Abstract
Youth has a history of association with violent behaviour. Young people are routinely represented in media and politics as a violent group. Schoolyard bullying, youth gangs, child abuse, deviant sexualised behaviour and violent protest are regularly the subject of moral panics internationally and with each new generation. In this book, I examine how narrow frames of reference for conceptualising violence and youth have obscured the complexities inherent in young people’s enactment and resistance to violence. I argue that young people adopt violent performativities as a result of subjugation to a complex system of ‘subjective’ and ‘objective’ violence. The highly visible physical violence that regularly captures public attention has a clear ‘subject’, whereas ‘objective’ violence is hidden and embedded in social systems and society that are often assumed to violence-free. The young people’s stories in this book offer counter-narratives in which they reject the assumed violence-free nature of contemporary society and resist the violent performativities available to them as they seek to embody alternatives.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
Guardianship of the Minister is the term for young people in state care in South Australia. Previously these young people have been referred to as ‘wards of the state’. Many of these young people adopt the title or are colloquially referred to by human service workers as ‘GOM kids’.
References
ABC Radio Adelaide. (2018, 2 August). SA ‘lagging behind’ other states as student violence escalates, high-profile psychologist says. ABC News. Retrieved from https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-08-02/school-stabbings-need-evidence-based-response-psychologist-says/10065810.
Bacchi, C. (2009). Analysing Policy: What’s the Problem Represented to Be?. Frenchs Forrest, NSW: Pearson.
Bourdieu, P. (2001). Masculine Domination. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Butler, J. (1999). Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York: Routledge.
Butler, J. (2011). Bodies That Matter. New York: Routledge Classics.
Crime Statistics Australia. (2019a). Victims and Offenders, 2009–10 to 2013–14. Canberra, Australian Capital Territory: Australian Government. Retrieved from http://crimestats.aic.gov.au/NHMP/2_victims-offenders/.
Crime Statistics Australia. (2019b). Victims of Physical Assault by Age. Canberra, Australian Capital Territory: Australian Government. Retrieved from http://crimestats.aic.gov.au/facts_figures/1_victims/C2/.
Crime Statistics Australia. (2019c). Young and Adult Offenders by Sex and Principal Offence. Canberra, Australian Capital Territory: Australian Government. Retrieved from http://crimestats.aic.gov.au/facts_figures/2_offenders/B2/.
Cuervo, H., & Wyn, J. (2016). An unspoken crisis: the ‘scarring effects’ of the complex nexus between education and work on two generations of young Australians. International Journal of Lifelong Education, 35(2), 122–135. https://doi.org/10.1080/02601370.2016.1164467.
Farrugia, D. (2013). Young people and structural inequality: beyond the middle ground. Journal of Youth Studies, 16(5), 679–693. https://doi.org/10.1080/13676261.2012.744817.
Farrugia, D. (2016). Youth Homelessness in Late Modernity: Reflexive Identities and Moral Worth (Vol. 1). Singapore: Springer.
Giroux, H. A. (2014). Resisting Youth and the Crushing State Violence of Neoliberalism. In A. Kamp & P. Kelly (Eds.), A Critical Youth Studies for the 21st Century (pp. 223–239). Boston: Brill.
Hall, G. S. (1904). Adolescence: Its Psychology and its relations to Physiology, Anthropology, Sociology, Sex, Crime, Religion and Education (Vol. II). New York: D. Appleton and Company.
Henriksen, A.-K., & Bengtsson, T. T. (2018). Trivializing violence: Marginalized youth narrating everyday violence. Theoretical Criminology, 22(1), 99–115. https://doi.org/10.1177/1362480616671995.
Kelly, P. (2003). Growing up as risky business? Risks, surveillance and the institutionalized mistrust of youth. Journal of Youth Studies, 6(2), 165–180. https://doi.org/10.1080/1367626032000110291.
Kelly, P. (2011). An untimely future for youth studies? Youth Studies Australia, 30(3), 47.
Kelly, P., & Kamp, A. (Eds.). (2014). A Critical Youth Studies for the 21st Century. Boston: Brill.
Kilby, J., & Ray, L. (2014). Introduction. The Sociological Review, 62(2_suppl), 1–12. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-954x.12188.
Kim, W. C., & Mauborgne, R. (2003). Fair process: Managing in the knowledge economy. Harvard Business Review, 81(1), 1–12. Retrieved from http://go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?id=GALE%7CA97467181&v=2.1&u=flinders&it=r&p=EAIM&sw=w&asid=86835ed16071c6867d4fa030637bfdad.
Kumsa, M. K., Ng, K., Chambon, A., Maiter, S., & Yan, M. C. (2013). Rethinking youth violence and healing. Journal of Youth Studies, 16(7), 847–863. https://doi.org/10.1080/13676261.2013.763919.
Law, J., & Urry, J. (2004). Enacting the social. Economy and Society, 33(3), 390–410. https://doi.org/10.1080/0308514042000225716.
Leonard, P., & McLaren, P. (1992). Decentering Pedagogy: Critical literacy, resistance and the politics of memory. In P. Leonard & P. McLaren (Eds.), Paulo Freire A Critical Encounter. London: Routledge.
Lombard, N. (2013). Young people’s temporal and spatial accounts of gendered violence. Sociology, 47(6), 1136–1151. https://doi.org/10.1177/0038038512458734.
Office for the Secretary-General’s Envoy on Youth. (2015). Youth violence is a global public health problem-WHO. Retrieved from http://www.un.org/youthenvoy/2015/12/youth-violence-is-a-global-public-health-problem-who/.
Ryan, B., & Stayner, G. (2018, January 2). African gangs in Melbourne are a problem, police admit, as Victorian Government defends strategy. ABC News. Retrieved from http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-01-02/street-gangs-are-a-problem-in-melbourne-police-admit/9297984.
Sercombe, H. (2003). Reflections on youth violence. Youth Studies Australia, 22(1), 25–30.
Strega, S. (2005). The view from the poststructural margins. In L. A. Brown & S. Strega (Eds.), Research as Resistance (pp. 199–235). Toronto: Canadian Scholars Press.
Swartz, S., & Scott, D. (2013). The rules of violence: a perspective from youth living in South African townships. Journal of Youth Studies, 17(3), 324–342. https://doi.org/10.1080/13676261.2013.815699.
Threadgold, S. (2011). Should I pitch my tent in the middle ground? On ‘middling tendency’, Beck and inequality in youth sociology. Journal of Youth Studies, 14(4), 381–393. https://doi.org/10.1080/13676261.2010.538042.
Wacquant, L. (2001). The penalisation of poverty and the rise of neo-liberalism. European Journal on Criminal Policy and Research, 9(4), 401–412. https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1013147404519.
Walby, S. (2013). Finance versus democracy? Theorizing finance in society. Work, Employment & Society, 27(3), 489–507. https://doi.org/10.1177/0950017013479741.
Watson, J. (2018). Youth Homelessness and Survival Sex: Intimate Relationships and Gendered Subjectivities. New York: Routledge.
White, R., & Wyn, J. (2011). Youth and Society: Exploring the social dynamics of youth experience (2nd ed.). South Melbourne, Victoria: Oxford University Press.
Wieviorka, M. (2014). The sociological analysis of violence: new perspectives. The Sociological Review, 62(S2), 50–64. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-954X.12191.
Woodman, D. (2009). The mysterious case of the pervasive choice biography: Ulrich Beck, structure/agency, and the middling state of theory in the sociology of youth. Journal of Youth Studies, 12(3), 243–256. https://doi.org/10.1080/13676260902807227.
Woodman, D., & Threadgold, S. (2014). Critical Youth Studies in an Individualized and Globalized World: Making the Most of Bourdieu and Beck. A Critical Youth Studies for the 21st Century (pp. 552–566). Brill: Leiden, Boston.
World Health Organisation. (2014). Global Status Report on Violence Prevention. Luxembourg: World Health Organisation. Retrieved from www.who.int/violence_injury_prevention/violence/status_report/2014.
World Health Organisation. (2015). Youth Violence. World Health Organisation. Retrieved from http://www.who.int/violence_injury_prevention/violence/youth-violence-infographic-2015.pdf?ua=1.
Wyn, J., & White, R. (1997). Rethinking Youth. London: SAGE.
Zizek, S. (2008). Violence: Six Sideways Reflections. London, UK: Profile Books LTD.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2020 Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Lohmeyer, B.A. (2020). Introduction: The Violent Performativities of Youth. In: Youth and Violent Performativities. Perspectives on Children and Young People, vol 11. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-5542-8_1
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-5542-8_1
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Singapore
Print ISBN: 978-981-15-5541-1
Online ISBN: 978-981-15-5542-8
eBook Packages: Social SciencesSocial Sciences (R0)