Abstract

GUIMARAES, Jamile. “It opened my mind”: transitioning from childhood to adolescence. Etnográfica [online]. 2023, vol.27, n.2, pp.341-364.  Epub Aug 22, 2023. ISSN 0873-6561.  https://doi.org/10.4000/etnografica.13629.

This article analyses the processes of transition from childhood to adolescence. The ethnographic research was conducted in a peripheral neighbourhood in the city of São Paulo, Brazil, with adolescents between 11 and 16 years old. The methodological instruments used were observation, ethnographic conversations and open interviews. The interaction with the teenagers took place in spaces of youth sociability and a public school. The transition experience is based on the discourses and practices that daily ground the identity negotiation within the intricacies of the symbolic, social and material boundaries of adolescence. Despite the tendency to de-standardize the course of life, culturally, roles and statuses are still socially recognized ways of manifesting passages between phases. The social learning of age is operationalized in power relations and scientific knowledge rooted in the social imaginary that both establishes norms for the constitution of adolescents, and supports the reproduction of traditional models of gender and sexuality.

Keywords : adolescence; transition; gender; sexuality; generation.

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