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On My Honor: Boy Scouts and the Making of American Youth. By Jay Mechling. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001. Pp. xxv + 323, acknowledgments, introduction, map, photographs, notes, index. $30.00 cloth, $19.00 paper)
In terms of his qualifications for writing a book on Boy Scout folklife, Jay Mechling is the participant-observer par excellence. He spent much of his youth as a Boy Scout in Florida and has continued to associate with the organization for much of his adult life. His field research is primarily based on his observations of a California troop's annual two-week summer camping trip, an event in which he participated approximately every other year for over twenty years. On My Honor is the story of one such camping trip. Isolated from the quotidian world of family, school, peers, and the national office for the Boy Scouts of America (BSA), the camping trip / initiation is the crux of an ongoing mentorship program carefully designed to help boys through what Mechling calls "the crisis of masculinity" and to have fun while doing so. He purposefully frames the narrative as a rite of passage for himself, the troop leaders, and the boys.
Scouting has activities all year around,...