The State of Contemporary Youth: Conceptual Underpinnings of Dominant Youth Discourses

Abstract

Various discourses contribute to ‘thinking’ youth in particular ways and this chapter examines a selection of these discourses and considers the question of what is at stake in such formations. The discussion references a range of contemporary issues about youth, but it opens with an examination of two controversial events and the media attention they generated as examples that mobilise a cluster of discursive responses concerning youth. In identifying a number of these discourses in their popular and academic forms – specific aspects of which will be addressed further in Chapters 4, 5 and 6 – I look to the discursive history that they emerge from. This involves an analysis of different conceptual paradigms and how they inform contemporary youth discourses. Starting with a developmental paradigm, I examine the work of Enlightenment thinkers John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau and then analyse a developmental psychology perspective. Following this, I consider a critical political economy paradigm by focusing on the work of education theorist, Henry Giroux. Finally I look at youth within a (sub)cultural studies paradigm, addressing both classic subculture theory and more recent scholarship on ‘post-subculture’ theory1. I examine how each approach conceptualises youth, exploring what assumptions each approach makes about youth as a category, and how each approach contributes to a set of discourses which inform com-monsense understandings of youth.