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5. STRESSING OUT IN TRANSITION – THE CASE OF UPPER SECONDARY SCHOOL STUDENTS FROM ZAGREB, CROATIA

STRESSING OUT IN TRANSITION – THE CASE OF UPPER SECONDARY SCHOOL STUDENTS FROM ZAGREB, CROATIA

Martinović Klarić Irena (1), Peternel Lana (1), Malnar Ana (2)

1) Institute for Social Research in Zagreb, Zagreb, Croatia; 2) Institute for Migration and Ethnic Studies, Zagreb, Croatia

Martinović Klarić Irena, e-mail: irena@idi.hr4; Peternel Lana, e-mail: lanapeternel@yahoo.com.

Abstract

This anthropological account explores manifestations of psychosocial stress in youth as a response to cultural changes in the transitional (post¬socialist and post¬conflict and now the European Union) context of contemporary Croatia. For youth a successful transition to independent adulthood requires competences in dealing with various age¬specific developmental tasks, each of which might represent a specific stressor. Youth maturation and social integration are even more uncertain and stressful in the transitional society that itself is undergoing drastic and multiple transformations of institutions, cultural values and norms. Analytical approaches based on the cultural consensus and cultural consonance theories are used to assess the associations of various cultural domains of everyday life to the stress outcome measurements of salivary biomarkers. Saliva is useful for population studies of psychosocial stress because it allows non¬invasive collection of samples in non¬clinical settings. Two salivary biomarkers of stress physiology are selected for laboratory testing: cortisol (the central hormone in the physiology of stress, a biomarker of the hypothalamic¬pituitary¬adrenal axis) and alpha¬amylase (a surrogate marker of the sympathetic nervous system activity that parallels stress¬related increase in norepinephrine). The results are presented from a recent pilot study using cultural consensus and cultural consonance analyses on salivary cortisol and alpha amylase levels in the group of the upper secondary school students from Zagreb, Croatia. This pilot study illustrates the usefulness of complementing recent developments in cognitive and cultural anthropology with research in biological anthropology.

Keywords

stress, salivary biomarkers, youth, cultural consensus and cultural consonance

Цит.: Martinović Klarić Irena, Peternel Lana, Malnar Ana STRESSING OUT IN TRANSITION – THE CASE OF UPPER SECONDARY SCHOOL STUDENTS FROM ZAGREB, CROATIA // Moscow University Anthropology Bulletin (Vestnik Moskovskogo Universiteta. Seria XXIII. Antropologia), 2014; 3/2014; с. 34-34