Yetişkin Olarak Eyleme ve Bekleme: Geç Kapitalizmde Yapma, Hissetme ve Olma

Abstract

Bu makale yetişkinlik ile olma durumu ve bir dizi pratik anlamında “yetişkin olarak eyleme” arasında bir ayrım yapmaktadır. Botswana’da gençlik ve yetişkinlik üzerine yapılan bir alan araştırmasına ve daha genel olarak küresel düzeyde gençlik, “bekleme dönemi” ve muğlak sınırları olan yetişkinlik üzerine yazılmış literatüre dayanan bu makale, bir performans ve performatif olarak yetişkin olarak eyleme fikrini araştırır. Bununla birlikte, makale her iki kavramın da yetişkinliği kazanmaya dair günümüzdeki endişeler içinde başarısız olmuş benlik duygusuna eğilip eğilmediğini sorgulamaktadır. Makale, sonrasında, “yetişkin hissetme” ve duygu pazarlama ve hisseden benlik ile birlikte onun geç kapitalizmdeki başarısızlıklarına yer vermektedir.

Keywords

• Yetişkinlik
• Gençlik
• Bekleme Dönemi
• Afrika
• Geç Kapitalizm
• Hisler

ADULTING AND WAITING: DOING, FEELING AND BEING IN LATE CAPITALISM

Abstract

This article distinguishes between adulthood and "adulting," a state of being and a set of practices, or doing. Based on field research on youth and adulthood in Botswana and more generally on literature about youth, "waithood," and elusive adulthood globally, the article explores the idea of adulting as a performance and as a performative, but questions whether either addresses the failed sense of self in current anxieties about attaining adulthood. The article then situates "feeling adult" and its failures in late capitalism, with its marketization of emotion and the feeling self.

Keywords

• Adulthood
• Youth
• Waithood
• Africa
• Late Capitalism
• Feelings

References

1. Argenti, N. & Durham, D. (2013). Youth. Oxford Handbook on Modern African History, edited by John Parker and Richard Reid, pp. 396-413. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
2. Arnett, J. (2004). Emerging Adulthood: The Winding Road from the Late Teens through the Twenties. New York: Oxford University Press.
3. Asad, T., ed. (1973). Anthropology and the Colonial Encounter. Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press.
4. Austin, J. (1962). How To Do Things with Words. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
5. Baxter, P. T. W. & Almagor, U. eds. (1978). Age, Generation, and Time: Some Features of East African Age Organisations. New York: St. Martin’s Press.
6. Bayart, J. F. (1993). The State in Africa: The politics of the belly. London: Longman. Berlant, L. (2011). Cruel Optimism. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
7. Blatterer, H. (2007). Coming of Age in Times of Uncertainty. New York: Berghahn Books.
8. Bledsoe, C., & Pison, G. eds. (1994). Nuptiality in Sub-Saharan Africa. Oxford: Clarendon.

9. Boddy, J. (2017). Just Sitting,’ But Not Sitting Still: Delayed Adulthood and Changing Gender Dynamics in Northern Sudan. In Elusive Adulthoods: The Anthropology of New Maturities, edited by Deborah Durham and Jacqueline Solway, pp. 152-73. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
10. Botswana, Government of. (2014). Population and Housing Census 2011: Analytical Report. Gaborone, Botswana: Statistics Botswana.
11. Brown, K. W. (2013). Adulting: How to Become a Grown-Up in 468 Easy(ish) Steps. New York: Grand Central Publishing.
12. Butler, J. (1990). Gender Trouble. Routledge.
13. Comaroff, J. & Comaroff, J. L. (2012). Theory from the South: Or, How Euro-America is Evolving Toward Africa. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
14. Comaroff, J. & Roberts, S. (1980). Rules and Processes: The Cultural Logic of Dispute in an African Context. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
15. Cooper, E. (2018). The importance of being serious: Subjectivity and adulthood in Kenya. Ethnos 83 (4): 665-682.
16. Diouf, M. (1996). Urban Youth and Senegalese Politics: Dakar, 1988–1994. Public Culture 8 (2): 225–250.
17. Dungey, C. & Ansell, N. (2020). ‘Not all of us can be nurses’: Proposing and Resisting Entrepreneurship Education in Lesotho. Sociological Research Online August 10, 2020. https://doi.org/10.1177%2F1360780420944967
18. Dungey, C. & Meinert, L. (2017). Learning to Wait: Schooling and the Instability of Adulthood for Young Men in Uganda. In Elusive Adulthoods, edited by Deborah Durham and Jacqueline Solway, pp. 83-104.
19. Durham, D. (2000). Youth and the Social Imagination in Africa. Anthropological Quarterly 73 (3): 113-120.
20. Durham, D. (2004). Disappearing Youth: Youth as a Social Shifter in Botswana. American Ethnologist 31 (4): 589-605.
21. Durham, D. (2005). Just Playing: Choirs, Bureaucracy, and the Work of Youth in Botswana. In Makers and Breakers: Children and Youth in Postcolonial Africa, edited by Alcinda Honwana and Filip de Boeck, pp. 150-171. London: James Currey.
22. Durham, D. (2007). Empowering Youth: Making Youth Citizens in Botswana. In Generations and Globalization, edited by Jennifer Cole and Deborah Durham, pp. 102- 131. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
23. Durham, D. (2008). Apathy and Agency: The Romance of Agency and Youth in Botswana. In Figuring the Future: Globalization and the Temporalities of Children and Youth, edited by Jennifer Cole and Deborah Durham. pp. 151-178. Santa Fe, NM: SAR Press.
24. Durham, D. (2017). Introduction: Elusive Adulthoods. In Elusive Adulthoods: The Anthropology of New Maturities, edited by Deborah Durham and Jacqueline Solway, pp. 1-38. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
25. Durham, D. (2019). ‘Have you been to all the malls?’: The New Mall Scene in Botswana. In Africa Every Day: Fun, Leisure, and Expressive Culture on the Continent, edited by Kemi Balogun, Lisa Gilman, Melissa Graboyes, and Habib Iddrisu, pp. 83-92. Athens, OH: Ohio University Press.
26. Fortes, M. (1984). Age, Generation, and Social Structure. In David I. Kertzer and Jennie Keith, eds., Age and Anthropological Theory. Pp. 99–122. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press.
27. Foucault, M. (1979). Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. Trans. Alan Sheridan. New York: Vintage Books.
28. Geertz, C. (1973). Thick Description. In The Interpretation of Cultures, pp. 3-30. New York: Basic Books.
29. Goffman, E. (1959). The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. New York: Anchor Books.
30. Goffman, E. (1967). Interaction Ritual. New York: Anchor Books.
31. Good, K. (1992). Interpreting the Exceptionality of Botswana. Journal of Modern African Studies 30 (1): 61-95.
32. Grinspan, J. (2015). A Birthday Like None Other: Turning Twenty-One in the Age of Popular Politics. In Age in America: The Colonial Era to the Present, edited by Corinne Field and Nicholas Syrett, 86–102. New York: New York University Press.
33. Hansen, K. T. (2005). Getting Stuck in the Compound: Some Odds Against Social Adulthood in Lusaka, Zambia. Africa Today 51 (4): 3–16.
34. Honwana, A. (2012). The Time of Youth: Work, Social Change, and Politics in Africa. Sterling: Kumarian Press.
35. Illouz, E. (2007). Cold Intimacies: The Making of Emotional Capitalism. Cambridge: Polity Press.
36. Illouz, E. (2008). Saving the Modern Soul: Therapy, Emotions, and the Culture of Self- Help. Berkeley: University of California Press.
37. Inhorn, M. C. & Nancy, J. S. H. eds. (2021). Waithood: Gender, Education, and Global Delays in Marriage and Childbearing. New York: Berghahn.
38. Lythcott-Haims, J. (2015). How to Raise an Adult: Break Free of the Overparenting Trap and Prepare your Children for Success. New York: St. Martin’s Griffin.
39. Mains, D. (2007). Neoliberal Times: Progress, Boredom, and Shame among Young Men in Urban Ethiopia. American Ethnologist 34(4): 659–73.
40. Masquelier, A. (2019). Fada: Boredom and Belonging in Niger. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
41. McKinnon, S. (2016) Doing and Being: Process, Essence, and Hierarchy in Making Kin. In The Routledge Companion to Contemporary Anthropology, edited by Simon Coleman, Susan Hyatt, and Ann Kingsolver, pp. 161-82. London: Routledge.
42. Newman, K. (1988). Falling from Grace: The Experience of Downward Mobility in the American Middle Class. New York: Free Press.
43. Newman, K. (2012). The Accordion Family: Boomerang Kids, Anxious Parents, and the Private Toll of Global Competition. Boston: Beacon Press.
44. Samatar, A. İ. (1999). An African Miracle: State and Class Leadership and Colonial Legacy in Botswana Development. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.
45. Settersten, R., Furstenberg, F. F. & Rumbaut, R. eds. (2008). On the Frontier of Adulthood: Theory, Research and Public Policy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
46. Silva, J. (2013). Coming Up Short: Working-Class Adulthood in an Age of Uncertainty. New York: Oxford University Press.
47. Singerman, D. (2007). The Economic Imperatives of Marriage: Emerging Practices and Identities Among Youth in the Middle East. The Middle East Youth Initiative Working Paper No. 6. Wolfensohn Center for Development, Dubai School of Government.
48. Solway, J. (2016). ‘Slow Marriage, Fast Bogadi’: Change and Continuity in Marriage in Botswana. Anthropology Southern Africa 39 (4): 309-322.
49. Sommers, M. (2012). Stuck: Rwandan Youth and the Struggle for Adulthood. Athens: University of Georgia Press.
50. Twenge, J. & Campbell, W. K. (2010). The Narcissism Epidemic: Living in the Age of Entitlement. New York: Atria Books.
51. Urciuoli, B. (2008). Skills and Selves in the New Workplace. American Ethnologist 35 (2): 211–28.
52. Weber, M. (2001). The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. Translated by Talcott Parsons, with an introduction by Anthony Giddens. London and New York: Routledge.
53. Werbner, R. (2004). Reasonable Radicals and Citizenship in Botswana: The Public Anthropology of Kalanga Elites. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.