CROSSROADS IN CULTURAL STUDIES
Fourth International Conference
June 29 - July 2, 2002, Tampere, Finland
Cultural Representations of Age and the Life-Course
Organiser: Sinikka Aapola
Cultural Representations of Age and the
Life-Course: Youth Transitions as Cultural Representations
Gordon, Tuula (Helsinki University
Collegiate, Finland) and Lahelma, Elina (University of Helsinki, Finland) 'GIRLS
JUST WANNA HAVE FUN?': REFLECTIONS ON BECOMING A WOMAN
We explore how Finnish young women construct their transitions to adulthood, and
how they imagine their futures as women. We focus on tensions in this process:
many young women want to accelerate their shifts towards independent adult
status. At the same time some of them attempt to postpone the point of being
locked into the lives of adult women. They look forward to acquiring the legal
status of an adult citizen and to moving to homes of their own. But they want to
stay young which means time for relationships, studying, working and travelling,
and definitely not children at an early age. Being an adult woman does not seem
to be a very tempting position for some young women; being a girl is considered
by them to open more possibilities. We also discuss how those young women who
are more keen to embrace female adulthood envisage their futures, and what
contradictions they experience. We explore these tensions drawing from our
research project 'Tracing Transitions - Follow-Up Study of Post-16 Students'. In
the project we have interviewed 40 young women and 23 young men aged 17-19, in
groups of 2-3 or alone. The project is grounded on an ethnographic study in
which we followed the same young people when they started secondary school at
the age of 13-14. In this paper we focus on the interviews of the young women
and compare and contrast this data with previous data we have on the same women
(field notes, earlier interviews, questionnaires etc.).
Tolonen, Tarja (University of Helsinki,
Finland) DESCRIPTIONS OF ORDINARY LIFE: SOCIAL DIFFERENCES IN YOUNG PEOPLE'S
NARRATIVES OF THEIR FUTURE
The focus of this presentation is to deconstruct social structures, such as
social class, habitus, locality, nationality and gender, through young people's
life-stories. I examine how young people position themselves locally, nationally
and globally, and how they discuss leaving or staying in their home-town. The
data was collected in different cities/towns in Finland, altogether 60
interviews of 20 year- olds. Their future plans, success-stories, and
significant social and spatial transitions were discussed. I analyse their
stories, the metaphors they use and the ways they describe their transitions and
places that have been important for them. The stories are contextualized
materially and socially by showing how social structures may transform
life-courses. The local economic situation, educational choices, the social and
economic support by parents and friendship-networks all create a meaningful
whole in an individual's life-course.
Vesselkova, Natalia (The Urals State
University, Russia) SOCIAL MATRIX OF AGES IN TRANSFORMATIONAL SOCIETY
Transformational society of modern Russia displays at least two contradictory
shifts within the social matrix of ages. (1) Now there are far many too young
persons (under 30) who occupy too high positions (bankers, politicians, and so
on). Often youth aspires only to cream adulthood off rather then to pass through
growing up step by step. (2) Those young people who stay at the periphery starts
to degrade impetuously. Even insignificant lag leads to "acquired
exclusion". Search and constructing of niche is characteristic for every
age, at the same time traditional matrix exists. These are different (and
intersecting each other) layers of social reality. Probably it is very positive
(in terms of tolerance and humanism) that boundaries of social age are so
flexible and moveable, and there is no longer strong restrictions for the
youngest people. However I find the state then outside rhythm begins determine
personal development - very alarming.
Prymikova, Elena (The Urals State
Professional-Pedagogical University, Russia) DEVELOPING SOCIAL COMPETENCE OF
SECONDARY SCHOOL STUDENTS
In modern society subject of social action needs to be capable of making
adequate decisions, which are increasingly go outside the sphere of common sense
stereotypes. Secondary school students with their high level of claims find
themselves in difficult situation of making choice. Effectiveness of choice is
determined by social competence. Adults often ignore particular social
competence of young people. Students in their turn often not sure of themselves
and lack basic values as a result of social anomie. Moreover young people feel
strong pressing by parents and teachers connected with the problem of
professional education. What strategies of becoming adults are preferred by
young people, what components of social competence are estimated as most
important and what is the role of education (pressing or developing)? Ongoing
research is devoted to these issues.
Cultural Representations of Age and
the Life-Course: Diverse Spheres, Diverse Meanings of Age
Aapola, Sinikka (University of Helsinki,
Finland) 'IT'S NOT ABOUT THE AGE YOU ARE' - DISCOURSES OF AGE AND THE
LIFE-COURSE IN POPULAR MAGAZINES
In this presentation, I shall present some preliminary findings from my
postdoctoral research project, called "Young People Transgressing Cultural
Age Orders". As a part of this project, I collect articles from Finnish
popular magazines and analyze them in a critical discourse analytical frame. I
shall look at the way cultural representations of age and the life-course are
produced in the magazines. Among my research questions are: What discourses are
used? How are they gendered? What kind of positions are constructed within them?
The main focus is on articles where cultural age orders are discussed. I am
particularly interested in features of young people who have transgressed
normative cultural age orders. These may include, for example, stories about
teenage mothers, young offenders and/or young 'geniuses' in educational
institutions or in the business world.
Iltanen, Sonja (University of Art and
Design, Finland) DESIGNING FOR DIVERSITY - FASHION DESIGN AND AGING BABY-BOOMERS
In my doctoral thesis I try to find out how Finnish fashion designers serve
women aged 50-60 and how ageing is dealt with in the context of clothing. The
research is carried out between 1999-2003. The data consist of a survey for
fashion designers, interviews of eight designers who design for baby-boomers,
and group interviews of twelve women born 1942-1952, with diverse backrounds.
The interviews focus on clothes that are designed and used at the moment. My
preliminary analysis is that fashion designers' conceptions of aging
baby-boomers are contradictory. They are seen as a positively challenging and
fairly age-specific target group, but age is said to be unimportant when
designing for them. The "adult woman" is youthful and ageless, but
showing her bodily aging through clothing is considered negative.
Jolanki, Outi (University of Tampere,
Finland) TESTIMONIES AND CONFESSIONS - HEALTH TALK IN THE BIOGRAPHICAL
INTERVIEWS OF NONAGENARIANS
The study looked at how health was talked about in the biographical interviews
with people aged ninety or over. Interviewees were approached due to their
exceptional status: high age and living alone relatively independently. Thus,
age and health were made visible in advance, and the aura of survivorship was
assigned to the respondents. However, traditional discourse on old age as
illness was also visible in participants' talk. The claim is made that
interviews invited moral talk about health, meaning that when discussing health,
interviewees gave testimonies and made confessions, which were constructed using
discourses emphasizing activity and duty to take care of one´s health. However,
the discourse of fate was used to legitimize failure to fulfill the ideals of
ability and activity. It is discussed how research itself may enhance and
reproduce certain discourses, and whether activity and 'healthism' talk
emphasizing individual effort and responsibility are gaining ground in research
into ageing.
Miettinen, Sonja (University of
Helsinki, Finland) A PARENT'S DEATH IN ADULT AGE AS A LIFE-COURSE TRANSITION
The death of an elderly parent may be seen as a normative, on-time occurrence
that generates several transformations in the life and identity of the surviving
child. In this presentation I am interested in how this transition is described
and defined by individuals in life-narratives - a process where the cultural and
subjective meet. First, I make an overview of narratives of parental loss
written by "ordinary" Finnish people from historical perspective. Thus
we see how the "epic" narration of the eldest generation, with wide
societal description and limited expression of emotions, contrasts sharply with
the "psychocultural" stories of the youngest generation, where the
focus is shifted the inner conflicts and analysed with concepts originating in
psychology. I then shift the focus to the selected stories of the youngest
generation, in order to examine more closely the contemporary ways of
constructing this phase of life in autobiographical narratives.
Chan, Shun-hing, (Lingnan
University, Hong Kong) and Lai-ching, Leung (City University of Hong
Kong, Hong Kong) THE
REPRESENTATION AND RECEPTION OF IMAGES OF OLDER WOMEN IN THE MASS MEDIA IN HONG
KONG
This paper is a study of the representations of older women in the mass media,
in particular TV advertisements in Hong Kong, and how older women being
represented receive such advertisements. Generally speaking, images of older
women are used in various kinds of TV ads, including insurance, health products,
milk products, supermarkets, real estates, government service propaganda and so
on. Stereotypes relating to aging, such as dependent, slow, stupid, unhealthy,
unattractive and so on are common. In addition to that, gender stereotypes such
as irrational, being protected, family oriented and so on are affixed to these
women images. Furthermore, most women in the TV ads are silent, partly because
they are not the main targets of the products advertised and partly because they
are considered as not appropriate to speak for their own needs. However this
paper will argue that aging women are not passive recipients of such images but
agents who can negotiate with the images and products in the capacity of
audiences and consumers. The basis of their negotiation is their gendered life
experiences and self identity constructed socially and culturally. This would
lead to both resistance against and identification with such images and
products.
|