The ‘negatives’ of life : the influence of transitional experiences in the use of culture of young adults

THE ‘NEGATIVES’ OF LIFE

The influence of transitional experiences in

the use of culture of young adults

Anna la Verge 6043607

Cultural Sociology

Marcel van den Haak (supervisor) Alex van Venrooij (second reader) 1st _{of April 2016}

Master thesis in Cultural Sociology University of Amsterdam

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Abstract - - - 3

Acknowledgements - - - 4

1. INTRODUCTION - - - 5

2. THEORY 2.1 How culture works - - - 8

2.2 Transitional experiences - - - 13 2.3 Happiness - - - - 15 3. METHODOLOGY 3.1 Approach - - - 18 3.2 Interviews - - - 20 3.3 Ethics - - - 21 3.4 Analysis - - - 22 4. NARRATIVES 4.1 Stefanie - - - 23 4.2 Gerben - - - 26 4.3 Anne - - - 28 4.4 Marnix - - - 30 5. CULTURAL TRANSITION 5.1 Experiences as cultural guidelines - - - 35

5.2 Dealing with disruption - - - 38

5.3 ‘Owning’ a new repertoire - - - - 41

5.4 Conclusion - - - - 45 6. HAPPINESS CULTURE - - - 46 7. CONCLUSION - - - 51 Bibliography - - - - 53 Appendices • I. Interview guide - - - - - - - 55

ABSTRACT

The research is concerned with the changes in the use of culture of young adults, when faced with a transitional experience. Adding to the sociological literature on how culture influences action, this research offers insight on the power of culture on change in action. Twenty in-depth interviews show the disruptive power experiences have on cultural ideas about the self, life and the future. The search for answers to questions of ontological security result in broaching old or new explanatory frames that shape new means for action. Establishing a stable sense of self is at the heart of this transitional process. Key words:

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I first and foremost would like to express my gratitude to all the respondents who shared their life story with me. Your willingness to be vulnerable and to share personal experiences and emotions has not only brought me this thesis, but also has inspired me with beautiful insights that enriched my personal life. Thank you so much. I would also like to thank my thesis supervisor Marcel van den Haak for being patient and giving me the space to make the choices that made this thesis ‘me’. You don’t know how much of a gift it has been to be able to really enjoy this process because of your guidance. Thanks to my love Marijn for putting up with me and giving me the pep talks I needed from time to time. Midas, as my best friend, thank you for all those hours of talking, understanding and supporting my points of view.

1. INTRODUCTION

Within sociology, the influence of culture on human action is widely studied. Max Weber’s influential work on the ‘Protestant Ethic’ evolved around the power of a cultural frame in structuring life (1958). But with the decrease of these collective (religious) meaning systems (Giddens, 1991, Shilling, 2003), the way people make meaning of the world around them has been transferred to the individual level. This process has left people alone in making sense of their daily lives. That’s why it is most relevant to understand the relation between cultural ideas and the use of them by people.

In the field of cultural sociology, Ann Swidler has developed a theoretical view on how culture works. In her book ‘Talk of Love: How Culture Matters’ (2000), Swidler studied how middle class Americans make sense of love. She reveals the way people gather all sorts of ideas of love in their personal ‘cultural repertoire’. This repertoire is a toolkit of meanings and skills from which people pick and choose what is useful to them when developing strategies of action. Depending on the need to understand themselves or their experiences, people shift in cultural frames (2000). Swidler’s research targets the varied ways people use culture; making it their own, distancing from it and how this relates to their experiences. Swidler describes different dimensions that actuate changes in how culture is used, but stays in generalities.

This research zooms in on transitional experiences. How do changes in a cultural repertoire come about? How can a person be really attached to his belief at one moment in his life and totally differ in belief at another? Swidler’s theory on how culture works offers different dimensions for explaining how changes in (the use of) a cultural repertoire come about. It is very useful when looking at how people choose a way to make sense of their lives while there is such a diverse range of cultural resources available. In order to get a thorough understanding of how culture works, we’ll have to look at how change comes about from up close.

To get a better understanding of how transitions in cultural repertoires come about, we have to look at changes in people’s lives. These ‘fateful moments’ (Giddens, 1991) demand reflection of self and the frames used for making sense of daily life. But also heavy, sudden experiences like the death

of a parent or an accident can distress these young adults lives. These ‘biographical disruptions’ (Bury, 1982) force the search for new ways to understand their changed lives.

Twenty semi-structured in-depth interviews where held with young people between 20 and 25, in order to obtain life narratives. Young adults are much more searching for meaning than older adults, who’s meanings are more established (Steger, Osishi & Kashdan’s, 2009). The reason for studying young adults lays in this turbulence. This period in these young adult’s lives is characterized by changes like moving out of their parents’ house, starting a new job or study and making new friends. Thomson et al (2002) show in their qualitative, longitudinal study that transitions to adulthood go along the lines of impactful experiences and the different ways that is dealt with insecurity depending on resources.

Happiness has been a topic of human life since we know, offering ways to guide people through life. Ancient thinkers like Aristotle wrote about it and it’s been the central theme in streams of thought like Buddhism and religions like Christianity. Sociologists have left the study of happiness to other disciplines like psychology. Remarkably, because insight in how happiness is of importance to people and the well-being of collectives is of sociological importance. But there have been some sociologists that are trying to raise attention to the topic of happiness in sociology. Dutch sociologist Ruut Veenhoven has developed the World Database of Happiness, regularly publishing comparative research on the level happiness in different countries. He thinks sociology has a blind eye for happiness and he gives multiple reasons. One of these reasons is that sociologists focus on what people do and not on how they feel. (Veenhoven, 2006) For that reason this research will look at how people make meaning of happiness. On the qualitative end of the research spectrum Mark Cieslik has been an advocate for happiness research. He pleads for a more qualitative, in-depth way of studying happiness. This research aims to fill this gap by offering a cultural perspective on studying happiness. It does not have the aim to ‘objectively’ answer the questions of what happiness is or how it can be achieved. Happiness is studied with cultural ‘glasses’ on, as a ‘vehicle’ to get insights on how changes

in cultural repertoires of young adults come about and how culture is used to deal with transitional experiences.

To sum, this research can be placed in the part of the field of cultural sociology that tries to get a better understanding of how culture works. The contribution is in enriching ‘Swidlerian’ cultural research by ‘zooming in’ on transitions to see how the use of culture links to experience. How do changes in the (use of) cultural repertoires of young adults come about? How do young adults use culture to deal with transitional experiences? And what are the consequences of these transitional experiences to the (use of) cultural repertoire? These are the questions that are central in this research. With the subject of happiness as ‘cultural vehicle’ this research aims to fill the sociological gap by studying happiness in-depth.

In the following chapter we’ll get more into the theoretical embeddedness. Explaining how the insights of Ann Swidler and the concepts of ‘fateful moments’ (Giddens, 1991) and ‘biographical disruptions’ (Bury, 1982) are applicable and useful when zooming in on transitional experiences. Also this research will be placed in the field of happiness. In chapter three the methodological approach to the collection and analysis of the data is elaborated on as well as the ethical considerations. In chapter four I’ll zoom in on the narratives of four respondents. These narratives will function as the basis for the analysis in chapter five. The data will be compared on how the respondents use culture when facing transitional experiences. Whereas chapter five analyzes the data from the ‘inside out’, in chapter six the ‘living in the moment’ culture will be unraveled and what this culture offers to respondents in making sense of their lives. Last, we’ll get in chapter seven to the conclusions that can be drawn.

2. THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK

2.1 HOW CULTURE WORKS

The theoretical fundaments of this research come from Ann Swidler. She developed a theoretical framework to understand how people use culture. For her research resulting in the book ‘Talk of Love: How Culture Matters’, people were interviewed about love. The interest was how people use culture to make sense of themselves and the world around them and how this influences action. Her insights will be used to specifically analyze how transitions in the way people use culture comes about.

CULTURE

Swidler follows Hannerz’ definition of culture as: “minimal definition of culturalness, in line with […] the essence of conventional usage […] that there are social processes of sharing modes of behavior and outlook within [a] community.” (Hannerz, 1969: 184) But she adds the emphasis from Geertz (1973) on symbolic vehicles through which people share and learn meanings (Swidler, 2000). Swidler describes cultural resources by giving examples of the cultural resources of love: ‘At one level, the culture of love is everywhere, filling paperback racks, pouring from car radios, shimmering on the movie screen.’ (2000: 11). Or: ‘Such is the power of this mythic drama that its variants still dominate our literature, our popular entertainment, and our imaginations. In hit songs and pulp fiction, as in the conversations and commiserations of friends and lovers, love is described and dissected. These sources do not all agree on what love is, but from “Love means never having to say you’re sorry” to “Love is not love which alters when it alteration finds,” the culture of love is all around us.’ (2000: 11). I will follow Swidler’s idea that cultural meanings are everywhere, transmitted through cultural resources: television shows, computer games, books, talk in the bar, teachings at school and so on. In this research cultural resources will be broadly interpreted in the material sense (access to media) and the immaterial sense (diverse social interaction). Culture offers different frames of ideas and meanings through which the world can be beheld.

CULTURAL REPERTOIRE

Individuals are in constant interaction with a great diversity of ideas and modes of behavior distributed through different kinds of resources. According to Swidler, people collect all these ideas in their ‘cultural repertoire’. A cultural repertoire can be seen as a kit of cultural tools from which people can choose to make sense of the world around them. This repertoire is filled with orientations and experiences obtained from cultural resources. Styles, convictions, arguments, ways to act and even multiple ideas of self can all be part of a person’s repertoire. (Swidler, 2000) It does not mean that choices are always made conscious and in a rational way. Swidler states that ‘…people are often “used by” their culture as much as they use it.’ (2000: 24) Culture is (usually) not deliberately used, because people are intertwined with it. The repertoire is filled with much more culture than they use. Some of it may be useful at some times, some of it may not. This becomes clear when Swidler explains switching frames. Talking about love, people often contradict themselves. This especially happens when there is an unforeseen turn of conversation about something someone is very invested in, forced to abandon the ideas he or she drew from before. Moving to another part of their repertoire, they switch frames. (2000)

TALKING ABOUT CULTURE

In this research, Swilder’s concepts of culture and cultural repertoire will be used. Besides these concepts there are more connotations connected to the word ‘culture’. To avoid confusion, I’ll elaborate on what I mean when using these concepts and how they relate to one another.

In this research the word ‘culture’ will be used as an overarching term for all the possible ideas, meaning and modes of behavior available in society. These ideas, meanings and modes of behavior are transmitted through cultural resources. People can come into contact with cultural meanings or ideas through cultural resources. Every individual has a cultural repertoire in which all collected culture is saved. The availability of different kinds of cultural resources determines the size and the diversity of a repertoire a person has. So some people have a more extensive repertoire than others. When speaking about a respondent who ‘uses more culture’, it means that

someone is more actively using cultural resources for ideas in explaining her or himself. This shows in how people talk; rich explanations and with references to cultural resources. The way they talk is more emotional intense, they try hard to explain themselves and the world around them. Whereas someone who doesn’t use a lot of culture has a pretty ‘flat’, less comprehensive way of speaking. Another phrase that will be used is being ‘in need of culture’. When someone is ‘in need of culture’ it means that someone is in need for more or different explanatory systems to make sense of the world. These explanatory systems are called ‘cultural frames’.

These frames can be seen as ‘glasses’ through which the world can be viewed. A cultural frame offers a certain kind of package with tools that are linked to one another: ideas, ways of talking, behavior styles etc. People can collect many different, and even contradictory, cultural frames in their repertoire. Usually leaving some untouched and others extensively used and able to switch between them when needed. When someone’s cultural repertoire doesn’t offer a ‘fitting’ or useful frame to make sense of her or his life at that moment, people can broach new cultural resources and search for new cultural frames outside of their own cultural repertoire. A certain cultural frame can come from ‘a’ culture. A culture is not an individual but a general collection or web of behavioral styles and meanings, distinguished from the concept ‘culture’ by the evolvement around a central idea. For instance, when thinking about punk youth culture you can think of hairdo’s, a style of dressing, a way of talking, political preference etc. to fit the ‘cultural picture’ of a punk. Such ‘webs’ of meanings can be widespread (like the American culture) or on a smaller level (the culture in a company). In chapter six this notion is used for describing the overarching ‘kind’ of cultural webs or the same ‘pools’ the respondents share to make sense in their daily lives. A culture offers individuals personal frames through which they can understand and move through their daily lives.

CULTURED CAPACITIES

So people have a cultural repertoire at their disposal. But what kind of function does culture have? What is it used for? Swidler distinguished four capacities of culture. It helps to become a certain kind of self, it teaches new styles, skills

and habits, it clarifies group membership and it helps in constructing an overall worldview. (Swidler, 2000)

People strive to become a certain kinds of person. Culture is of importance to shape the inner capacities and appropriating those capacities in the right way at the right moment. So learning how to arouse certain feelings and images of the self. This means, for instance, being able to of feel guilty when the social situation asks for it (Swidler, 2000).

Besides establishing a certain kind of self, culture helps people to make styles, skills and habits their own. This comes down to making judgments of cultural taste (style) and practical ways (skills). Greeting somebody in the right way, for instance. Not only knowing how this greeting should be done, but also understanding the ideas behind it and physically being able to perform it. Styles and skills can be learned, but some harder that the other. Habits have a more stern character and are hard to internalize. They help us perform normalized lines of conducts in a natural and unconscious way. Swilder gives the example of understanding the notion of time and all the taken-for-granted acts that are necessary to get on time for work. Getting in touch with cultural resources trains people in their styles, skills and habits (Swidler, 2000).

Another function of culture is to establish and communicate group membership. It offers ways to see yourself as a member of a certain or more groups. In acting out the signals that belong to of this membership (this requires skills, styles and habits) boundaries are drawn (Swidler, 2000).

Last, but not least, culture offers resources to build and support a worldview. This contains ideas of what the world is like. People can, but not always do, use this overarching view to develop clear lines of action. These includes ideologies, scientific convictions or religious believe systems (Swidler, 2000).

STRATEGIES OF ACTION

When talking about the way people ‘use’ culture, it is about how culture “… actually influences people, shaping their thoughts, feelings, and action.” (Swilder, 2000: 79). Swidler criticizes the Weberian thinking of culture shaping goals or ends. She thinks culture shapes the means of patterns of action. This

is what she calls strategies of action. Culture’s capacities to shape self-images, styles, skills, habits, group membership and worldviews influence how a person acts in the longer run. Means do not depend on ends, but ends are created by the cultured capacities. The better a person is at a certain repertoire of skillset, the more likely he/she will use it. People can have multiple strategies of action next to each other and they can also conflict. A strategy of action gives individuals one or more approaches to deal with problems that occur in daily life. (Swidler, 2000)

CHANGE AND ACTION

In this research we are particularly interested in how culture is used in times of transition. Now that is shown how Swidler views the influence of culture, we can take a closer look how she explains the different ways culture is used and how this changes. She found different dimensions that are of influence. All dimensions can be more or less applicable to an individual case.

Swidler sees a difference between settled and unsettled lives. She found that people use less culture in settled times, when everything is stable and goes easily. People do not need to make sense of what is happening, because they feel secure. People have a very distant use of culture, it is more intertwined with action, more taken-for-granted. While in unsettled times people explore and use more of cultural resources to understand what’s going on in their lives in avoidance of insecurity. They actively explore different ‘options’ for a new way of organizing their life, new strategies of action. This degree of stability influences the need for culture. Although people have the same cultural resources at their disposal, some might use more culture because of their greater need to understand the world around them. Swidler calls those examined lives. Someone will search and ‘study’ their cultural repertoire more deeply in order to make sense. While others have more unexamined lives. Their life is quieter and they will not pay attention to certain parts of their repertoire or will only use it superficially. That doesn’t mean that culture doesn’t have any influence on settled, unexamined lives, only differs in the relation to experience from settled lives. Culture is more present and coherent when someone is exploring new strategies of action or examining ideas that are already in the repertoire. These new ‘glasses’ have to be the

‘right fit’ for explaining life. This means that culture and experiences should match. People attach more meaning to it. In more settled times, if cultural ideas and experiences in daily life do not always match it doesn’t really matter. Major transitions in life make people question and reexamine their, before take-for-granted, strategies of action. (Swidler, 2000)

Another difference in the use of culture Swilder found among her interviewees is the more or less coherent way people talk about love. Some people will use ideas from a more unified set, while the ideas of others are more used ‘at random’. A more coherent cultural frame does not mean someone’s action will be as coherent. The coherence of used cultural resources can differ, but also the coherence of how resources are used. (Swidler, 2000)

2.2 TRANSITIONAL EXPERIENCES

People have daily experiences that have an influence on how they think about themselves and the world around them. Usually those daily experiences go by unnoticed, because we are not that emotionally invested and they are taken-for-granted. But there are experiences that are big, heavy experiences that cannot go by unnoticed of influence because they shake us up, in a positive and/or negative way. Those experiences confront us with new situations where we do not know ourselves and do not have a way to think about it. This gives insecurity and the need for a new way to understand the situation and our selves. This is where culture comes in.

Quite some sociological literature, especially in medical sociology, deals with impactful experiences. Bury (1982) uses the concept of ‘biographical disruptions’, when talking about the influence of the chronic illness of rheumatoid arthritis. Heavy experiences like a chronic illness disrupt the ‘normality’ of daily life by sudden insecurity about the future. Bury describes three aspects of these disruptive experiences. It disrupts taken-for-granted assumptions that usually steer behavior without thinking. On a deeper level, there is the disruption of bigger explanatory systems. This leads to questioning life, choices and self. And then there is the reaction to the disruption, which asks for using resources to be able to handle the new situation (1982). Translating this to our study of culture, it offers a way to see

what the impact is of biographical disruptions on a person’s cultural repertoire. Bury’s insights can help to analyze the degree in which disruptions have impact on young adults’ lives and in what ways they deal with it. How do they make use of culture to make sense of the new situation? What does this mean for their sense of self? And does it have an effect on how they behave? The concept of biographical disruption has been used to study disruptions in health. It has a negative connotation, because it is related to experiences of pain and suffering. In relation to happiness, this would mean that biographical disruptions cause unhappiness. It also has a connotation of things that just happen, without the influence of a person, when something catches you off guard. Because of these connotations of events that produce unhappiness and of events that happen to you, the concept of biographical disruptions does not cover the total range of experiences that bring about changes in (the use of) a cultural repertoire.

Anthony Giddens’ concept ‘fateful moments’ has a more open meaning. Giddens describes it as a moment when “an individual stands, as it were, at a crossroads in his existence; or where a person learns of information with fatal consequences.” (1991: 33) This notion leaves room for experiences that are not per se of negative nature or without control, as does count for Bury’s biographical disruption. According to Giddens (1991), fateful moments also include the decision to get married or to start a business. When relating this to the case of young adults, the period in their life involves a lot of fateful moments like choosing a studying or moving out of their parents’ house. Fateful moments demand reflection of the self and deliberating potential consequences of choices and action. Because of the potential risk for the future, people tend to consult resources, whether it is advice of a friend or reading a self-help book. (1991) The concept of fateful moments adds to that of biographical disruptions, because of the openness to positive changing experiences that may influence someone’s cultural repertoire and the degree of control people have at those fateful moments.

Though called differently, the essence of these concepts is the same. They are about experiences that challenge the way individuals view the world and themselves, making life less secure. The fundaments of the frame through which everyday life is structured and experiences are understood is

questioned. The concepts of biographical disruptions and fateful moments are useful to analyze how changes in a persons’ cultural repertoire, notion of self and even action is brought about. The use of two different concepts, although seemingly the same, is for analytic reasons. The conceptual nuances do justice to the different degrees of impact experiences can have on repertoires, the sense of self of individuals and their strategies of action. To bracket the concepts of biographical disruptions and fateful moments the self-constructed term ‘transitional experiences’ will be used.

2.3 HAPPINESS

Different scientific fields have tried to shine a light on happiness. Probably the most is publicized on the topic of well-being (often interchangeably used for happiness) in psychology. Comparisons of happiness in different countries are made by the introduction of happiness indexes (Veenhoven, 1993; Diener, 2000). But also in the field of economy attention is given to happiness, researching the effects of income and economic situation on happiness (Easterlin, 1995; Frey & Stutzer, 2002; Oswald, 1997). Within sociology the most work on happiness is published in the 1970’s and 1980’s focusing on happiness in marriage (Orden & Bradburn, 1968; VanLaningham & Johnson, 2001; Hicks & Platt, 1970; Ryan, 1981).

Despite the enormous importance of well-being for collectives and the attention in fields like psychology and economics, as already put forward, most sociologists stay away from the topic of happiness. Researching happiness is sociologically relevant because of the positive effects it has on the functioning of collectives. Happiness should be a core sociological research subject because of the individual and collective power of well-being and of course the negative consequences of structural unhappiness within groups in society.

In scientific research there is no consensus on what happiness means and a great diversity of happiness conceptions is used. For this reason, psychologist Ed Diener introduced the concept of Subjective Well-being (SWB) in 1984. Diener (1984) defines subjective well-being as the subjective evaluation of life with the presence of pleasant emotions and the relative absence of unpleasant emotions. In a study of concepts of happiness in

dictionaries and other sources across time, Oishi et al found that there is much variety in conceptions of happiness across cultures (2013). Ryan and Deci state in their review of research on well-being that it can be roughly classified in the hedonic and eudaimonic approach. The hedonic perception of happiness evolves around feeling good, or wellbeing. The eudaimonic understanding of happiness contains of the contrast between good and bad experiences and the struggle for flourishing over time. But these two approaches are used in varied ways throughout the literature of happiness (2001).

Sociologist Mark Cieslik is an advocate of happiness research. He studied the experience of happiness by people in their everyday lives by doing in-depth interviews. He concludes that people view happiness in a complex way. Wellbeing is not seen just as flourishing, but flourishing in contrast with sacrifices and hard work. Cieslik states that this fits the eudaimonic idea of happiness, while most researchers study happiness from a thin, simplistic, hedonic account of happiness (2014).

This is also his critique on Frank Furedi’s book ‘Therapy Culture’ (2004). Furedi describes the therapeutic culture he thinks is present in Western societies today and why it has become so important: “Therapeutic culture today offers a distinct view about the nature of human beings. It tends to regard people’s emotional state as peculiarly problematic and at the same time as defining their identity. As a result, therapeutic culture regards the management of emotion as the most effective way of guiding individual and collective behavior.” And: ‘”Therapeutic culture does, therefore, provide a system of meaning and symbols through which people experience and make sense of the world.” (…) Furedi sees isolation and individuation as reasons why people interpret experiences as outcomes of their internal life instead of the lack of meaning provided by society. According to him, the produced therapy culture creates a narrow view on happiness that contains of just feeling good. Striving towards this kind of happiness makes people depended on the therapy industry. (2004) Mark Cieslik criticizes Furedi’s view on wellbeing. He thinks Furedi’s perspective on happiness is too simplistic and approached as a problem. According to Cieslik, there should be more focus on the complexity of happiness in everyday life and how that is embedded in

social connections and not in relation to modernity. (2014) This thesis studies first and foremost happiness in a qualitative, ‘thick’ way (Cieslik, 2014) to get an in-depth understanding of the use of culture and how this changes by experiences. This way the complexity of happiness of everyday life will be studied. But we will also analyze the use of cultures, in the sense Furedi describes the therapy culture (2004), in how people make sense of themselves and the world around them.

Besides the contribution to the sociological field of happiness, the topic of happiness is used as a ‘vehicle’ to study culture. Because the concept of happiness has so many different meanings that are, or could be, attached to it, it serves as a way for individuals to structure their life narrative around it. Happiness is a subject that means a lot to people. Which, because of the emotional scope, offers a topic to obtain useful data. The concept of happiness is an antonym. So discussing happiness, inherently means talking about unhappiness. Experiences of happiness and unhappiness are useful because the interest of this research is in cultural transitions, which are led by emotional experiences.

3. METHODOLOGY

3.1 DATA COLLECTION

For this research twenty in-depth interviews were conducted with young adults aged between 20 and 26 years old. Ten of the interviewees are female, ten male. All of the respondents are currently living in Amsterdam, but they grew up in a great diversity of villages and cities throughout the Netherlands. For the recruitment of respondents I used my own network, sending messages to friends, colleagues and putting a message on Facebook. All of the interviewees are higher educated, five of them recently finished their study and are currently working. The characteristics of the respondents are summarized in a table, see appendix II.

In recruiting respondents I was looking for a quite homogeneous group to be able to look for similarities. The data collected from this group of respondents is used to search for enriching theoretical insights about cultural mechanisms and the common cultural pool this particular group draws from in constructing their life narrative. As a researcher, being of the same age and having the same kind of ‘studying’ life, was experienced as an advantage when it comes to identification for me as for the respondent. It probably made it easier for respondents to ‘level’ with me as a researcher, knowing what it is like to conduct research. A lot of interviewees expressed that they were interested in participating because they were curious in how this kind of research would be in practice. The downside of this selection method was the selective non-response. This means a bias in the interest for the subject in general (that can say something about the kind of persons that want to participate) and also a bias in the kind of period respondents are in (insecure, instable, in need for thinking a lot about happiness). In hindsight, it didn’t result in research problems, because the group of respondents turned out to be varied enough on the dimensions that makes people differ in their use of culture. Respondents differed in the kind of transitional experiences that influenced their repertoire (also respondents that haven’t had noteworthy repertoire changing experience) and in what point they are in or after such a

transition. Nevertheless, the group of respondents was homogeneous enough to extract common culture repertoires.

The choice of doing in-depth interviews was based on the aim to get a thick description of repertoires of happiness and a better understanding of the ways culture is used when constructing a narrative. The interviews were semi-structured into four parts. The topics gave a little guidance, but where flexible to overlap or put in a different order following the course of the interview. The purpose of the little structure was for the interviewee to talk freely and construct his or her story in his or her own way. A more structured interview would have limited the interviewees in the ‘way’ they talk and would make the relation between the interviewees and me as an interviewer more formal and less trusting. Before starting the official data collection, I conducted three test interviews to get comfortable with the open-ended style of interviewing and to see if there where topics that I was missing. This also helped me to get to know the topics by heart. From then on I only needed the interview guide to check at the end of the interview if I didn’t miss a certain question and for reading the vignettes out loud. See appendix I for the interview guide.

The interviews started out with the question what someone’s daily life looks like. This offered entries on topics (study, work, the kind of period they are in) for further questioning. This gave a picture of the interviewee’s current life and the things that are important to him or her. Thereafter I usually moved over to the interviewee’s background (city, family, school etc.). This made it easier to understand how the interviewee makes sense of his or her self and life at this moment. The third part consisted of questions more specifically on happiness, in order to distil what kind of ideas an interviewee has on happiness and to see correspondence with their own experiences. At the end of the interview I presented one or more of the four vignettes with the subjects of work/money, love, travel and friendship. These vignettes were useful to see how the interviewees would react on a dilemma that wasn’t their own. Would they approach it on a more abstract level or draw strongly from personal experiences? Would they have a strong opinion or would they switch easily from perspective? During the interviews a next subject would only be broached when a former subject was saturated and the responded wouldn’t have anything to say about it anymore. The interview ended when all the

prepared topics were saturated and when I as the interviewer had a clear image of the respondent.

3.2 APPROACH

The aim of this research is to get a better understanding of how young adults use culture to construct a life narrative. According to this open research interest, a grounded theory approach is used (Glaser and Strauss, 1967). The research process is not seen as a linear process, but as moving back and forth through the stages of data collection, coding and analysis in a circular way. In this way the data can be approached in an open, inductive way, but also with deductive, shaping elements. (Hennink et al, 2011) This had the advantage of letting the data ‘speak for itself’. The richness of the interview data would not get lost when looking for a deeper understanding of the mechanisms of the use of culture. Of course Swidler’s theoretical approach to culture was used as a strong foundation. It offered some sensitizing concepts that guided and eventually narrowed down the scope of the research.

In-depth interviews were held to get insight in the self-constructed biography of young adults. Narrative research is useful to get into the self-understanding and allocated meaning. (Ezzy, 1998) Consciously or unconsciously, people leave an impression. Because of how they construct their story, what they emphasize and what they just mention sideways. It is the meaning they attach to certain issues, experiences, or parts of themselves, that create an image of somebody. According to Boersma et al (2009) the analysis of discourse is a way to research emotions. Bröer and Duyvendak view the analysis of ‘talk’ in relation to emotions as follows: “We do not need to reduce feelings to discourse to accept that language use is a prime way of learning how to feel. In language use, feelings are legitimized, questioned or inhibited.” (2009) Being well aware that the data collected is a construction of a narrative bounded to this particular time and place. Because the focus is on the mechanisms of how this construction comes about, this is not problematic.

3.3 ETHICS

Interviewing individuals on their personal life experiences is a delicate matter. As an interviewer I was well aware of the major ethical obligation to treat your interviewees and their stories with respect, both during the interview and afterwards in writing. At the beginning of the interview I made clear to the respondents that the interview had an open character and the data would be treated anonymously and with confidentiality. All interviewees agreed before hand that the interview was recorded. The names of the interviewees that are used in this research are fictitious.

The relationship between the interviewer and the interviewee is seen as a social relationship (Bourdieu, 1993). As an interviewer, a great sensitivity is required to be able to let someone speak freely, getting the desired data, but also reducing the symbolic violence. This symbolic violence (Bourdieu, 1993) can occur when the power balance between the interviewer and interviewee is off. This is why the atmosphere in which the interview will be taken place is of great importance. In determining the location of the interview I gave the respondents the choice to let the interview take place at their own house or in an office space at the movie theatre where I work. At someone’s house would have the advantage of the interviewee feeling comfortable in his or her own environment. But if someone would see this as intruding his or her privacy at forehand then there would be the option of the office space at my work. I chose the latter above a space at the university, because that would be too formal and impersonal. Besides, that place where I work has a relaxed atmosphere and shows a part of me. Sharing something of myself could break the stiff interviewer and interviewee relation. This is also why the power of small talk should not be underestimated. Beforehand I tried to break the ice by making jokes and telling something about myself, benefiting the trusting atmosphere and trying to eliminate a potential power difference.

During the interview, the interviewer must be able to balance the thin line between subtly steering to topics that are emotionally meaningful, and crossing the border when something gets too sensitive (Bourdieu, 1993). This way the interviewee could be putting up a wall or get his or her attitude can tilt towards distrusting the interviewer. Because of the emotional sensitivity that is dealt with, questions where asked openly. The interviewer is not the one who

creates the language or the frames in which a respondent tells his or her story. This way, the interviewee was able to construct his or her own narrative freely and stigmatization was avoided. Breaking down the asymmetry of the social relation between the interviewer and the interviewee gets to a deep understanding of where someone is coming from. Putting you as an interviewer in the interviewee’s shoes. This ‘intellectual love’ Bourdieu talks about benefits the ethical concerns and also the quality of the data required from the interview. (Bourdieu, 1993)

3.4 ANALYSIS

Interviews were transcribed verbatim. For coding I used Atlas Ti. The data were coded inductively, by starting with open coding. Of course the sensitizing concepts from Swidler’s culture theory were in the back of my mind and also influenced the way I looked at the data. The first four interviews were openly coded, when a point of saturation was reached. After that I structured the codes for a more axial way of coding for the rest of the transcripts. The resulted in a more deductive strategy, but still open to new codes.

After coding the transcripts I wrote short memo’s about every respondent guided by the codes that arose from the data. These summarized biographies helped to get a grip on the most remarkable observations and the story someone tries to build around him or herself. These memo’s, together with the coded transcripts made it easier to get a thorough understanding of the meaning respondents shared and to raise it to a conceptual level, connecting differences and similarities within the data.

4. NARRATIVES

In this chapter, we take a closer look at the narratives of four of the interviewed young adults. Not being able to tell all stories, I highlighted these four stories, because together they cover the diversity of the data the best. The biographies of the respondents must be seen as a whole in order to understand the patterns in their use of culture and how this is ‘wrapped around’ impactful life experiences. Their stories function as the basis for illustrating the findings.

4.1 STEFANIE (22) – WORKING ON THE SELF

Stefanie finds herself in a very turbulent phase in her life. With a lot of persistence, although rambling, she tells me everything that is needed to get an insight in her life thus far. She recently moved to Amsterdam where she studies and works as an intern at a TV channel. She tells me that she is having a hard time with “starting a new life”. Moving away from her friends and parents makes her feel insecure.

This insecurity is nothing new. Her childhood is characterized by instability. She has moved a lot. Her mother suffered from a manic-depression. As a kid, she found her mother twice after trying to commit suicide. She says she always felt like a mother to her mother, resulting in having a superficial relationship with her. Her father always had a lot of debts and drank a lot. She says she has a troubled relationship with him. Growing up, she never felt at home.

Two years ago she moved out of her parents’ house, because she could not take living with them anymore. After moving, “everything came out”. She got depressed because she “needed to process it all”. Despite al the other heavy experiences she had, she marked this moment as a turning point. Since then, she has been into therapy, trying to get a grip on her life and herself.

Stefanie: “… and on the other side, it was also good because now I finally talked to my parents about what their behavior has done to me all that time. And they never saw that and where angry that I had [study] delay and what depression? You are just lazy. They never saw how far I have come on my own, I’m also an only child. How I

managed by myself that I live here now and my internship and other things. And I also could be in the gutter like them. And that is what I threw out and that feels very nice, but it is a long process. And lots of therapy, which I have been doing for the last two years. So, yes…”

Being into therapy gave her new ways of explaining and understanding her life, behavior and self. This repertoire evolves around self-acceptance. Through this repertoire, she is really well able to explain her past experiences and connect them to each other. Despite that, her story seems a bit chaotic, moving quickly from the ‘therapy’ frame to another way of talking. This goes into extremes. This therapy frame allows her to compliment herself and it gives her understanding of the hard times she has gone through. But she switches easily to a very negative way of talking about herself. When asked to describe herself she responded:

Stefanie: “Then I can’t do it. Ridiculous really. If I rely on what other people say then, hm… I do have humor and also intelligent. A hard worker. I see myself as a strong person. But on the other side… Also very insecure. I find it so difficult to say this about myself! My god! Yes, on the one hand I think well, one day I think I look quite nice. I can’t complain. And on another day I think of myself as super ugly. But that is also human.”

Both ways of talking evolve around a different sense of self. On the one hand there is the strong, hard working sense of self. Working hard and seeing progress is something that moves her. Seeing improvement in her body due to working out, getting good grades or getting positive feedback at her internship. Those things supply her sense of self of a hard working, smart person. And on the other hand there is the insecure, low self esteem sense of self. This understanding of herself is ‘fed’ when things do not go so well. Then she is easily inclined to making it a failure of herself, contributing to a negative self-image. Or, as she explains, she compromises her insecurity by partying and getting superficial, sexual attention from men. This wild girl is also a part of her self-image. As we can see, Stefanie is struggling to get her new sense of self, her new ideas and behavior in line.

These two faces also show when she talks about the future. She stresses she would really like to have a stable life for herself with a nice man on her side and a good career. Her confident ‘strong’ sense of self allows her to strive and hope for this picture of the future, because it seems within reach. When it comes to the topic of children, she switches from the one repertoire to the other:

Stefanie: “I am so afraid that I will do the same as my parents did. And I do not want to do that to my child. And you of course say I can give that love, but you often see people falling into the same pattern. And I would find that the worst thing of my life, if I couldn’t offer my love to a child. And that sucks, because of course I would really just want to be a normal girl, but I am just that wild chick because I run away for things.”

This incoherence in sense of self makes Stefanie depend on cultural resources in order to get a better grip on moving through her daily life. As already elaborated on, therapy offers a new kind of repertoire. She also emphasizes the importance of her friends. They give her advice when needed and a pep talk when she thinks low of herself. Especially her best friend, who she describes as “her opposite”: a very confident, free spirit, stable and positive. She gave Stefanie the advice to enjoy herself and find her own strength on a moment when she felt down. That still resonates. Also her mentor at her internship has provided her of an idea that was very useful to her. To see her emotions as something human, accepting them and not making it worse then it is. Because of the instability in her life, she is in need of a cultural frame that fits. That makes her very susceptible for new ideas. Stefanie: “And yes, I am really curious what my life is going to be like, but yes, I am really busy with therapy and working on myself. I know that I know myself well in everything, in my strengths and in my weaknesses. And I think that that is something positive.”

As shown, Stefanie is still in an unstable period of her transition, actively trying to get a hold on herself. A discrepancy still exists between her

already renewed repertoire and her ‘old’ sense of self. With her turbulent background, she has never been able to establish a coherent, stable sense of self. Motivated by the goal of stability, she keeps ‘working on her self’.

4.2 GERBEN (25) – PARADOXICAL POSITIVITY

Gerben’s life has recently drastically changed. He had a car accident when traveling with a friend, which left him with a broken neck. Now, five months later, he is sitting in front of me like nothing happened. Only the neck brace he bears with him and the two almost unnoticeable marks of a halo frame give away that something is off.

Until the accident, his life had been very steady. He has a very stable background and does not recall any transitioning experiences. Not to long ago he finished his study and after that he had worked for a company investing in start-ups. Before his travel he quit his job, due to the lack of possibility for personal growth, and was in the process of getting a consultancy traineeship, which he sees as more challenging. He found himself very happy with his life: having friends he knows for a long while, a girlfriend and getting a lot out of playing sports.

Currently, his life revolves around his rehabilitation. This is in sharp contrast with his very active ‘normal’ life before the accident. He always has been fanatic at sports. During his study he did the exclusive Honour’s Programme and the recent switch of jobs was motivated by a lack of possibility for personal growth. Progress is the recurring theme. He gets a lot from getting better at things and seeing progress. This is in line with his sense of self. He characterizes himself as a very ambitious and positive person. This cultural repertoire has been very useful to him. And it still is, because it also comes back in the way he talks about his recovery.

Gerben: “But the good thing for me is, that I can make steps. I mean, on day one I could only do this with my head [turns his head a little bit] and now I can do this [turns his head much further]. That’s why it works differently, because for my own feeling I don’t have to accept that this is forever. […] And that’s nice. It helps you further. It gives grip. And the idea that I can do a lot of things later on.”

The progress drives him. His culture frame of setting a goal and working hard to get there helps him. Although his life has been upside down, he still is able to use the same cultural frame and is able to look at himself in the same way. But besides getting motivation from progress, he also broached another side of his self, namely being very down to earth. This gives a very paradoxical way of talking about the future. He starts with the positive side of having hope, but quickly nuances this to not ‘lose himself’ in this hope:

Gerben: “But there are a lot of things of which I still think, I dream about running for example. And I was all about sports. Yes… there still is a chance that I can never do that again, you know. We just do not know yet.”

When asked what thoughts helped him through the days when laying in the hospital, he referred to a strategy that he got from his mother and brother: to look at the process on the short term. The next scan or his move to a hospital in another country. What did not help him at all was when people told him that it was going to be okay. The idea of not being able to control what the future will look like makes him insecure. Short-term thinking gave him a feeling of having grip, of security. This strategy resonated with his sense of self as a hard worker and a positive person repertoire of goal-orientation and process. Gerben: “And I’ve said from the beginning, that for me the force of the hit depends on how much I will be able to do later. Of course this is something that you never want to go through and it is horrible, but in a year, or two, if I will be able to do what I used to, then it would not hit me as hard as when I will not be able to do something the next eighty years.”

He says he found it hard to be a patient. He refuses to see himself as a handicapped person. And so he distances himself from this handicapped identity, focusing on getting back to being his ‘normal self’. In order to get his sense of self up, he makes the success of his recovery so far as something of his own achievement, while he sees the potential setbacks as things that are beyond his control. He says he always took good care of his body and sees this as the reason that it is now strong and recovers more easily. Mentally he

compares himself to others, telling that he sometimes thinks he is “… a good person to have this.” Confirming his self-image as being a positive person. This gives him a feeling of self-confidence.

Although the accident could be marked as a biographical disruption, Gerben’s cultural repertoire shows no changes, only an addition of small skills but which were in line with his sense of self. After a heavy disruption like this, you would expect him to be in need of a repertoire to understand this new, totally sudden situation, because the repertoire he usually uses seems only suitable for a stable life. But it seems that he is able to use his ‘old’ cultural frame of hard work and progress, and also keep his self-image of a positive, ambitious, strong person in tact.

This could be because the consequences of the accident are not clear yet. He himself explains the paradox of security and insecurity. On the one hand, the fact that he doesn’t know what his future will be like scares him, but on the other hand it gives him hope. So he is in need of managing his hopes in order to cope with what has happened, his changed daily life and prospects of the future. He does this within his ‘old’ cultural frame by on the one hand using working hard and progress as motivators for keeping hope, but on the other hand nuancing this hope by putting it in perspective. If his recovery is fully successful and his life goes back to ‘normal’, he probably does not need a structural change in his repertoire. But if it turns out that he will not be able to run for the rest of his life, Gerben will probably be needing much more culture and maybe different culture to be able to make sense of his new life. Only then, he will need to accept the changed situation and ‘make it his own’.

4.3 ANNE (23) – ‘OWNING’ A NEW FRAME

Anne’s daily life is filled with a lot of different activities. She studies at the university and does three specializations. Two days a week she works as a sales assistant. Besides that, she also has two other jobs she sometimes does. It is a lot, she admits, but she enjoys doing it all, so then things go easily.

But two years ago her life looked totally different. She studied at an expensive private college with a very prestigious culture. She was very passionate about her study, but the workload was heavy and there was a lot

of competition among students. When Anne got the disease Pfeiffer, she still continued to work as hard, with little of sleep and relaxation. This resulted in a burn-out, and because of that she was forced to quit Artemis.

Anne: “I cried a lot. But that was mainly because I, I had worked very hard for 1.5 years what for such a stupid situation, that’s how I saw it back then, was taken away from me. And I found that so terribly unfair. I was really mad about that. Yes also because they wouldn’t give me a resit and I felt very bad. Only something small needed to happen and I was upset. So I think I was very sad about that situation then. I didn’t have peace with it.”

As this quote makes clear, her study meant so much to her that a great part of her sense of self depended on it. She says that study gave her a sense of uniqueness, being able to get into school you had to get accepted for, being talented. She links this urge to proof herself to being bullied at school and wanting to compete with her older brother and sister. Not having this study meant losing meaning.

Right after recovering, a lot of things changed in her life. She moved to Amsterdam, started her current study, her relationship ended and she got a new job. The disruption of her ‘old’ life by the burn-out left her forced to develop new ideas and skills. Right after telling me about her burn-out, she says:

Anne: “If we are talking about luck, then this is the best thing that happened to me. It has had a lot of impact on the way I live my life.”

While the disruptive experience of a burn-out was hard for her, it resulted in a fateful moment, making radical choices. Her ‘old’ self was to be renewed, accompanied by a new way of looking at her life and the world. She attached meaning to new things. Her current study offered her enrichment of her cultural repertoire.

Anne: “I use to be very jealous [at her sister]. But not at all anymore. I would not want to switch. And that is something of the last two years. Because I notice that I look differently to the world. And also since I study Art History and Philosophy and those

kinds of things, I have more knowledge about Humanities. […] And in what different kinds of ways you can look at the world. And that you can choose to let a theory go and adhere a new one. And that it can improve your life so much. That is what I have experienced.”

These new resources gave her a diversity of new glasses to look at her life, which contributed to the challenge she faced. On the one hand she had learned that the goal-orientated achievement strategy could make her lose herself in things, as it did with her study resulting in a burn-out. On the other hand the feeling of achieving something gives her a sense of self, contributing to her happiness. She says it gives the same feeling when getting a sticker at school as a kid, when doing a task well. Her new resources allowed her to accept this ‘passionate’ side of herself, but now organizes it differently in her daily life. The avoidance of the “traumatic” feeling of stress and the desire to feel energetic motivates her to apply those skills. She now only does a few things a day, giving it her full attention.

Anne: “Well, I think it also has to do with if you are satisfied with the way that you live your life. It sounds strange in this context, but before I knew that I often was too late and then you also feel guilty when you are too late. When I am late now sometimes and everybody knows that you are always on time, then it feels different. I know that is why I do not have that much stress anymore, because I have a better image of myself. How I have to deal with those things.”

As shown in the quote above, Anne managed to make the new ideas her own, developing new skills that fit her sense of self without he risk of her sense of self being taken away. From the period of instability she has been able to get a new cultural frame that gives her a stable way of moving through life. Her life is a lot “more simple” she says.

4.4 MARNIX (26) – ABSENCE OF CULTURE

Marnix just recently left his student life behind him. Since a couple months he has a steady, but quite a demanding job as a consultant and he moved in with

his girlfriend. He tells me that, although he is still getting used to the rhythm of his new job, he has a very stable life.

Until now his life is characterized by stability. He grew up in a small village with his sister and parents. He describes his upbringing as ‘protected’ and his high school period as ‘safe’. When moving to Amsterdam to study, he went to live with friends from his high school. After that, he lived for four years in the same house, in the same neighborhood he currently lives. He emphasizes that the friendships he has had since his childhood are still the most important to him. More recent friendships always dilute.

After some insistence, Marnix describes two periods in his life that where he felt less secure compared to the rest of his life. The first year of his study in Amsterdam was the first time he struggled, getting used to the new environment.

Marnix: “I remember, speaking about happiness, I don’t know exactly why, but I know that in the beginning I was really unhappy at university. About just everything. I found everything shit. I think the worst was that I, again, was together with a few people from my high school. But, I don’t know, that just was, that university is also not the most appealing institution. And then I was, you know, in the morning I had to travel one and a half hours with the bus or something. […] And when I was there, I just didn’t know it all. The study also was in English. I chose it myself of course, but when you suddenly are there then you have to switch of course. Yes and then you notice that you are on a higher level. Then you notice that you cannot lean back and just be the smartest. Suddenly everybody can think properly. It took a while to get used to that.”

This quote shows how he had a hard time getting to know his new surroundings and adjusting his sense of self. From seeing himself as one of the smartest, without having to work hard, the new situation makes this notion of self not really valuable when surrounded by other smart people and suddenly required to work hard. The other period of insecurity was only recently, when he finished his study and needed to find a new house and a job. When talking about mirroring yourself with others, he said:

Marnix: “Maybe when I was looking for a job I did that a bit. It sure is a moment when you have had a few years of studying and you think of yourself as a smart guys, and then you suddenly have to make it reality. Then you really need to find a job. You look around at other people, some having problems with finding a job, others go through it easily. Having the most fantastic options, so to say. And where am I? Am I in the one group or in the other?

He tells me how he then realized how it is easy to take such fundamental things for granted and how it can feel really unstable when those basic needs aren’t arranged. Both experiences changed the perception of he had of himself for quiet a while.

Compared to his further very stable life, these transition periods left him feeling insecure and changed the ways he views things. But when looking at how he talks about it, the explanations he gives are of a very practical nature. Marnix speaks about his life in a concise manner, giving short answers and without referring to much cultural resources. His limited use of culture can be explained by the character of his transitional experiences. These experiences were far from deeply disruptive for a long period of time. As he states himself, these are things you just “have to get used to”. He doesn’t need to drastically shift frames in order to be able to explain what is happening in his life. Whereas culture can offer a lot of different ‘options’ to view the world, Marnix seems to never really had the need or the necessity to look for new frames or didn’t bump into very different views than he is used to. Besides the gradual, non-disruptive character of these transitions, he also has very stable resources to refer to in understanding his life. The people in his familiar surrounding shared his experiences and so the glasses through which he could explain these changes were within reach, so he didn’t have to look anywhere else.

When looking at the fateful moments in his life, the choices that were made have been pretty obvious and within reach. The choice of his high school was based on his sister going there. He shared his choice of study with a lot of guys from his high school, because it was just the logical thing to do within his social environment. When asked if he ever thought of studying something else he said:

Marnix: “I didn’t know what else I wanted to do. Going back to my high school where I got to on my scooter before nine and just smoked a cigarette wasn’t an option. Right? […] I just couldn’t do that. It wasn’t an option. So I had to.”

Also in explaining his choice to study in Amsterdam, he had the same kind of reasoning:

Marnix: “Amsterdam always appealed more to me. And also all my friends went there. It wasn’t really an option to go somewhere else for that matter. And I still lived at home in the beginning. And Amsterdam is quite close of course. I also found it comforting to still be at home for the first half of the school year. I also had to get my drivers license and that kind of things.”

As we see in the quotes above, his social environment plays a great part in his decision-making, limiting the range of options he felt he had. This left his with little need for a lot of deliberation. He underpins his choices with very practical reasoning. His life experiences didn’t encourage him to expand his cultural repertoire, leaving him with the options that are giving to him by his ‘closed’ social environment.

5. CULTURAL TRANSITION

We just ‘zoomed in’ on the stories of Stefanie, Gerben, Anne and Marnix. Now let’s take a step back and look at the differences and similarities in how they use culture when faced with transitions. In the previous chapter we already touched upon the different dimensions that shape a person’s cultural use. This chapter aims to highlight these dimensions more by comparing the use of culture of these four young adults. To get an overview of the dimensions in which the respondents are the same or different, see the table below.

Stefanie Gerben Anne Marnix

(Un)settled life Unsettled life Unsettled life Settled life Settled life (Un)examined life Examined life Examined life Examined life Unexamined life Making use

of/searching for new cultural resources A lot (therapy) Little (despite therapy) A lot (study) Little Changes in cultural repertoire New added ‘therapy’ frame Switching between two well-known frames

New added ‘focus’ frame

Stayed with his well-known frame Use of culture Switching between

older and new added cultural frame

Working hard to make use of his old cultural frame

Made her new cultural frame her own

Easily able to make use of his old cultural frame Changes in self-image Eager to ‘own’ her

new found sense of self

Doesn’t allow

changes to his sense of self Established a new sense of self Established little changes to his sense of self

The figure below roughly shows the transitional process we are interested in and is divided in three parts (A, B, C) according to the questions we want answered. This schematic display is useful to get a clear image and does not allow the nuances that are elaborated on in the text. First (A) we will take a look at what happens when change occurs in someone’s life. How does change in (the use of) cultural repertoires come about? Secondly (B) the focus is on how people deal with this disruption, searching for explanations by making use of culture in different ways. Last (C), we look at the end of a transitional period. How do young adults try to establish a new status quo? And what has changed in (the use of) their cultural repertoire?