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Symbolic resources and responsibility in transitionsTANIA ZITTOUN is interested in transitions in young people's lives and especially in the resources that people find to facilitate these, in their everyday lives and in fiction. Her main past studies have addressed teenagers’ transition to work, adults’ transitions to parenthood, and various ruptures in young people's lives. As a developmental and cultural psychologist, she is currently researching and teaching the psychosociology of transitions at the University of Lausanne (Switzerland). She would join University of Neuchâtel (Switzerland) as professor of education in August. Address: Institut de Psychologie, Université de Lausanne, Humense, CH – 1015 Lausanne, Switzerland. [email: tania.zittoun{at}unil.ch and tania.zittoun{at}unine.ch] Since youth transitions have been redefined as flexible periods of change, it becomes difficult to conceptually distinguish them from any other transition period in people's life. Transitions are here defined as involving three types of interdependent processes (social relocation, knowledge construction and meaning-making). From a cultural psychological perspective, youth transitions can be qualified by young people's access to symbolic responsibility. Through a case study, the article shows how cultural elements chosen and used by a person can support processes of transition. Finally, the article sketches a model of uses of symbolic resources enabled by symbolic responsibility.
Key Words: symbolic resources • youth • transition • development • psychology • meaning making • culture
Young, Vol. 15, No. 2,
193-211 (2007) |
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