ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the method and research design, and the process of data construction and interpretation in the fieldwork. It talks about two aspects of the data which fit the criterion of 'democratic research. The chapter discusses the investigation into the ways teenage girls from different socioeconomic backgrounds understood gender, race and class relations, and how they negotiated a feminine identity and came to terms with the problems of femininity in contemporary British culture. The research was undertaken in the framework of recent British sociology of youth and gender – and was intended to be an exploration of the material and ideological processes by which young people take up a social and cultural identity and arrive at a particular position in the socioeconomic class structure. It focuses on the processes by which girls and women are compelled to negotiate the options of marriage, motherhood and domestic work, and how they deal with violence and sexual oppression.
