I think Genevieve may give us a hint in asking about the role of
adults in young-adult cliqueishness. Could it be our exclusion of
younger-adults from older-adult social relations and
organizations that forces them to try to recreate functional-
scale communities by the most elementary principles (in-group
solidarity/ out-group aggression; exclusivity principles; badges
of membership loyalty, etc.).
It seems that what we find bizarre or pathological about the
cliques is the fact that the 'cliqueishness' of these small-scale
units is not mitigated by their being further organized at higher
levels into still larger networks (as older-adult institutions
do). People are forced to make single affiliations instead of
multiple ones, are limited by groups instead of being able to
mobilize various social networks as resources and
counterbalances, group-indexing characteristics become greatly
exaggerated instead of remaining fluid as people shift among
roles in different groups, or appeal to balancing qualities
needed for the small-scale group to be able to integrate into the
larger-scale ones, etc.
Is this one of the many implicit strategies of infantilization of
young adults which function in our society to justify depriving
this age-group of its adult rights? By excluding them we force
them to turn to behavior patterns that seem to justify their
exclusion. N'est-ce pas?
JAY.
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JAY LEMKE.
City University of New York.
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