On adequacy. Bodily states and the categorization of age

Abstract

Through ethnographic research conducted in France on growing up and maturing with Turner syndrome, the article critically analyzes the concept of adequacy between body and time. By causing an alteration of bodily transformations as they are thought of and organized in contemporary society, the syndrome reveals the normative power of age classifications. However, if social codes seem to frame the interlocutors in the statutory position of the little girl or the menopausal woman, their experiences show how bodily experiences produce a process of bioreflexivity, which allows them to look otherwise at the obviousness of the adult condition and the uniform perception of vulnerability of growing old.  The contribution thus invites a move beyond the dichotomy between constructionism and naturalism in anthropology, through the idea of situated body states and a concept of adequacy that is not absolute, but always positional.