Act Your Age Intro and Ch.1
Mehtab Mann
EDIS 5011
27 September 2012
Act Your Age! A cultural construction of adolescence
Lesko, N. (2012). Act your age!: A cultural construction of adolescence. (2nd ed.) . New York, NY: Routledge.
Introduction and Chapter 1 Summary
Main Idea:
The introduction discusses four “confident characterizations” that Lesko asserts lead to a demeaning view of adolescents. These are that adolescents “come of age” into adulthood, are controlled by raging hormones, are peer-oriented, and that adolescence is defined by age. Lesko will “take a close look at these ‘troubling teenagers’ as stock characters in popular narratives, scientific discourses and educational programs via endlessly repeated stories-clinical and anecdotal- of instability, emotionality, present-centeredness, and irresponsibility” (1).
The overall argument of the book is that in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, adolescence as a concept became a convenient social space for modern society to worry about the possibilities of social change. In essence, the concept of adolescence is culturally constructed by society. In opposition to biological and sociohistorical views, Lesko presents the postmodern view of adolescence that “examines the reasoning about adolescence and situates that reasoning within broader social and political crises and scholarly knowledge” (7). According to Lesko, the way we think about adolescence is racist and sexist. “We see and think adolescence as always a technology of whiteness, of masculinity, and of domination” (9).
Finally, she defines important terms such as discourse, genealogy, government, postmodernism, postculturalism, subjectivity and technology.
In Chapter 1, Lesko discusses the 1893 World’s Fair and the distinct hierarchy that was laid out there placing “white European men and their societies, norms, and values at the pinnacle of civilization and morality” (17). At the same time, in public discourse, adolescence “became an embodiment of and worry about ‘progress’” (18). The preoccupation with racial, gender, and national progress were the central preoccupations through which “adolescence became an identifiable, important, but ever worrisome modern construct” (18). Lesko goes on to describe the cultural climate in America at this time, discussing racial, social, and gender dimensions. At this time, science took over cultural leadership as “the unbiased, nonpolitical arena of knowledge” (26) through which society could “know” other peoples. Recapitulation theory (the idea that child development parallels the development of civilization, which arrests at different points) established a parallelism across children, savages and animals. At this time, “adolescence was signaled out as a crucial point at which an individual (and a race) leaped to a developed, superior, Western selfhood or remained arrested in a savage state” (29). Adolescence became a marker of civility, so long as it’s expression was in line with sociocultural norms (ie white, male, heterosexual, self-restraining).
Questions:
1. What changed with the establishment of modern civilization that gave rise to the modern concept of the adolescent? How is the definition of adolescence changing as civilization continues to change?
2. How relevant is a historical look back on the origins of modern adolescence? What is the value of Lesko’s postmodernist approach to the construction of adolescence?
Media example:
http://www.mysanantonio.com/default/article/Critics-blast-Tennessee-s-no-holding-hands-bill-3658826.php
I chose this article because it discusses sex education in public schools in Tennessee and includes view points from several concerned parties. It made me think about the impact that constructions of adolescence have on policy and parenting. It also made me think about how universally accepted some constructions of adolescents are (ie adolescents can't make good decisions when it comes to sex so we have to either decide to keep them ignorant or teach them how to make their bad decision in a less hamrful way).
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I think this is a really interesting question, and one in which we undoubtably will learn more about as we read. Interestingly enough, I would argue that modernity is only entrenching it’s heels in the concept of raced, gendered, and socialized adolescence. In fact, social scientists are becoming even more concerned with definitions – so much so that the “college-going age” has now become a new group called the “emerging adults”, shortening the period of adolescence in it’s length.
What modernity has been responsible is this idea of categorizing and ordering groups. The concept of eugenics, or the idea that there is a science of race that somehow delineates ordinal differences between those of different races, is a prime example. Scientific knowledge was abused to place some people above others. What I find interesting in the chapter we read is this idea that adolescence is an emergent period where we see the transcendence between one group to another. Yet this is impossible between races, or genders, and static nationhoods. I find it absurd that a developmental cycle in some way is an analogy for these compartments when in fact all people of different races, genders, and nations experience adolescence.
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I also think about the trend towards the divergence between age of emotional maturation and age of physical maturation that we looked at in class.
We hear about teenage kings and martyrs and soldiers in the past who definitely don’t fit into our stereotypes about adolescence (or at least, what survived in history about their lives doesn’t).
Maybe the categorization of people into so many developmental stages is not only in response to modern theory but also to the modern phenomenon of our delayed emotional maturation.
Do adolescents mature earlier in cultures that don’t fixate on adolescence as ours does?
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You asked about whether or not adolescents mature earlier in cultures that don’t fixate on adolescence as much as ours. I think the fact that there is a fixation on adolescents probably doesn’t matter as much as the way in which it’s fixated upon. I mean, if you had a culture that, like us, fixates on adolescence, but does so in a different way (for example, gave them more responsibilities and pushed them more to mature) then adolescents would probably mature earlier.
I think adolescents matured faster in the past. I can think of a couple different possible reasons for this – firstly, the average life expectancy (in 2012, in the US) is significantly longer. There probably isn’t as much pressure on adolescents to hurry up and mature, since they have more time. Secondly, adolescents in the past were often treated as if they were already adults, and they tended to have more responsibilities. This would also probably push them into maturing faster.
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I agree with Morgan’s comment in that it’s the mode of fixation rather than fixation at all. The mode from the 19th and 20th century standpoint has been to help codify not only adolescents, but other groups as well (races, genders, etc). In the same way that adolescents have been racialized and gendered, so too have African-Americans with lighter skin been “adolescenced” and women who show “manly” traits such as confidence and leadership been “adolescened”.
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I do believe that the state of civilization (or rather, culture, society, etc) influences both adolescence and the perceptions of adolescence. Adolescents compose a subgroup within their larger society, so any differences between the norms and values of the adolescent subgroup versus those of the entire group will naturally lead to some contention.
I’m not really sure how relevant a historical look at the origins of modern adolescence will be. I can see it being somewhat pertinent, but I feel like there should be a lot of other support for her argument. Of course, I’ve not gotten very far into the book yet so I’ll have to reserve judgment.
I was interested in the fact that, in the intro, Lesko says that the terms “coming of age” and “at the threshold” are terms that “appear to give adolescence importance but really confer greater authority on the author of the homily. Scientists and educators who proclaim the problems of the not-yet-of-age are positionally superior.” (2) She seems to talk for awhile about how relevant perceptions of dominance are to perceptions of adolescence… I got the impression that she’s saying that some of the views adults have about adolescents stem from the fact that they want to feel superior. I don’t agree with that. Sure, there are always going to be people who will say anything to feel like they’re better, but that seems like a really cynical view on human nature, and it disregards all of the given reasons for why people have these beliefs. Am I drawing the wrong conclusion here, misreading/remember what I’ve read? I rather hope so. Or does she end up providing greater support for these sorts of claims, or clarifying her position? This didn’t exactly seem like one of her main points, but it interested me.
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I thought about how society doesn’t allow adolescents or children to do several things that adults are allowed to do (vote, drive) because there is an assumed (and usually accurate) inability to successfully do those activities.
Most of these exceptions seem appropriate to me. Maybe issues of dominance come into play in adolescence because we expect children not to act like adults but we EXPECT ADOLESCENTS TO ACT LIKE ADULTS and view them as inferior when they don’t.
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I agree with your comment about how adolescents tend to be treated differently, but these differences usually make sense. I also agree about how some of these ideas of dominance may come about because of the fact that we expect adolescents to act like adults, and then treat them as inferior when they don’t match these expectations.
I remember Dr. Futch mentioning in lecture the discrepancy between the advanced state of the bodies of adolescents and their minds/behaviors. I think that this may be a contributing factor to the expectations that adults often have of adolescents. Adolescents look similar to adults, so it can be easy to forget/not realize that other parts of them are in a different stage of development. Furthermore, older adolescents are also capable of advanced analytical thought, which may cause people to believe that they should therefore act like adults in other ways. If their bodies are grown and they’re capable of formal operational thought, then why can’t they act like adults as well? Of course, this is all basically wild speculation.
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I’m coming from more of a constructivis/interpretivist standpoint that there is always some form of power at work, and typically the power structure can be found by those who “write the rules”. Because adolescents themselves did not come up with this terminology, we can rightly say that the power in this situation is probably situated/stems from another party. I agree with Lesko that codifying a group in essence demonstrates power. Whether it is absolute, whereby adults are the determinant on what “emergent” means is up for grabs, but because they invented the categorization, it’s logical to believe it stemmed from a standpoint of power.
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