The Teenager and the Social Scientist

Abstract

Which came first, the teenager or the social scientist? This article explores the rise of the social scientific study of the adolescent in 1940s and 50s New Zealand. Our social science scene came of age during these decades, and teenagers became the object of much inquiry and social debate at the same time. Was this co-emergence coincidental? In this article I suggest that these two groups - adolescents and social scientists - were mutually constitutive. As Aileen Maxwell, Ada Gilling, Dorothy Crowther and A.E. Manning described and constructed mid-century youth cultures in particular ways, they also helped to create a platform and a public profile for social scientific writing. Is it stretching it too far to suggest that the social scientist was the 'bodgie' or the 'widgie' of the intellectual world?