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Tricks of Festival: Children, Enculturation, and American Halloween
Author(s) -
CLARK CINDY DELL
Publication year - 2005
Publication title -
ethos
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.783
H-Index - 44
eISSN - 1548-1352
pISSN - 0091-2131
DOI - 10.1525/eth.2005.33.2.180
Subject(s) - enculturation , socialization , normative , meaning (existential) , psychology , developmental psychology , subject (documents) , gender studies , social psychology , sociology , pedagogy , epistemology , philosophy , library science , computer science , psychotherapist
The American children's ritual, Halloween, involves an emergent, active and complex process rather than unidirectional socialization of children by adults. Inversions of meaning are prominent in Halloween through: 1) adult support for inverted, anti‐normative themes, and 2) a turnabout by which children gain ascendance through costumed trick‐or‐treating. Based on interviews with six and seven year old children and their parents, as well as participant observation at Halloween events, Halloween's inversions had different interpretations for adults compared to children. For example the degree and quality of fear associated with Halloween varied between elders and children. Following the traumatic events of September 11, 2001, adult‐rendered meanings of Halloween were shown to be unfixed and subject to modification. These findings raise critical questions about simplistic notions of socialization and cultural reduplication.