Aged Agency

This chapter develops a theory of agency as aged. It presents one of the first views of agency as something that changes across the life course. The chapter traces the story of a girl whose leg was cut by a machete. While the girl’s adoptive mother claimed that the cut was an accident, a child said that he saw the mother purposely cut her daughter’s leg. As various people in the village adjudicated these claims, the chapter shows that their interpretations of speech were affected by people’s statuses as children or adults. Adults in Jajikon view children as what the author calls “nonmoral agents” and say that “children cannot lie.” These ideologies of childhood and speech give children the ability to do and say things that adults cannot. They give children aged agency.

Introduction

The introduction asks a basic question: What makes children and adults different from each other? The chapter focuses on how Marshallese children and adults use words and goods differently, as well as on Marshallese children’s lack of “shame” (āliklik). It argues that these differences are not natural but cultural: children are socialized to do things that are inappropriate for their elders to do. This production of difference has numerous implications for anthropological theory: it shows that agency is aged, that past research on giving is incomplete, and that socialization should be seen not as a movement from novice to expert but as the process of producing oneself as different from others. While explaining these points, the chapter also introduces readers to the atoll environment of the Marshall Islands, the author’s ethnographic and sociolinguistic research methods, and the organization of the book.

Conclusion

The conclusion argues for a view of culture and linguistic practices as aged. It describes what happened to several of the children after the events in this book and then considers the impact of historical change. It discusses the distinction between cohort variation and age variation, demonstrating that all of the differences discussed in the book are examples of age variation. The conclusion then reviews data that show how understanding cultural reproduction, socialization, cultural change, agency, and giving requires an analysis of age differences. Finally, it argues for a renewed attention to age in cultural and linguistic anthropology.

“Give Me My Food”

This chapter analyzes the production of relative age through discussing children’s efforts to get other children to give. It explicitly contrasts children’s direct modes of interaction with the indirect adult-adult interaction patterns discussed in chapter 3. The chapter focuses on one small child who walked into a church while sucking on a lollipop and three older children who attempted to get him to share his food. These four children did a number of things that adults avoid: display their food in public, directly demand food, directly criticize and insult other children, and directly refuse to give. These direct forms of speech are not natural results of children’s immaturity. Rather, they are techniques through which children mark and negotiate their hierarchical status relationships—who has power over whom. The chapter argues that these power negotiations are also age negotiations. Through their speech, children index themselves as children and construct relative age.

Socializing Age Differences

This chapter analyzes how interactions socialize people into age-specific linguistic practices, social behaviors, and subjective reactions. The chapter follows the story of Jackie. Too ashamed to run an errand, she tries to pass the errand off to her younger kin, Sisina. The chapter compares Jackie with Sisina, focusing specifically on their speech, emotions, and actions. It then analyzes the linguistic and social pressures that led Jackie and Sisina to feel, speak, and act differently, examining first the influences that produced Jackie as mature and ashamed and then the influences that produced Sisina as immature and lacking shame. The chapter expands on the idea of dual indexicality to argue for a view of language socialization as the continuous production of differences and a view of immaturity as a social production.

On the Road

This chapter analyzes how adults use indirection to hide dangerous acts such as avoiding giving, requests, criticisms, and lies. It focuses on a trip the author took with a friend to go buy soda and her many linguistic and semiotic mistakes. As she learned what to say and what not to say, the author gained valuable insights into the role of indirection in adult relationships and the inevitable leakage of signs. People’s words never entirely hide their goods, requests, or lies. As a result, successfully avoiding giving depends on others, specifically on people ignoring the signs of possession. Since people need not cooperate, avoiding giving is inevitably dangerous; adults are better off when they can displace responsibility for it onto someone else. By framing these conclusions with an analysis of the author’s trip to buy soda, the chapter also reveals how the experience of fieldwork leads to ethnographic discovery.

What Is Age and Where Does It Come From?

This chapter reviews the research on age and the life course. It argues that age differences are cultural and produced through interaction. The chapter defines “age” and “immaturity” and then discusses how ideologies of age and experiences of the life course differ across cultures and contexts. It compares three different types of life course variation: cohort differences, differences between children in different contexts (including gender differences), and age differences. Investigating age differences requires building upon theoretical developments in the study of gender and race to explicitly focus on how age itself is socialized. The chapter argues for a new view of language socialization not as an interaction between novices and experts but as the constant and continuous production of differences, often age differences. This new model provides insight not only into socialization but also into cultural and linguistic practices more broadly.

“Give Me My Child”

Chapter 1 introduces Marshallese social and economic life, arguing that in the Marshall Islands age is power and power is age. The chapter tells the story of a young woman who faces a very common situation in the Marshall Islands: a request from a relative to adopt her newborn infant. Examining how and why different family members had the right to claim this infant, the chapter also discusses Marshallese history, social life, interaction patterns, and the culturally specific emotion āliklik (shame). Readers will learn about Marshallese kinship patterns, economic practices, colonial and postcolonial histories, religious organizations, subjectivities, and the power of age. As the chapter discusses different aspects of Marshallese history and society, it becomes clear that kin and age relationships were themselves transformed by negotiations for an infant girl.