Elusive adulthoods : the anthropology of new maturities / edited by Deborah Durham and Jacqueline Solway.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Durham, Deborah Lynn, 1958- editor.

Solway, Jacqueline S., editor.

American Anthropological Association. Annual Meeting 2013 : Chicago, Ill.), creator.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Young adults--Economic conditions--21st century--Congresses.

Young adults.

Young adults--Social conditions--21st century--Congresses.

Adulthood--Congresses.

Adulthood.

Maturation (Psychology).

Young adults--Economic conditions.

Young adults--Social conditions.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (vii, 205 pages)

Place of Publication:

Bloomington, Indiana : Indiana University Press, [2017]

Summary:

Over the past decade, complaints about an inability to achieve adulthood have rung out around the world. Young people across the globe, burdened with debt and unsatisfactory job prospects, are struggling to establish households, marry, and, perhaps most significantly, "feel" grown up. For them, achievement of adulthood has become increasingly elusive. Elusive Adulthoods poses the question "What is adulthood?" and examines how the field of anthropology has come to overlook this meaningful life transition. Through diverse case studies, contributors explore a variety of means by which adulthood can be recognized, such as negotiated relationships with others and as a form of upward class mobility. Contributors also grapple with the difficulties that come from a sense of having missed full adulthood - perhaps due to rapid social change or reluctance to embrace the necessary subordination to job and family. In each case, changing political and economic factors form the background for generational experiences and understandings of what it means to reach adulthood as globalization dictates changes to traditional rites of passage. -- from back cover.

Contents:

Elusive adulthoods : introduction / Deborah Durham

The predicament of adulthood in Botswana / Jacqueline Solway

Educated youth and the search for adulthood in post-war Sri Lanka / Dhana Hughes

Learning to wait : schooling and the instability of adulthood for young men in Uganda / Claire Elisabeth Dungey and Lotte Meinert

Adulthood and youth in a rapidly urbanizing Chinese county / Andrew B. Kipnis

Inventing the rules : redefining moral agency among the first post-independence generation in Papua New Guinea / Karen Sykes

"Just sitting," but not sitting still : delayed adulthood and changing gender dynamics in northern Sudan / Janice Boddy

Between "too young" and "already old" : the fleeting adulthood of Russia's split generation / Anna Kruglova.

Notes:

"This book started with a double session at the annual meeting of the American Anthropological Association in November 2013 in Chicago, Illinois. Although not all participants in that session could join in the edited publication, their papers at that session and our discussions of all our papers over meals and emails enriched our understanding of how anthropologists can approach the study of adulthood."--Page vii.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

0-253-03019-6