CHAPTER THREE - Adolescent Issues and Coming-of-Age Ceremonies

A: BACKGROUND

4. Strange Ceremonies: Coming-of-Age in Different Cultures

Below are some examples of how this works in different cultures, in terms of comparative anthropology.

In traditional Aborigine culture, the entrance to male adolescence is marked by the “walkabout”, a test in which the individual boy is sent off to spend up to a year alone in the wild. There, he will need to use the tracking and survival skills that he has learned while growing up, in order to survive on his own. If the boy passes this test and returns to his tribe, he will do so as a new, self-confident young man, secure in his ability to play a valued part in the life of the tribe.

In certain African tribes, part of the initiation into the next stage of life includes a test of the individual's hunting skills. A youth will have to bring back a particular animal that he has hunted alone.

In some native American cultures, there will be an element of isolation, where a boy will have to go away and survive specific night adventures.

In addition, many ceremonies might include ritual elements of physical pain, or physical marking, such as ceremonies where participants undergo blows, whipping, or the scarring of skin.

In general, one of the apparent features in this particular set of transitional ceremonies is the emphasis on independence. The concept behind it is that the individual enters into the ceremony as a child, but emerges from it in a different, more independent role, accepted by the collective as an individual capable of contracting their own relationship with the society.

In particular - especially for boys - the specific form of the ceremony is invariably shaped by an emphasis on the characteristics that the society most values in its adults:

A society that prizes physical skills (such as: hunting, tracking, speed, endurance) as being essential to survival, is likely to emphasise these qualities in its ceremony. The necessary skills will be woven into a ceremony which will naturally reinforce the traditional belief system of the group, so that the individual will emerge from the ceremony with the new status strengthened by the blessing of the traditional gods, or deities.