Summary
Excerpt
Table Of Contents
- Cover
- Title
- Copyright
- About the author
- About the book
- This eBook can be cited
- Table of Contents
- Introduction
- 1. Youth in the city. Looking back to the Chicago School of Sociology
- 1.1. The city as a social laboratory
- 1.2. Living the interstices
- 1.3. Mapping juvenile delinquency
- 1.4. Young women
- 1.5. Motion pictures and youth
- 1.6. Looking back to Chicago
- 2. Youth and generations. Background, contents and (in)actuality of Karl Mannheim’s perspective
- 2.1. An outdated concept?
- 2.2. The sociological “problem of generations”
- 2.3. Generations and social change
- 2.4. Youth as outsiders
- 2.5. Critical aspects
- 2.6. An open-ended debate
- 3. Youth culture and the peer group. Looping back around to Talcott Parsons
- 3.1. The peer group and the transition to adulthood
- 3.2. The “psychosocial moratorium”
- 3.3. Youth culture and social integration
- 3.4. An “adolescent society”?
- 3.5. Youth culture and the value system
- 3.6. Between sociological analysis and “myth”
- 4. Youth, dissent and counterculture. The “long 1960s” in Goodman, Keniston, and Roszak
- 4.1. The (un)complacent youth
- 4.2. “Growing up absurd”? Paul Goodman’s visionary sociology
- 4.3. Faces of dissent: From youth alienation to youth protest
- 4.4. Roszak and “The Making of a Counter Culture”
- 4.5. A “postmodern youth”
- 4.6. Fury, symbol, value
- 5. Rituals, resistance and style. The CCCS and youth subcultures
- 5.1. A new research agenda
- 5.2. Theoretical foundations
- 5.3. “Resistance through rituals”
- 5.4. The meaning of style
- 5.5. Homology and creativity
- 5.6. From symbolic challenges to incorporations
- 5.7. Subcultures and beyond
Introduction
Social research on young people has been widely recognised as both consistent and relevant. Between the late 1970s and the early 1980s a specialised field of study progressively took shape, gaining full legitimacy and recognition within the social sciences (Furlong, 2013; Côté, 2014; Ibrahim & Steinberg, 2014; Wyn & Cahill, 2015; Kelly & Kamp, 2015). In the perspective embraced herein, the field of youth studies is intrinsically interdisciplinary, despite boasting a strong sociological core.
Nowadays, many practitioners, experts and specialists falling under youth studies understand the field as having two dominant pillars (perspectives or “twin tracks”): the first bringing together studies that, despite their heterogeneity, focus on transitions (in particular on the transition to adulthood); the second encompassing studies and research hinging on a cultural perspective and examining various youth cultural forms (Woodman & Bennett, 2015a). This distinction offers a useful analytical framework to classify and systematise the wide range of studies on young people that is currently available, both at the national and international levels. Moreover, it allows to pinpoint the differences – in terms of interpretation categories, methodological orientations and reference contexts – between the studies and research projects inspired by one or the other perspective respectively (Cohen, 1997; Furlong, Woodman & Wyn, 2011).
Despite sharing their foundational premises, “there are […] many studies that do resemble one approach more than the other and orient to the different canonical texts and to the latest debates within either the transitions or cultures approach” (Woodman & Bennett, 2015a: 2). This polarisation has been affected by the ways in which scientific and academic research has defined itself in the past decades, firstly in terms of organisation, and then as regards funding structure and editorial politics. This process has led to a progressive and pervasive specialisation and segmentation of youth research – culminating in a representation of the relationship of the two traditions as deeply fragmented and marred by tensions and hostility.
Nevertheless, if one looks closely, that between “transition” and “cultural” perspectives appears to be a false binary, abating the possibility of a comprehensive, far-reaching and holistic understanding of youth in modern societies. This becomes particularly clear in late modern contexts, where the complexity within which young people build and give meaning to their lives and experiences necessarily calls for a re-consideration of the interlinkages, interdependencies and ←7 | 8→connections between the structural and cultural dimensions (Woodman & Bennett, 2015b). Only in this way can we better understand both the specific aspects giving shape to “transitions” and those lending meaning to “cultures”, as well as the differences and convergences between the two research areas.
In light of this, the book chooses as object of analysis those which are currently defined as “youth cultural studies”, to retrace the main steps of the process leading to the emergence and the consolidation of this perspective within youth studies. The exploration of the Classics in youth cultural studies commences with a dive into the analytical pathway developed by the Chicago School of Sociology in the 1920s and 1930s and comes to a close with the research on youth subcultures conducted by the Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies. Along the way are Mannheim’s reflections on the crisis riddling Europe between the two World Wars; the studies on “youth culture” carried out in the United States around the 1940s and 1950s; and the re-evaluation of some contributions to the debate on youth dissent and student protest.
The ultimate aim is that of rebuilding the corpus of theoretical and methodological approaches, themes of analysis and interpretation categories, contexts for reflection and orientations that – in their intrinsic and much-needed articulation – constitute the “paradigm” (Cristofori, 1997) from which contemporary research on youth cultures originates and upon which it rests (Bennett, 2016). This corpus is the result of a long process of accumulation, subtraction and crystallisation of observations, analyses, interpretations and knowledge able to collectively give shape to a tradition and body of science. As Jon Elster (1989) put it, these are the Nuts and Bolts making up the toolbox of the youth researcher to which those who practice or are interested in social research, can resort to interpret and comprehend key matters in the debate on young people and youth cultures.
Details
- Pages
- 144
- Publication Year
- 2023
- ISBN (PDF)
- 9783631895078
- ISBN (ePUB)
- 9783631895085
- ISBN (Hardcover)
- 9783631894859
- DOI
- 10.3726/b20486
- Language
- English
- Publication date
- 2023 (May)
- Keywords
- Youth Culture Youth cultures origins various approaches to study youth culture
- Published
- Berlin, Bern, Bruxelles, New York, Oxford, Warszawa, Wien, 2023. 144 pp.
