Elusive Adulthoods: The Anthropology of New Maturities
Deborah Durham · Jacqueline Solway
Oct 2017 · Indiana University Press
Ebook
210
Pages
family_home
Eligible
info
reportRatings and reviews aren’t verified Learn More
About this ebook
Essays on the changing meanings of adulthood in places around the world: “An important collection that furthers anthropological work on life stages.” —Susan Reynolds Whyte, author of Generations in Africa: Connections and Conflicts
Elusive Adulthoods examines why, in recent years, complaints about an inability to achieve adulthood have been heard in societies around the world.
By exploring the changing meaning of adulthood in Botswana, China, Sudan, Papua New Guinea, Russia, Sri Lanka, Uganda, and the United States, contributors to this volume pose the problem of “What is adulthood?” and examine how the field of anthropology has come to overlook this meaningful stage in its studies.
Through these case studies we discover different means of recognizing the achievement of adulthood, such as through negotiated relationships with others, including grown children, and as a form of upward class mobility. We also encounter the difficulties that come from a sense of having missed full adulthood, instead jumping directly into old age in the course of rapid social change, or a reluctance to embrace the stability of adulthood and necessary subordination to job and family. In all cases, the contributors demonstrate how changing political and economic factors form the background for generational experience and understanding of adulthood, which is a major focus of concern for people around the globe as they negotiate changing ways of living.
Elusive Adulthoods examines why, in recent years, complaints about an inability to achieve adulthood have been heard in societies around the world.
By exploring the changing meaning of adulthood in Botswana, China, Sudan, Papua New Guinea, Russia, Sri Lanka, Uganda, and the United States, contributors to this volume pose the problem of “What is adulthood?” and examine how the field of anthropology has come to overlook this meaningful stage in its studies.
Through these case studies we discover different means of recognizing the achievement of adulthood, such as through negotiated relationships with others, including grown children, and as a form of upward class mobility. We also encounter the difficulties that come from a sense of having missed full adulthood, instead jumping directly into old age in the course of rapid social change, or a reluctance to embrace the stability of adulthood and necessary subordination to job and family. In all cases, the contributors demonstrate how changing political and economic factors form the background for generational experience and understanding of adulthood, which is a major focus of concern for people around the globe as they negotiate changing ways of living.
About the author
Deborah Durham is Professor of Anthropology at Sweet Briar College. She is coeditor, with Jennifer Cole, of Generations and Globalization: Youth, Age, and Family in the New World Economy and Figuring the Future: Globalization and the Temporalities of Children and Youth.
Jacqueline Solway is Professor Emeritus of the International Development Studies and Anthropology Departments of Trent University of Canada. She is editor of The Politics of Egalitarianism: Anthropological Theory and Practice.
Rate this ebook
Tell us what you think.
Reading information
Smartphones and tablets
Install the Google Play Books app for Android and iPad/iPhone. It syncs automatically with your account and allows you to read online or offline wherever you are.
Laptops and computers
You can listen to audiobooks purchased on Google Play using your computer's web browser.
eReaders and other devices
To read on e-ink devices like Kobo eReaders, you'll need to download a file and transfer it to your device. Follow the detailed Help Center instructions to transfer the files to supported eReaders.
