James E. Cote

Why are today's adults more like adolescents, in their dress and personal tastes, than ever before? Why do so many adults seem to drift and avoid responsibilities such as work and family? As the traditional family breaks down and marriage and child rearing are delayed, what makes a person an adult? Many people in the industrial West are simply not "growing up" in the traditional sense. Instead, they pursue personal, individual fulfillment and emerge from a vague and prolonged youth into a vague and insecure adulthood. The transition to adulthood is becoming more hazardous, and the destination is becoming more difficult to reach, if it is reached at all. Arrested Adulthood examines the variety of young people's responses to this new situation. James E. Côté shows us adults who allow the profit-driven industries of mass culture to provide the structure that is missing, as their lives become more individualistic and atomized. He also shows adults who resist anomie and build their world around their sense of personal connectedness to others. Finally, Côté provides a vision of a truly progressive society in which all members can develop their potentials apart from the influence of the market. In so doing, he gives us a clearer vision of what it means to be an adult and makes sense of the longest, but least understood period of the life course.

The Changing Nature of Maturity and Identity

Arrested Adulthood

Charles Levine

The concept of identity is one of the most important ideas the social sciences have investigated in recent years, yet no introductory textbooks are available to those who want to gain a sense of this burgeoning field. The first of its kind, this text provides an introduction to the scientific study of identity formation, with a focus on youth development. The analyses of the problems and prospects faced by contemporary young people in forming identities are placed in the context of societies that themselves are in transition, further complicating identity formation and the interrelated processes of self development and moral-ethical reasoning. In order to sort through what is now a vast literature on the various aspects of human identity, this book introduces the Simplified Identity Formation Theory. This theory cuts through much of the academic jargon that limits the accessibility of this promising field, and builds an understanding of human identity from first principles. This book is optimized for students and instructors, featuring several useful pedagogical tools and a robust series of online resources: Primer format: the text synthesizes the vast and disparate literature that has characterized the field of Identity Studies, with a focus on identity formation during the transition to adulthood; theory and research is discussed in plain, non-technical language, using the author’s new Simplified Identity Formation Theory. In-text pedagogy: to enhance student engagement, box insert and in-text examples from current events, popular culture, and social media are incorporated throughout the text; key terms are in bold in each chapter and combined in a glossary at the end of the text. Online resources for instructors: A robust set of resources that, when combined with the text, provides a complete blueprint for designing an identity course; resources include PowerPoint Presentations, test bank, sample syllabi, and instructor manuals for both face-to-face and online courses that include weekly written assignment questions and discussion-forum questions along with essay topic ideas and grading rubrics. Online resources for students: a student manual, flashcards, practice quizzes, and exercises with video links.

A Simplified Approach

Identity Formation, Youth, and Development

In 1979, Kathleen Barry's landmark book, Female Sexual Slavery, pulled back the curtain on a world of abuse prostitution that shocked the world. Documenting in devastating detail the lives of street prostitutes and the international traffic in women, Barry's work was called powerful and compassionate by Adrienne Rich and a courageous and crusading book that should be read everywhere by Gloria Steinem. The Los Angeles Times found it a powerful work filled with disbelief, outrage, and documentation . . . sexual bondage shackles women as much today as it has for centuries. In The Prostitution of Sexuality, Barry assesses where we are 15 years later, how far we've come and, more importantly, how far we have still to go. Shifting her focus from the sexuality of prostitution to the prostitution of sexuality, Barry exposes the practice of teenage sexual exploitation and the flourishing Asian sex tour industry, emphasizing the world-wide role of the expanding multi-billion dollar pornography industry. The work identifies the global conditions of sexual exploitation, from sex industrialization in developing countries to te normalization of prostitution in the West. The Prostitution of Sexuality considers sexual exploitation a political condition and thus the foundation of women's subordination and the base from which discrimination against women is constructed and enacted. Breaking new ground, Barry convincingly argues for the need to integrate the struggle against sexual exploitation in prostitution into broader feminist struggles and to place it, as one of several connected issues, in the forefront of the feminist agenda. Barry concludes the book with a sampling of strategies-- international, regional, local, and personal--that feminist activists have employed successfully since the early 1980s, highlighting new international legal strategies for human rights resulting from her work.

James E. C“t‚

In 1928, Margaret Mead published her first book, entitled Coming of Age in Samoa, in which she described to the Western world an exotic culture where people "came of age" with a minimum of "storm and stress." In 1983, Derek Freeman, an Australian anthropologist, published a book in which he systematically attacked Mead's conclusions about that culture and the way people came of age. Since then, a great deal of attention has been directed toward the Mead-Freeman controversy. This book contributes to that controversy and to the general understanding of adolescent storm and stress by undertaking an interdisciplinary analysis of Freeman's criticisms and an assessment of the plausibility of Mead's work. Addressing the issue of what has become of Mead's Samoa of the 1920s, this book historically tracks the nature of the "coming of age in Samoa" to the present, in order to give the reader an understanding of the circumstances confronting young people in contemporary Samoa. It shows that Mead's Samoa has been lost; what was once a place in which most young people came of age with relative ease has become a place where young people experience great difficulty in terms of finding a place in their society, to the point where they currently have one of the highest suicide rates in the world. While much has been written about this controversy during the past decade, a gap exists in the sense that most of the publicity about Mead's work has missed her main focus concerning the processes governing the "coming of age" of her informants. A valuable historical document and a pioneering study, Mead's book anticipated changes that are still unfolding today in the field of human development. The preoccupation with issues tangential to her main focus--issues involving the Samoan ethos and character--have not only diverted a clear analysis of Mead's work, they have also led to the creation of a number of myths and misconceptions about Mead and her book. The author also has an interest in Mead's original focus on the relative impact of biological and cultural influences in shaping the behavior of those coming of age--in all societies. Despite what has been said by her critics, not only was this a crucial issue during the time of her study, but it is also an issue that is now just beginning to be understood some 60 years later. In addition, the issue of biology versus culture--the so-called nature-nurture debate--carries with it many political implications. In the case of the Mead-Freeman controversy, this political agenda looms large--an agenda which is clearly spelled out in this book.

An Evaluation of the Mead-freeman Controversy

Adolescent Storm and Stress

Andy Furlong

This is the first handbook to cover the sociological approaches to higher education. It is timely because of global expansions of mass higher educational systems, especially as these systems come under scrutiny by a variety of stakeholders. Questions are being raised about the value of traditional pedagogies along with calls for efficiency, accountability and cost-reduction, but above all job training. Within this neoliberal context, each chapter examines different sociological aspects of, and debates about, educational institutions as status-conferring organizations, with myriad positional characteristics, experiences, and outcomes. Many current debates concern the legitimacy of the statuses conferred, including the continuing debate regarding the role of universities in legitimating social class reproduction as well as more recent concerns about standards in mass systems. This handbook puts these issues and debates in focus in ways that will be of interest to a variety of stakeholders, within academia as well as in policy circles.

Routledge Handbook of the Sociology of Higher Education

Anton Allahar

Young adults in the modern era face a completely differently set of challenges from previous generations. Tracing historical constructions of adolescence and their role in maintaining social order, James E. Cote and Anton L. Allahar persuasively argue that young people today constitute one of the most disadvantaged and vulnerable groups in society. Today, for the first time, teenagers and young adults in the United states, Canada, Japan, Scandinavia and Western Europe can expect to have a lower standard of living than their parents. Youth are conditioned to stay young linger and have, as a result, become socially and economically marginalized. Many young people amass credentials regardless of employment prospects and continue to live at home, often dependent on their parents, into their thirties. With fewer jobs available, young people are ironically targeted increasingly as consumers, rather than as producers. As new technologies continually reduce the work force and alter the social fabric, an entire generation of young people has struggled to keep up. What then does it mean to come of age in an advanced industrial or post-industrial society?

James E. Cote

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