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COMING OF AGE IN TIMES OF UNCERTAINTY
Harry Blatterer
First published in 2007 by
Berghahn Books www.berghahnbooks.com
©2007, 2009 Harry Blatterer
First paperback edition published in 2009
First ebook edition published in 2012
All rights reserved.
Except for the quotation of short passages
for the purposes of criticism and review, no part of this book
may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or
mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information
storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented,
without written permission of the publisher.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Blatterer, Harry.
Coming of age in times of uncertainty / Harry Blatterer.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 1–84545–285–2 (hardback : alk. paper) -- 978-1-84545-628-3 (paperback : alk. paper) -- 978-0-85745-531-4 (ebook) 1. Adulthood. 2. Social role. 3. Life cycle, Human. I. Title.
HQ799.95.B56 2007
305.2409172'2—DC22 2006036156
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN: 978-1-84545-285-8 hardback, 978-1-84545-628-3 paperback, 978-0-85745-531-4 ebook
For Maria and Mira
CONTENTS
1 REPRESENTATIONS OF ADULTHOOD
2 ADULTHOOD, INDIVIDUALIZATION, AND THE LIFE COURSE
3 ADULTHOOD AND SOCIAL RECOGNITION
4 FROM ADULTHOOD AS A GOAL TO YOUTH AS A VALUE
PREFACE
Peter Beilharz
The new individualism presents itself to us as a serious problem, and challenge. The main reason for this is obvious. There does seem to be a weakening of ties, a corrosion of loyalty, an acceleration of time, an increasing emphasis on looking out for number one. Sometimes this care still extends to looking after a family, but now the idea of the family is also increasingly uncertain, open to dissolution and renewal. If I can make my family anew, at short notice, then there is really only me, the individual, as a core unit or reality.
Leading intellectual trends such as communitarianism and critical theory have staked a claim to blowing the whistle on these trends. They have long identified surplus individualism, or narcissism, as a major problem in the West. Perhaps this was best brought out into the sixties, by the me-generation and its chronic self-absorption, self-obsession. This line of criticism was confirmed by writers like Lasch and Sennett in the US, and later by Bauman in Europe. Here the markers are apparent. There seems to be a loss of telos, or project, for many ordinary citizens in everyday life. The moment becomes all consuming, and immediate gratification becomes overwhelming. Huxley warned us about this is Brave New World in 1932 already. Changed conceptions of time would lead to reduced or diminished social commitments. Prolonged adolescence would bring with it postponed adulthood. Nobody seems to want to grow up any more, especially not the young.
Yet we behave like children, us adults too. Perhaps it is rather the case that the me-generation never stopped, just kept expanding. From a properly sociological perspective, it now seems that there was a Golden Age life course—a pattern of habits and expectations unique to the period of the postwar boom. Here there was a standard life-course, standardized expectations for men, women, and children, one size fits all, and these senses expanded conceptually until we had normalized them. Certainly one historically unique aspect of the postwar period was the expansion of youth and youth
