Youth Culture And Social Change

This book brings together historians, sociologists and social scientists to examine aspects of youth culture. The book’s themes are riots, music and gangs, connecting spectacular expression of youthful disaffection with everyday practices. By so doing, Youth Culture and Social Change maps out new ways of historicizing responses to economic and social change: public unrest and popular culture.

This book examines the relation between the phenomenon of globalization, changes in the lifeworld of young people and the development of specific youth cultures. It explores the social, political, economic and cultural impact of globalization on young people. Growing diversity in their lifeworlds, technological development, migration and the ubiquity of digital communication and representation of the world open up new forms of self-representation, networking and political expression, which are described and discussed in the book. Other topics are the impact of globalization on work and economy, global environmental issues such as climate change, political movements which put “nationalism first”, change of youth`s values and the significance of body, gender and beauty. The book highlights the challenges of young people in modern life, as well as the way in which they express themselves and engage in society – in culture, politics, work and social life.

Reviews of the first edition “Not only does the clarity of the authors’ writing make the book very accessible, but their argument is also illustrated throughout with a broad range of empirical material … undoubtedly a strong contribution to the study of both contemporary youth and ‘late-modern’ society.” Youth Justice “A very accessible, well-evidenced and important book … It succeeds in raising important questions in a new and powerful way.” Journal of Education and Work “the book will be very popular with students and with academics…..The clarity of the organization, expression and argument is particularly commendable. I have no doubt that Young People and Social Change will rightly find its way onto the recommended reading lists of many in the field.” Professor Robert MacDonald, University of Teesside A welcome update to one of the most influential and authoritative books on young people in modern societies. With a fuller theoretical explanation and drawing on a comprehensive range of studies from Europe, North America, Australia and Japan, the second edition of Young People and Social Change is a valuable contribution to the field. The authors examine modern theoretical interpretations of social change in relation to young people and provide an overview of their experiences in a number of key contexts such as education, employment, the family, leisure, health, crime and politics. Building on the success of the previous edition, the second edition offers an expanded theoretical approach and wider coverage of empirical data to take into account worldwide developments in the field. Drawing on a wealth of research evidence, the book highlights key differences between the experiences of young people in different countries in the developed world. Young People and Social Change offers a wide-ranging and up-to-date introductory text for students in sociology of youth, sociology of education, social stratification and related fields.

Literatuuropgave : p. 169-185. - Met reg. Topics include youth culture and subculture and their relation to popular and high culture; youth, the media and moral panics; and youth and literary texts.

Published in 1997, this text is built around themes agreed upon for a conference which aimed to set the agenda for youth research over the next decade. These themes are: the shaping of trajectories and biographies - individualization, agency, structure; vulnerable groups excluded and included youth, polarization, marginalization; social construction of identity - identity, culture, gender, ethnicity; political and social participation and citizenship. The book brings together the work of British and Continental researchers.

Examines modern theoretical interpretations of social change in relation to young people and provides an overview of their experiences in a number of key contexts such as education, employment, leisure, health, crime and politics. This second edition offers introductory text for students in sociology of youth, sociology of education, and more.

"Adolescent culture is always changing, making it difficult for youth pastors to keep up. Even college students who are a few years out of high school find it challenging to stay current with the changing culture of teens. However, when equipped with tools that help them think critically about culture on a broad scale, youth ministry students can be prepared for a strategic ministry to teens that effectively addresses the youth cultural context. This academic resource uses a multi-disciplinary approach to understand culture by exploring the nature, theology, ecology, and ethnography of culture, then combining these different perspectives to develop a critical approach to youth culture."

The essays in this volume examine youthful dissent since Berkeley in 1964 within a number of contexts -- the school and the university, opposition to the draft and the Vietnam war, the civil rights struggle, and the drug culture. The contributors are particularly concerned with the role of the mental health professional in relation to the dilemma of youth today and their culture -- a culture that is widely divergent from that best known by the professional. "As old forms and tradition shave fallen away, the adults continue to move along familiar paths and often seem to refuse to look at the surrounding rubble. In an attempt to find individual definition and social purpose today's youth has become disaffected, uncommitted, hostile, angry, and apathetic. A relatively small number have dedicated themselves to total destruction of our society." Their very nonconformity often brings "a vicious storm of hatred -- and sometimes bullets -- down upon their heads." Particularly affected, the authors believe, are young people of the working class, whose homes were the first to be disrupted by the technological change and whose elders are the least tolerant of the characteristics of today's youth culture. Most of the papers in this volume were presented at the forty-seventh annual convention of the American Orthopsychiatry Association -- a convention noted for the continuous disruption of its presentations by young protesters. Drs. Levitt and Rubenstein have interspersed vignettes of the students participating in the dissent with the formal papers which include contributions by Edgar Z. Freidenberg, Daniel Offer, and Nathan Glazer among many others. The authors present varying viewpoints on the proper function of the professional as both teacher and therapist in dealing with dissent.

After the collapse of state socialism at the end of the 1980s, young people in Eastern Europe began to play a dramatically different role in society. Once cast as the vital, reinvigorating protagonists of the communist ideal, they emerged as promoters of democratisation and agents of a now hegemonic market system. Twenty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989, an event symbolising both the lifting of the Iron Curtain and the end of the Cold War, an international seminar was held in Budapest to discuss how the opening of eastern European societies to western Europe and the world had changed the living conditions and experiences of young people growing up in the region. This collection of essays, based on this seminar, examines the circumstances of young people in eastern Europe before and after 1989 from a variety of angles: their transition to adulthood; their living conditions; the scope they have for social participation; the way in which they construct their identities and constitute and represent current social realities; their cultures and genders; and the interplay of continuities and discontinuities around this historic watershed. This book, which pays particularly close attention to the relationship between research, policy and practice, is an invaluable tool for anyone wishing to achieve a deeper understanding of young people in Eastern Europe today.

In the 1960s and 70s, a new youth consciousness emerged in Western Europe which gave this period its distinct character. This volume demonstrates how international developments fused with national traditions, producing specific youth cultures that became leading trendsetters of emergent post-industrial Western societies.