We first made contact with Stan in 1997 when he was aged 16 and attending one of the schools in which the Youth Values study was conducted, a high-achieving state school located in an affluent, leafy suburb in the commuter belt. Stan completed a questionnaire and took part in a focus group discussion but was not selected to be interviewed. We made contact with him again in 1999, when he was invited and agreed to participate in the second stage of the study. He was interviewed three times, at ages 18 (1999), 19 (2000) and 20 (2001). In addition, he completed a memory book between the first and second interviews. This case history draws primarily on data from these three interviews and his memory book. Each of the interviews was conducted by Sue Sharpe and all took place in the sitting room of his family's home.

The study captured a period of intense personal change and identity work for Stan. When we first met him he was in the school sixth form, studying for A levels, expecting that, like most of his peers, he would go on to university and a profession. By the end of the study he was working as an apprentice joiner in a local firm. This transformation in his working plans occurred alongside a transformation in his personal life, wherein he found God and romantic love on the same weekend – finding his way from being ‘a spotty youth in a fast car’ to a ‘family man’ and a leader in his local church. Although I did not expect Stan to be an articulate commentator on his own life, his successive interviews are marked by intense personal reflection and introspection, and he valued the opportunity to keep a diary for the research.

The data that form the basis of this case history are slighter than others in this book, yet nevertheless capture an intense and revealing period in a young man's life. In this chapter I trace a series of experiments in masculinity, exploring in turn the fields of existence represented by work, consumption and family life. In each I identify how particular techniques of the self contribute over time to the narrative threads of a project of self. These threads are longitudinal, and contribute to a layered analysis in which it is possible to discern contradictions and instabilities, as well as repetitions and recurrent motifs.