(no subject)

[pozorvlak]

An anthropologist friend once remarked to me that university meets precisely the anthropological definition of a coming-of-age ritual.

• There is some form of ceremony to mark the start of the ritual.
• For the duration of the ritual, the initiates are separated from the mass of the people, and allowed an unusual degree of license to do foolish and/or antisocial things.
• Periodically, the initiates are given tests of strength, stamina, cunning, ability to solve differential equations, or some other desirable quality.
• At the end of the ritual, there is another ceremony, to mark the initiates' re-integration with society at large as adults.

This kind of thing, she went on to elaborate, is what she really likes about anthropology; the tension between the similarity and diversity of all people. Coming-of-age rituals the world over exhibit the same general patterns, but their expressions vary enormously. Similarly, almost every society has some notion of kinship, but the precise details vary greatly from society to society.

This particular example prompts a few questions, though:

1. 18 seems rather late, and 3-4 years seems rather long, for a coming-of-age ritual. What's the distribution of age and length on these things? Is there any correlation between the technological level of a society and the length or time of its coming-of-age ritual?
2. Off the top of my head, the proportion of people attending university in the UK is a little under half: I'm guessing it's similar in most other industrialised countries. So what's the analogous ritual for the non-university-attending classes? School? How does this play out in families where the children attended university but not the parents? And can increasing university attendance (now, and historically) tell us anything more general about the spread and evolution of rituals?
3. Do other societies have the equivalent of postgrads or mature students?

Comments

[bdunbar.livejournal.com]

Are well-intentioned fuckups by boots treated more leniently than fuckups by professionals?

As long as the recruit is trying hard and is otherwise capable .. in my experience, yes.

but there's always been a lingering sense of failure. We all have our crosses to bear, I suppose.

We all have them: what I've achieved in life (so far) would have been a lot easier if I'd gone to college instead of joining the service.