No.22: Research Article #5

The article I searched out and read for today’s blog is called Asking, giving, receiving: Friendship as survival strategy among Accra’s street children by Phillip Mizen and Yaw Ofosu-Kusi. I have changed my argument from the broader one, friendship, to a more specific one, which is true friends are willing to save or help us, both mentally and physically, whenever we need. There is only one article out of the five I printed out that is relevant to this topic. So today, after English class, I went to the Academic Search Complete again and search for some new articles. And I found this one.

This article is about a three-year project on Accra street children. The researchers went to live with and talked to street children and found out their friendship became their sources of help, security, and survival. “Among the street children of Accra there is little sign of well-defined economic units, bureaucratic and hierarchal corporations whose singe rationale is the pursuit of money, especially through theft and the fencing of stolen goods. The friendships we have encountered involve no comparable organized economic (or criminal) function, nor do the terms within which these friendships are created and reproduced begin and end with the singular pursuit of money.” (Page 444, Asking, giving, receiving: Friendship as survival strategy among Accra’s street children)

There are some dialogue between the researcher and some of the street children. Here is my favorite one:

“YOK: Do they help you in any way?

Yebach Richard: Yes, we all buy food and eat together sometimes.

YOK: Does it mean that if you have no money, they will buy food for you to eat?

Yeboah Richard: Yes, because that is what we do.

YOK: What about the next day if you still don’t have money?

Yeboah Richard: Yes, they will. That is what we do to help each other.”

(Page 446, Asking, giving, receiving: Friendship as survival strategy among Accra’s street children)

Bibliography:

Mizen, Phillip, and Yaw Ofosu-Kusi. "Asking, giving, receiving: Friendship as survival strategy among Accra’s street children." Childhood 17.4 (2010): 441-454. Academic Search Complete. EBSCO. Web. 26 Jan. 2011.