Paper short abstract:

The question how contextual factors become inscribed “beneath the skin“ to shape individual health outcomes and well-being in youth is problematized within the framework of the nascent culture theory in the study of health, the life history theory and our recent case study.

Paper long abstract:

The question how contextual factors become inscribed "beneath the skin" to shape individual health outcomes and well-being in youth is problematized within the framework of the nascent culture theory in the study of health and the life history theory. By following Dressler's arguments for ethnographic critique of theory and examination of how a theory is instantiated within specific cultural contexts, or a cohort, I will discuss our recent case study aimed at studying the relationship between cultural changes and individual health outcomes in high school seniors from Zagreb (Croatia) by integrating biomarkers with ethnographic research and by applying a novel theoretical and methodological concept, termed youth modernity competence. Youth modernity competence implies modernity knowledge, acceptance and integration of differences in individual modernity orientations in everyday life domains. We hypothesize that youth modernity competence is associated with specific patterns of subjective and objective stress measures as well as with delayed effects such as pre-migration expectations. The association of youth modernity competence, stress and pre-migratory expectations is moderated and/or mediated by the effects of cultural context and coping.