Notes for Adolescent Culture
School of Family and Consumer Sciences 400.404/504    Instructor: D. Witt

The term Culture is anthroplogical one first defined by Sir Edward Tylor - “Culture, or civilization, taken in its broad, ethnographic sense, is that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society.”

There is the larger American Culture that contains all the elements of our national mind - flag, historic documents, defining historical moments, "our way of life", capitalism, the two party system. Also hot dogs, baseball, characteristically American art, music, and science.

There are also subcultures that exist underneath the umbrella of the larger culture. Subcultures can be based on specific religions, ethnicities, races, age groups, tastes in music, art, or fashion.
Two important dimensions of subculture in adolescents’ lives are Socioeconomic Status of their family and Ethnic origins.

According to (Brewer & Campbell, 1976), people have a tendency to:

These beliefs are part of the concept of Ethnocentrism - favoring one's own group over all others. Education is not immune to falling into the ethnocentrism trap - traditionally, when we study adolescent development, we study it from a Eurocentric approach (unique to the values of US), but what of adolescent development among diverse adolescents.
How do we create a society of free expression with so many diverse subcultures and an institutional system of education that is dominated by Anglo values?

One way is to rely on one of four Models of Changing the Cultural Focus of the Individual
  1. Assimilation.  Occurs when individuals relinquish their cultural identity and move into the larger society.  “The melting pot.”
  2. Acculturation.  Cultural change that results from continuous, firsthand contact between two distinctive cultural groups.
  3. Alternation model.  This model assumes that it is possible for an individual to know and understand two different cultures.  It also assumes that individuals can alter their behavior to fit a particular social context.
  4. Multicultural model.  This model promotes a pluralistic approach to understanding two or more cultures.  It argues that people can maintain their distinctive identities while working with others from different cultures to meet common national or economic needs.
Additionally, we can counter these issues is to consciously study things like dating rituals across cultures, make cross-cultural comparisons, do comparitive research on different cultures.
Anthropology was the first, and probably still the premiere discipline for doing this kind of scholarly work. Margret Mead study of adolescents from Somoa = Coming of Age in Samoa". 
Among her findings was some evidence that Storm and Stress of adolescence is not a cultural universal as previously thought.

Achievement
In the U.S. adolescents are socialized to be achievement oriented and somewhat independent to a greater degree when compared to other culture's youngsters. Studies have shown that American parents socialize children to be independent while other cultures focus on obedience and responsibility (Kenya) and group solidarity (Asian, Hispanic). U.S. adolescents tend to be more competitive, less cooperative, and to discount the gains of adolescents from other culturals.

Although Anglo-Americans are achievement oriented, they do not exceed certain cultures (Japanese, Chinese, Asian) depending on what we are taking as our measure of achievement. 86% of Asian-American & 64% of Caucasian American pursue post-High School education.  Achievement to the exclusion of other developmental tasks may be detrimental to overall development.  According to David Elkind, American children are too achievement oriented and it has affected mental health among adolescents. 

Adolescent Sexuality
Some cultures consider the expression of sexuality to be healthy and appropriate while others forbid it.

Among the folk on Ines Beag (Small Island in Ireland).  Inhabitants are the most sexually deprived in the world.  They have No knowledge of French kissing or masturbation. Sex education doesn’t exist. At once they believe that 1) after marriage, nature will take its course, and 2) men think that intercourse is bad for their health. They detest nudity- only babies are allowed to bathe nude and adults wash only the parts of their body that extend beyond their clothing. Premarital sex is out of the question. After marriage, sexual partners keep clothing on during intercourse.

In contrast, Mangaian culture in the South Pacific allow boys to learn about masturbation around age 6 and 7, and at age 13, boys undergo a male ritual in which they receive an incision on their penis while receiving instruction on how to sexually please a woman.  After the ritual incision heals, the young man is invited to engage in sexual relations with an experienced woman who teaches him how to hold back his desire until the female partner can be satisfied. By the end of adolescence, our developing Mangaian male has sexual relations every night with a woman.

Obviously we are being unfair to the folk described in the two cultures in these sweeping, general statements. To illustrate this, how might we similarly characterize American adolescent sexuality?

Rites of Passage
Ceremonies or rituals that mark an individual’s transition from one status to another, especially from childhood into adulthood.

The difference between culture and "pop" culture

Culture is a complex of knowledge, belief, art, morals, laws, customs, and human capabilities and habits of thought, that is acquired by individuals as members of society. Culture is a system of norms (behavior codes) that provides each individual with a guide for behavior, standards for proper conduct. We practice using it everyday. Subcultures, such as teen culture, youth culture, the MTV generation, or Gen-X, are part of the larger culture and use many of its symbols. Popular Culture also generates its own symbols. Of course, being adolescent, African-American, blue collar, protestant, and a northerner has a great deal of meaning in terms of a person's daily experience in life. Such a person's opinions, attitudes, and even behaviors will probably be much different from an adolescent, Hispanic, middle class, Catholic living in New Mexico. And that person will have a different set of assumptions from an Asian-American rich kid from New York. Add to this complex of traits and experiences things like historical era, musical tastes, rural-urban differences, and so on, and the effects of subculture membership takes on a much broader meaning. 

The concept of Culture is a very big deal in anthropological circles. In fact, it is the raison d'etre of all anthropologists. As it turns out, it is a pretty useful idea for the rest of us. When a developmental psychologist talks about the importance of environment in the development of an individual - the d.p. is referring, in large part, to culture. Same goes for discussions of the acquisition of language in a two year old baby. Language, oddly enough, is culture (it is the verbal representation of culture in symbolic terms).

Culture is also information on how to behave in any situation. Our culture is plain and efficient in relating to us about our behavior. When someone tells you something really shocking, you respond by:

One of the main functions of culture is that it develops so that we may interact with each other using its communication system - language.
AS part of culture, a language is invented so that people can be taught to survive in the physical world. Words are symbols, perfectly devoid of meaning until WE artificially attach meaning to the series of grunts, whistles, and sounds that make up a word. Here's one:

he-mo-stat
he - make a smile with teeth apart and force air out of the mouth without vibrating the vocal chords, then rais the back of the tongue towards the roof of the mouth
mo - purse the lips together, buzz the vocal chords and kiss the lips open to form an "o"
stat - whistle a "ssss" as you place the tip of the tongue to the inside top of the front teeth, then quickly drop the jaw open releasing the tongue for a second, then quickly put it back on the top teeth. hhhhhhhhee-moooooo-ssssstat

Pretty ridiculous, no? And that's just the tongue, teeth, lips, and vocal chords.
We can inflect upwards to make an interrogative - Hemostat?
We can inflect downwards on the 2nd syllable to make a declarative - Hemostat!
Or we can emphasize the 1st syllable and trail off on the second to signify disbelief - HEMostat?

Language is flexible and deliciously useful. Ancient Hopi native Americans had no future or past tense in their language. The only unit of time in their language is a day. Consequently, they are often late for meetings. A puff of smoke, a wave, a flame, lightning, and a meteor shower all were denoted by a single verb meaning "an event of short duration." Airplanes, birds, insects were referred to by a noun that means "a thing that flies through the air."  Eskimo/Aleutian Islanders have over 100 words to describe various snow conditions because snow and the weather are life and death events in their culture.

The sociologist, Emil Durkheim, noticed that so called primitive societies build their near environment to shape their conception of the universe, building their shelters in the form that they see the universe taking. If he saw huts arranged in a big circle, with a common meeting ground in the middle, he's figure the people to be believers that the universe/reality is a circular one.

Here in the U.S. of A. (most of western culture, in fact) we see an orderly, linear universe. Look at how we build our cities:

You can bet that the people who live here pattern their thoughts in much the same way they pattern there cities.
In other words, our patterns of thought are determined by the words we have to express ourselves. Culture determines language, Language determines our expressions, our Expressions determine the very ideas in our heads.

The Development of Personality as it is influenced by culture.

All life experiences and situations derive their meaining from the culture in which they are played out. We receive the Larger culture as part of our social heritage. We also reshape culture as we live in it and use it.Our culture is a very complex thing. It tells us what is important, based on the needs of society, but the messages aren't always clear.Society wants us to:

These things are usually in our best interests and always in the interests of society. So culture gives us symbols that help preserve the goals of society. If the goals aren't in social interests, then they won't be positively held in our minds.

Sets of symbols make for a cultural imperative.
Our body image is related to our self-esteem, which is related to our feelings of efficacy. Now, Why is it our bodies (naked) seldom match the ideal presented by a market economy (the culture?). This is a complex question actually, so I'm going to give you a simplistic answer.  What if you liked your body so much - thought you were so beautiful - that you felt sorry for those who never got to see it. So you started wearing very revealing clothes everywhere. Just enough to keep you from getting arrested.

What if everybody did this?  One reason why this won't happen is because we generally believe we fall way short of the cultural ideal.We believe this because we have been trained to value what the culture wants us to value.And the culture wants us to value that which makes the economy move - retail sales!

Why else would a person go through this:


We go so far in "dressing" for others that we hide our humanness with colognes, perfumes, hair dressings, undergarments, the right clothes.
Regarding Overall Body Appearance, the most critical areas for women:  weight 52%,  buttocks (57%)  thighs (51%)  abdomen (50%)

We try to hide through cosmetics ($20 billion a year) and cosmetic surgery - responses to real (not imagined) demands to conform to the ideal. Consistently, research shows that attributes of warmth, friendliness, strength, and sexiness are associated with the more physically attractive people. This translates into social power in the hands of those who would dress us.

Youth Culture

It is from group experiences that self-concept emerges. The importance of group interaction and adherence to the rules of the clique cannot be overestimated. We develop reference groups - certain groups whose opinions we cherish (positive reference groups) and whose opinions we abhor (negative reference groups).

We wish to identify ourselves with some groups and separate ourselves from others.
We "dress" figuratively and literally for our peers.

The youth culture has its own set of values, morals, and behavior codes. Points of agreement between adolescent and adult cultural values are in areas where one group or the other has little interest. EX: Religion, Politics, etc.

In areas of great concern to both, there is plenty of potential for extreme conflict - hair styles , personal freedom , control over one's life , language , school performance , peer relatons , sexual behavior , music.

Lanaguage in the youth culture: stylized, specialized speech patterns. Awesome, smooth, hormonally inept, basically hot, def, jammin', killer, tubular.
Tribal aspects: burners, dweebs, scabs, skinheads, slammin, dozens, front offs, flicks,  I was chillin' at Sulls and I yakked a power spew!

In addressing the study of popular culture - Music, videos, television, movies - one finds that the area is rich in speculation and opinion, full of wild accusations about the ultimate dead end of troubled youth, as if we could blame the current state of all things teen on rock and roll lyrics.  No social scientist believes the trouble with kids today is the direct result of music.  However, there are several parents, elected officials, and teachers who do.

Studies of Intended vs. perceived meanings of lyrics consistely find:

  1. those who worry the most have only limited experience with the music
  2. the kids have a hard time reproducing lyrics
    3. I'm reminded of the blue music of my high school years. The band was the Kingsmen and the song was Louie, Louie. This was a three chord, repetitive tune that was said to have lurid connotations and the (gasp) "f" word clearly spoken in the lyrics. It didn't help that the band could hardly play their instruments and the singer slurred almost every line in the tune. Countless thousands of high schoolers were suspended for having copies of the lyrics in their notebooks.
Researchers also consistently find that:
  1. troubled youth doesn't like music unless it has a dancable beat.
  2. today's artists are no more or less valueless as a class than the average school teacher.
  3. nobody listens to lyrics much
What has happened is that popular culture (the business) has pinpointed adolescents as a market with greater intensity than ever before - high end sneakers, starter jackets, smoking cartoon animals. They didn't start with teenagers. This all begins when we are children, pleading with our parents for the action figures, toys, even bedsheets that go with the blockbuster movie they just saw. In the interest of making lots of money, agents of the entertainment industry know that parents will pay to have a happy child. Over the years, we come to expect more stuff. We deny our own failings as parents, while looking for easy answers to our children's problems. Meanwhile:
How'd we get this way? "On the surface, the world of the 1950's was all Eisenhower calm. Under the surface, silent young pleople railed at their repression and discontentment." (Rubin, 1969). In a society where "How much is that doggie in the window" can claim the number 1 sales position for five weeks straight, the sight of black leather jacketed "punks", complete with the dangling Lucky cigarette was appalling, delinquent, renegade, and hoodlum-like. In the forties and fifties, people were divoded into two groups: children and adults. In 1948, the term "teenager" was first used in print in Life Magazine, thereby beginning the era of the youth culture.

It became increasingly clear, because of pinpoint marketing strategies, that there could be developed in teenagers special troubles, desires, and passions that were particular to their age. Not just teenagers in love, but the draft, the war, the bomb, the FUTURE!!!!  James Dean, Sal Mineo, and Natalie Wood had just finished "Rebel Without a Cause", a movie detailing the middle class kids and their alienation. The message was, "Hey you parents - Better Watch Out!"

-next  The Self and Identity