
