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.