The Problem of Contemporary Adulthood: Calendars Cartographies and Constructions

Abstract

Adulthood is a social category of human development which is all too easy to take for granted. It is ubiquitous to the point where we no longer see it, and are inclined in the social sciences and the humanities to act as though it isn’t there. As Crawford suggests in this volume, the category of adulthood masquerades as a central norm presented in discourse as inevitable and natural. As such it is an example of social process named by Barthes as exnomination (1973: 50). Nowadays we do openly talk of some of its major categories — childhood perhaps or youth or old age. Yet these categories are themselves invented, set up as either being a category of waiting for adulthood (Lesko 2001) or following it. The central norm of adulthood carries power of labour market and family relations, and drives both the cultures and actual material structures of dependency (Hockey and James 1993).