Dissertation Research: The Role of Adolescent Initiation Rituals in Shaping Youth Behavior In Rural Tanzania

论文研究：青少年启蒙仪式在塑造坦桑尼亚农村青少年行为中的作用

• 批准号: 0850672
• 负责人: Jill Korbin
• 金额: $ 1.5万
• 依托单位: Case Western Reserve University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2009
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2009-04-15 至 2010-09-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0850672&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Dissertation; Research; Role; Adolescent; Initiation

Graduate student Meghan C. Halley, with the guidance of Dr. Jill E. Korbin, will undertake ethnographic and comparative research examining the role of adolescent initiation rituals in shaping adolescent behavior in rural Mtwara, Tanzania. The rural district of Mtwara is one of only a few regions in Tanzania in which adolescent initiation rituals are still widely practiced. Referred to as unyago for girls and jando for boys, these rituals provide young people with explicit instruction on gender roles and family life, including reproduction. Despite the long history of these rituals, recent changes both in the practices themselves and in the social, political, and economic contexts in which they occur have fueled controversy over the role of these practices in shaping youth behavior. Through person-centered ethnography of youths' experiences of the initiation process, the researcher will explore how individuals understand, interpret, and utilize the concepts, values, and meanings discussed in unyago and jando. She will also utilize a systematic, comparative framework to examine the interaction between these rituals and other underlying biopsychological, environmental, economic, and cultural factors that may influence youths' reproductive health knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors. This research is important for its potential to improve social science theory regarding the salient factors shaping enculturation during adolescence in general, as well as the shifting role of adolescent initiation practices within this process. As traditional practices such as unyago and jando meet with emerging concerns over adolescent reproductive health, in-depth, systematic examination of the role of such practices in shaping youth behavior is necessary to address these concerns.

在吉尔·E·科宾（Jill E. Korbin）博士的指导下，研究生梅根·哈利（Meghan C. 姆特瓦拉（Mtwara）农村地区是坦桑尼亚仅有的少数几个地区之一，在该地区仍然广泛实践青少年启动仪式。这些仪式被称为女孩和男孩的Jando，为年轻人提供了有关性别角色和家庭生活的明确指导，包括繁殖。 尽管这些仪式有悠久的历史，但在实践本身以及他们发生的社会，政治和经济环境中，最近的变化都引发了人们争议这些实践在塑造青年行为中的作用。 通过以人为本的青年人对启动过程经验的民族志，研究人员将探讨个人如何理解，解释和利用Unyago和Jando讨论的概念，价值观和含义。她还将利用系统的，比较的框架来检查这些仪式与其他潜在的生物心理学，环境，经济和文化因素之间的相互作用，从而可能影响青年的生殖健康知识，态度和行为。 这项研究对于它在整个青春期的显着因素以及在此过程中青春期起始实践的转移作用的转变作用而言，这对于改善社会科学理论的潜力很重要。随着诸如Unyago和Jando等传统实践对青少年生殖健康的新兴担忧，深入，系统地检查这种做法在塑造青年行为中的作用是为了解决这些问题。