Positioning Others and Locating the Moral Self

Abstract

In the previous chapter, I presented a complex view of how the young people in this study construct morality. Amongst these constructions are a number of hegemonic and emancipated social representations. Young people appear to have clear and conventional moral borderlines especially around issues of violence, substance use, and crime. This is the case, despite the fact that they often do not act in keeping with what they profess to be their moral code. In fact, their actions reflect a more nuanced code in which contextual rules apply (in the case of violence) and hierarchies exist (in the case of substance use and crime). Their moral codes around sex and money are mixed—the former informed by gender, the latter by the demands of poverty, while both place and self feature as important moral markers. This chapter builds on and further expands these representations by exploring the ways in which township youth position themselves and others within their existing moral codes. I begin by showing how these young people’s morality is embodied in people, rather than only existing in particular actions, locations or abstract principles. Consequently, it is the process of embodiment that allows township youth to categorize their peers, and position themselves within the moral domain.