Leisure forms youth

This work is in the wake of detailed surveys on the cultural practices of the French published regularly by Olivier Donnat – which, however, are not interested in those under fifteen, and previous work by Sylvie Octobre on the cultural leisure activities of 6-14 year olds. years. Its project is in fact to analyze recent cultural developments as they are experienced from 11 to 17 years old, in a sphere marked by the articulation of digital technology and new activity supports with more traditional leisure activities (musical practices, artistic, sporting). It is about understanding how children and adolescents grow up today in this continent of serious leisure where objects, activities, supports, conversations occupy the center. The methodology of the survey, consistent with this project, is remarkable: monitoring by panel of 3,900 children interviewed four times, supplemented by targeted portraits of adolescents, and questionnaires given to the parents of students questioned at 11 years old. Broader questions were also asked about the respondents’ relationship to school and the future, but also to their own physical appearance, relationships with their peers and family. In short, it is a collective and above all evolving portrait of childhood and adolescence through its leisure activities, where the question of cultural practices stricto sensu is linked to those, broader, of transmissions, of maturation and construction of the individual. The work is structured very clearly into four questions.

Tell me what your hobbies are and I’ll tell you who you are… but also how old you are. From now on, the maturation of a child does not only take place through the exercise of the profession of student, child – in the family – and young person – in the group – well identified and commented on but through a fourth profession, that of cultural consumer. It is partly misnamed, moreover, as the authors themselves recognize, to the extent that consumption is also practices, and often passions. From 11 years old to 17 years old, we move from a continent marked by reading, television and games to a universe much more centered on digital technology and musical universes. The college constitutes at this level an intermediate stage, an opening of cultural possibilities at the same time as a place of provisional group conformity, which then gradually gives way to a great singularization of tastes.

Tell me who you are and I’ll tell you what you do. The combined effects of social origin and gender are analyzed here both separately and in their interactions. Large areas of leisure activities are little marked by social differences – artistic and sporting practices in primary school and college, concern for one’s appearance, increasingly widely shared, ability to define oneself finely across musical divisions. Others are much more clearly: the massive and exclusive use of television is becoming characteristic of working-class circles. ; adolescents in vocational high schools are characterized by low participation in supervised cultural and sporting activities. Adult moral panics are shaken by many observations: there are more bad students than good students who do not play video games, however, only in a more predictable sense. This chapter also confirms the gendered fabric of individuals through leisure, both in the activities chosen, the stars idolized, while blurring it in places, when intimate conversation becomes masculine and digital skills also feminine.

The third question: Tell me what you do, I’ll tell you who you look like, tackles the question of transmissions head-on. First of all, family-related, even though the general educational discourse of parents favors the idea of ​​a triple function of these leisure activities: development, relaxation and support for success. It should be noted that, all social origins combined, half of parents have introduced their children to their passion and that 8 out of 10 encourage them to practice it. However, the authors distinguish several educational climates around these leisure activities. Strongly marked by social origins, they are more or less centered on voluntary transmission, and on the possibility of implementing it – conflicts on this subject are, for example, more the work of working class circles, making inheritances more or less uncertain. . But it should be noted that these legacies should only be considered in interaction with other forms of transmission. In particular, juvenile sociability, but also of siblings – an object rarely given autonomy in the analysis – can in certain cases compensate or compensate for the vagaries of inheritance, but also weaken them, when a family climate favorable to transmission does not exist. not find sufficient relays.

Finally, the fourth question asks the question of the future of adolescents aged 11 to 17, and draws statistical trajectories based on the four levels considered. They are incredibly diverse, occupying almost the entire space of possible statistics, testifying once again, if necessary, to the individualization of this domain, but also judged more or less favorable, by researchers, depending on whether they give rise to lasting attachments, to more and more discoveries of activities or, on the contrary, to a weakening, a dispersion, an impoverishment of this domain. Long, very precise portraits give flesh to the most statistically frequent trajectories, showing in a rather dizzying manner the number of micro-choices that young people face in terms of leisure.

Let’s put it bluntly: the profusion and precision of the statistical results provided by the study make it both interesting and difficult to read. If the specialist in one or other of the questions dealt with in the book will certainly find something to satisfy his curiosity, it is sometimes difficult to prioritize the importance of the observations made, even if the structure of the book helps to trace an itinerary in this abundant book. Portraits of young people in particular are sometimes so precise that they struggle to give a global vision of their maturation, perhaps paradoxically lacking… Basically, while studies on youth culture have often been polarized by academic debates, and that the little echo of cultural studies in France have made Naruto and Harry Potter less than legitimate subjects, the book shows how it is now impossible to consider the socialization and education of young people by ignoring this polyphonic set of opportunities and activities in which they trace their path. It also outlines the outline of new inequalities, invisible to institutions, and illegible within the usual frameworks, but which can undoubtedly weigh heavily on individual trajectories, an entire field that it invites us to explore. In particular, does the question of how young people’s future projects relate to this cultural experience not merit further investigation, even though they formulate official projects which appear very cut off from it, while being confronted with models alternative success stories at school ? In this sense, the temporality of such a long research, which is the price and interest of it, and whose authors explain to what extent it is difficult to carry out in the current context, could be further profitably extended to understand what young adults make of often significant investments. In short, in the age of digital media, this study is a strong contribution, also opening new areas, to the understanding of what growing up means today.