The contextual definition of harm: 11- to 15-year-olds’ perspectives on social incidents and bullying

Abstract

Bullying remains a problem in schools, affecting the health of many young people. In this study, the focus is on exploring how 11- to 15-year-olds talk about their social worlds and social incidents such as bullying. Through semi-structured interviews, analyzed with constructivist grounded theory, the conceptualization of the participants’ perspectives reveals that three types of incidents take place in their social worlds: Diffuse incidents, Quarrel incidents and Bullying. Incidents are framed differently, which reveals how the social context plays an integral part in how different incidents and interactions were defined and considered as harmful bullying or not. Four contextual aspects are taken into consideration: (1) Iteration, (2) Type of target, (3) Social and emotional harm for the target, (4) Social relationship to target. Even if not all type of incidents are framed as harmful bullying, they interact by being grounded in normative identity constructions that use both social categories such as gender and sexuality and locally produced social categories.