Celebrating nostalgia or critiquing naivety: Reading pop music reunions through discourses of the fan life course

2019 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 133-150 ◽  
Author(s):  
Simone Driessen

This study explores how fans give meaning to pop music reunions through the lens of the life course. It does so through a content analysis of forum comments about TV series The Big Reunion, which reunites chart-topping music acts from the past decades. The fans interpret The Big Reunion in three modes closely related to their life-course position: first, now young adults, the fans read the reunion as a nostalgic phenomenon. Second, they consider the reunion as an ironic event. Third, they question The Big Reunion’s formula by reflecting on it through the prism of their current position in the life course. These readings reveal how the fans celebrate a nostalgic reflection on the pop acts of their youth; yet also offer a critique on their former, ‘naïve’ teenage/child-selves.

2020 ◽  
pp. 104973232097820
Author(s):  
Leslie A. McCallum ◽  
Ramona Alaggia

Despite the high percentage of adults living with anorexia nervosa (AN) over the life course, there is limited understanding of what it means to be living with AN in midlife when the majority of research has focused on adolescents and young adults. As such, clinical practice for individuals in midlife is informed by a severe and enduring AN (SE-AN) framework, which assumes that recovery is not necessarily feasible past young adulthood. This study used constructivist grounded theory methodology to understand the experiences of adults in midlife living with AN. In-depth analyses of 19 participant narratives in midlife show that individuals face barriers to seeking help or remaining in recovery; however, midlife can also act as a significant catalyst toward recovery. Subsequently, there is merit in revisiting the utility of the SE-AN framework in the context of life course theory and exploring resilience-informed approaches in supporting recovery from AN.


Inclusion ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 46-54 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Blanck

Abstract The Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA) of 1990, and the ADA Amendments Act (ADAAA) of 2008, are effecting dramatic changes in the perception of cognitive and other disabilities, from primarily viewing disability as a medical state to be cured and pitied toward acceptance of disability as an element of human experience and self-identity. The ADA's modern understanding of disability is as much shaped by diversity in biology, local culture, and self-identity over the life course, as it is by the barriers to inclusion we build and maintain in society. This view reflects the paradigm shift from the prior and dominating medical model to a social and environmental approach to disability civil and human rights. This two-part special issue of the journal Inclusion examines the ADA at its 25th anniversary. The articles reflect on the past 25 years, examine the present, and anticipate the future to ensure continued progress towards the civil and human rights of individuals with cognitive and other disabilities.


Author(s):  
Jarl Mooyaart

AbstractThis chapter focuses on the linkages between socio-economic background, family formation and economic (dis)advantage and reveals to what extent the influence of parental education on family formation persists over time, i.e. across birth cohorts. The second part of this chapter examines to what extent the influence of socio-economic background persists over the life-course. This part covers: (1) the influence of parental education on union formation over the life-course, and (2) the influence of socio-economic background on income trajectories in young adulthood, after adjusting for the career and family pathways that young adults followed during the transition to adulthood, thereby examining the influence of socio-economic background on income beyond the first stage of young adulthood. This chapter reveals two key insights on the linkages between socio-economic background, family formation and (dis)advantage: (1) Whereas union and family formation patterns have changed across birth cohorts, socio-economic background continues to stratify union and family formation pathways; (2) Although the influence of socio-economic background on family formation and young adults’ economic position decreases throughout young adulthood, socio-economic background continues to have an impact in young adulthood.


Young ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 45-65 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mette Ranta ◽  
Anne Birgitta Pessi ◽  
Henrietta Grönlund

This study examined young adults’ perspectives on the concept of the sacred. Altogether, 334 young Finnish adults aged 19–35 were studied through a self-report questionnaire. The participants’ personal conceptions, reflections and experiences of the sacred were assessed with open-ended questions. Answers were classified in a data-determined content analysis using a thematic analytical approach. In addition, the study examined how these understandings of the sacred were related to subjective religiosity and how the definitions vary across gender. The findings suggest that the conceptions of the sacred mainly concentrate on individuality and personal issues, including personal opinion, rest and peace, but also close social relationships and the church as an institution. By differentiating the conceptions of the sacred, this study reflects cultural interpretations of what the sacred means and integrates the concept in the theory of young adulthood as a life course phase and in the sociology of youth.


2021 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 100-106
Author(s):  
Thomas Kemple

Rather than refuting or challenging the claims by Baert, Morgan, and Ushiyama to originality, the objective of this commentary is to flesh out “existence theory” by extending its repertoire of examples and by expanding on its classical and philosophical sources. Drawing on precedents in canonical statements by Vico, Weber, Durkheim, Simmel, and Marx, this response poses questions about the model’s implied assumption of a time-line that traces a “straight” path from the past to the present and future by invoking the alternative imagery of a circular history, cyclical time, or “queer” life course. To support this argument, contemporary queer theories are invoked to supplement the concept-metaphor of “existential milestones” with that of “existential cornerstones,” which do not always suggest that human development follows a single path or a binding timeline. The civil institutions of religion, marriage, and burial, as discussed by both classical sociologists and queer theorists, for instance, may be defined by a sense of necessity and inevitability but also by contingency and coincidence.


Focaal ◽  
2007 ◽  
Vol 2007 (49) ◽  
pp. 31-44 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sharika Thiranagama

Charting the life course of Malathi, a young Sri Lankan Tamil woman, this article attempts to discuss the ways in which people and places in Sri Lanka are remade through experiences of violence. The article suggests moving away from a notion of 'home' as fixed on one place; instead, it considers the movement of people between different places. Further, it suggests that senses of home are also embedded within uneasy, constantly negotiated relationships with those people with whom we feel at home. Moreover, the article argues that ideas about 'the future' as equally as 'the past' inform the possibility of being at home.


2017 ◽  
Vol 37 (3) ◽  
pp. 329-347 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eleanor Wilkinson ◽  
Iliana Ortega-AlcÁzar

This article considers how welfare cuts in ‘austerity Britain’ have impacted young adults’ access to a home of their own, asking at what stage in the life-course should the welfare state be expected to support someone’s residential independence? The article focuses on the 2012 changed age-threshold for the Shared Accommodation Rate of Local Housing Allowance, which meant that single people (without dependants) aged between 25 and 34 are only entitled to claim the cost of a single room in a shared property. This policy has highlighted the issue of forced sharing, and poses questions as to whether a shared property with strangers can necessarily always be considered a home. The article identifies the persistence of normative conceptions of household transition across the life-course. Ultimately the article concludes that these normative assumptions enable policy makers to promote this policy as a matter of ‘fairness’ rather than a form of social injustice.


2017 ◽  
Vol 66 (5) ◽  
pp. 748-768 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martina Yopo Díaz

The life course of Chilean women has experienced profound transformations in the past decades. It has been argued that transitions to marriage and motherhood are being postponed as they are experienced by women at an older age and are becoming events that characterize an increasingly smaller part of the female population. These changes have been often interpreted as part of a process of individualization that would have reconfigured the cultural norms and social practices regarding gender roles and family formation in Chilean society. Nevertheless, the prevalence and diversification of the practices and norms that shape the transitions to marriage and motherhood at an empirical level remain unexplored. This article aims to assess the individualization of the life course of women in Chile by empirically analysing the destandardization of the practices and norms that shape the transitions to marriage and motherhood. By analysing data from the Encuesta Nacional Bicentenario Universidad Católica – Adimark (2009), it demonstrates that changes in the prevalence of the transitions to marriage and motherhood and the diversification of the practices and norms that shape their timing are ambivalent regarding destandardization. These results suggest that the life course of women in Chile is becoming individualized to some extent, but that this trend of cultural and social change is not consistent and uniform, but rather partial and fragmented, non-linear, and significantly conditioned by the social structure.


1988 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 269-280 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patricia Voydanoff

This essay reviews and synthesizes Jessie Bernard's writings on women, work, and family. Bernard's conceptualization of “two worlds”—one of women and one of men—provides the organizing theme, from which three major issues are derived: (a) the dilemmas of caring, (b) the feminization of work, and (c) work and family roles over the life course. Examining her historical perspective on these issues, her view of the present, and her vision of the future, the article raises unanswered questions in Bernard's work and suggests implications for future research on women's work and family roles.


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