Critical Youth Studies

In A Critical Youth Studies for the 21st Century Peter Kelly and Annelies Kamp present an edited collection that explores the challenges and opportunities faced by young people in an often dangerous 21st century. In an increasingly globalised world these challenges and opportunities include those associated with widening inequalities, precarious labour markets, the commodification of education, the hopes for democracy, and with practising an identity under these circumstances and in these spaces. Drawing on contemporary critical social theories and diverse methodologies, contributors to the collection, who are established and emerging scholars from the Americas, Europe, and Asia/Pacific, open up discussions about what a critical youth studies can contribute to community, policy and academic debates about these challenges and opportunities. Contributors are: Anna Anderson, Dena Aufseeser, Judith Bessant, Ros Black, Daniel Briggs, Laurie Browne, David Cairns, Perri Campbell, James Côté, Ann Dadich, Maria de Lourdes Beldi Alacantra, Nora Duckett, Deirdre Duffy, Angela Dwyer, Christina Ergler, Michelle Fine, Madeline Fox, Andy Furlong, Theo Gavrielides, Henry Giroux, John Goodwin, Keith Heggart, Luke Howie, Amelia Johns, Annelies Kamp, Peter Kelly, Fengshu Liu, Conor McGuckin, Majella McSharry, Filipa Menezes, Magda Nico, Pam Nilan, Henrietta O'Connor, Jo Pike, Herwig Reiter, Geraldine Scanlon, Keri Schwab, Michael Shevlin, Adnan Selimovic, Joan Smith, Jodie Taylor, Steven Threadgold, Vappu Tyyskä, Brendan Walsh, Lucas Walsh, Rob Watts, Bronwyn Wood, Dan Woodman, and David Zyngier. A Critical Youth Studies for the 21st Century is now available in paperback for individual customers.

Critical studies of youth play an increasingly important role in educational research. This volume adds to that ongoing conversation by addressing the methodological lessons learned from key scholars in the field. With a focus on “the doing” of critical youth studies in ways that center praxis and relational care in work with youth and their communities, the volume showcases scholars discussing their research and reflecting on the practical strategies they have used to operationalize their conceptions of knowledge in youth-centered research projects. Each chapter addresses the research features, challenges, tensions, and debates of the project; engagement with communities; and relationality, reciprocity, and responsibility to participants. The focus throughout is on qualitative approaches that are humanizing, anti-colonial, and transformative.

Sociology of Adolescence is a second- or third-year course, examining the social definitions of adolescence in cross-cultural and historical perspectives. In their previous examination of the Sociology of Adolescence in a book titled, Generation On Hold (1994), the authors observed the increasingly prolonged transitional period between the dependency of childhood and the independence of adulthood caused by diminished workplace opportunities. Critical Youth Studies now expands upon that topic using clear evidence of this trend and its troubling consequences. Not only in Canada, but also in virtually every advanced industrialized country in the world, the full cohort transition now spans the ages of 15 to 30. Young people constitute a disadvantaged group in need of special academic and policy attention, whether they go on to higher education or complete high school or less. What lies behind the growing inequalities among age cohorts? Should it be taken for granted as the "new normal"? This book presents a focused argument that challenges complacency and provides a model for critical thinking on these issues.

How should a six year-old be approached for an interview? What questions and topics are appropriate for 12 year olds? Do parents need to give their approval for all studies? This work features essays on the subject of youth that address these concerns, providing scholars with practical answers to their many methodological concerns.

A definitive statement of YPAR as it relates to education with an informative combination of theory and practice, this edited collection addresses both the political challenges and inherent power imbalances of conducting research with young people.

Whereas once young women’s feminist activism could be easily identified, today this resistance seems obscure, transitory, and disorganized. In Next Wave Cultures, established and emerging scholars provide an interdisciplinary examination of young women’s multilayered lives. This collection demonstrates that young women have new ways of taking on politics and culture that may not be recognizable under more traditional paradigms, but deserve to be identified as socially engaged and potentially transformative nonetheless. Exploring the ways in which girls' various cultural pursuits are tied to identity formation and relate to issues of class, sexuality, ethnicity, religion, ability, and, gender, Next Wave Cultures highlights both the limitations and opportunities afforded by globalization of youth consumer culture. This valuable collection is a necessary read across disciplines—especially to those in the fields of education, gender and cultural studies, sociology, and psychology.

Over the last decade, "youth" has become increasingly central to policy, development, media and public debates and conflicts across the world – whether as an ideological symbol, social category or political actor. Set against a backdrop of contemporary political economy, Youth Rising? seeks to understand exactly how and why youth has become such a popular and productive social category and concept. The book provocatively argues that the rise and spread of global neoliberalism has not only led youth to become more politically and symbolically salient, but also to expand to encompass a growing range of ages and individuals of different class, race, ethnic, national and religious backgrounds. Employing both theoretical and historical analysis, authors Mayssoun Sukarieh and Stuart Tannock trace the development of youth within the context of capitalism, where it has long functioned as a category for social control. The book’s chapters critically analyze the growing fears of mass youth unemployment and a "lost generation" that spread around the world in the wake of the global financial crisis. They question as well the relentless focus on youth in the reporting and discussion of recent global protests and uprisings. By helping develop a better understanding of such phenomena and critically and reflexively investigating the very category and identity of youth, Youth Rising? offers a fresh and sobering challenge to the field of youth studies and to widespread claims about the relationship between youth and social change.