Summary
Wild Years: Comprehensive Summary from H1 to H12
- Course
- Institution
- Book
Good, comprehensive summary of Andy Furlong's book “Youth Studies” for the course given on UU “Wild Years”!
[Show more]
Connected book
Book Title:
Author(s):
- Edition:
- ISBN:
- Edition:
More summaries for
-
Wild Years: Uitgebreide aantekeningen van alle HC (met tabellen + plaatjes!)
-
Youth studies an introduction
-
Summary of Furlong ch. 1-12 Wild Years
1 review
By: lisannekuiper44 • 3 year ago
Seller
Follow
teun1105
Reviews received
Content preview
Andy Furlong (2013)Youth Studies: An Introduction
Chapter 1: Youth and the life course
Content:
I. What is youth?
II. Why study youth?
III. Youth and the life course
IV. Structure vs. agency
V. The idea of generation
VI. Psychological perspectives
VII. Policy perspectives
I: What is youth?
- Youth = Socially constructed intermediary phase that stands between childhood and
adulthood: it is not defined chronologically as a stage that can be tied to specific age
ranges, nor can its end point be linked to specific activities, such as taking up paid
work or having sexual relations.
Youth and age: The United Nations defines ‘youth’ as persons between the
ages of 15 and 24 with all UN statistics based on this definition. The UN also
recognizes that a useful distinction can be made between teenagers (i.e.
those between the ages of 13 and 19) and young adults (those between the
ages of 20 and 24).
- Specific developmental phases: Youth is a broader concept than adolescence,
which relates to specific developmental phases, beginning with puberty and ending
once physiological and emotional maturity is achieved, and it tends to cover a more
protracted time span.
- Traumatic adolescence: For Hall, the physiological changes associated with
adolescence meant that the experience was essentially traumatic: characterized by
storm and stress.
- Decision-making process and the brain in adolescence: Adolescence was a
period which involved risky behavior, mood swings and conflict with parents. The
brain’s frontal lobe cortex, which plays an important role in judgement, does not
mature fully until young people are in their early or late twenties. As a result, young
people may exercise poor judgement and are prone to risky behavior. Also, young
people’s experiences, well-being and relationships also have a powerful impact on
development and on decision-making processes.
- Sociological definition (semi-dependence): The sociological tradition in youth
research has always placed a strong emphasis on the way in which experiences are
central to definitions of youth as they link to patterns of dependence. Youth, for them,
is a period of semi-dependence that falls between full dependency that characterizes
childhood and the independence of adulthood.
Context-specific: Defined in this way, it is clear that youth is constructed
differently across time and between societies. In some societies young people
become independent at a relatively young age, while in others dependency
can last well into their second decade of life, and even beyond.
- Problematic identification of youth stage because of modern society: In some
respects the identification of a clear youth stage in the life course has become
increasingly problematic as a result of changes in modern societies. Young people
spend longer in education, enter full-time employment at a later stage and can remain
dependent for greater periods of time. Moreover, many young people have non-linear
sets of experiences in which events occur in a non-traditional order.
New phase? As a result of the growing protraction and complexity of youth as
, a stage in the life course, researchers have begun to argue we must
recognize a new phase that they have termed ‘young adulthood’, ‘post-
adolescence’ or ‘emerging adulthood’.
II: Why study youth?
- Unsurprisingly, the issues that engage youth researchers are frequently of great
interest to policy makers. Often researchers are attracted to a field of study because it
is very topical and stimulates widespread debate, although frequently they become
involved because they harbour doubts about the veracity of popularist explanations.
The link between the policy agenda, media concerns and the research agenda has
been evident throughout much of the history of youth research.
- Two main themes: In terms of policy-related themes, two interlinked areas stand out
particularly prominently:
1. Crime cultures
2. Youth cultures (especially when they are regarded as having anti-social or
criminal tendencies or when their consumption habits suggest new markets to be
exploited).
- Transitional and cultural approaches: In youth research there has been a long-
standing rift between what can be termed the ‘transitional’ and ‘cultural’ approaches.
1. Transitional perspective = Those working within a ‘transitional’ perspective have
tended to focus on the relationship between education and work and the ways in
which social inequalities are reproduced as a part of the transition from youth to
adulthood.
2. Cultural perspective = Many (but not all) of those working within a ‘cultural’
perspective have tended to focus on lifestyles and youth subcultures, especially
those that are highly visible and challenge the cultural standpoints of older
generations.
- Importance of studying youth: It is important to study youth, because the points
where young people engage with the institutions that either promote social justice or
entrench social division are significant points of reference for every society. Hence,
the study of youth is important as an indicator of the real ‘costs’ and ‘benefits’ of the
political and economic systems of each society.
III: Youth and the life course
- Old view lifecycle: The individual’s journey through life is presented as normative
and decontextualized. Key sets of experiences are closely linked to age-related
stages in a developmental process (experiences like leaving school, gaining full-time
employment).
- Life course (Glen Elder) = Key principles are historical time and place, the timing of
lives, linked or interdependent lives and human agency in constrained settings.
- Life Course Theory = In elaborating life course theory, Walter Heinz suggests that it
rests on five principles:
1. Life-span development: Each life phase affects the entire life course.
2. Human agency: Individuals actively construct their biography.
3. Time and place: The life course is embedded in historical events.
4. Timing of decisions: Social circumstances and events influence transitions.
5. Linked lives: Social relationships and networks contribute to the shaping of
biographies.
- Changes in emphasis of youth transitions:
1. 1960: growth task: In the 1960s, work on youth transitions tended to have a
strong physiological underpinning with processes of integration seen in terms of
clear routes leading to occupational niches. Influenced by the work of Havighurst
(1948) and Erikson (1968), there was an emphasis on ‘growth task’ models in
, which young people’s routes were linked to the successful accomplishment of a
developmental project which resulted in the establishment of a vocational identity.
2. 1970: routes and pathways: In the 1970s, with a rise in youth unemployment
resulting in more complex transitions, ‘routes and pathways’ became the favoured
metaphors.
3. 1980: trajectory: By the 1980s, ‘trajectory’ became the predominant metaphor.
Underpinned by structuralist interpretations, the term implied that transitional
outcomes were strongly conditioned by factors such as social class and cultural
capital and were therefore largely beyond individual control.
4. 1990: navigation: By the 1990s with the rise of postmodern perspectives, new
metaphors were introduced that revolved around the idea of ‘navigation’.
Individual agency was given much greater prominence, and transitional outcomes
were increasingly linked to factors like judgement, resilience and life management
skills.
Shift from functionalism to eventually postmodernism: Here we can observe a
move from functionalism to structuralism and from structuralism to
postmodernism, although of course changes in theoretical paradigms are
never quite as neat as this.
- Key concerns/topics from researchers over the years: The key concerns of youth
researchers have actually changed very little over the last 40 years or so, although
both the lived experiences of young people and the way in which social scientists
interpret them have. From a sociological perspective, the transmission of advantage
and disadvantage across generations has always been a key topic of interest.
IV: Structure versus agency
- Opportunities and agency of youth: One of the factors that has a strong bearing on
young people’s experience relates to the opportunities that are available at a given
point in time. As a result their scope to exercise agency might be restricted
(unemployment little agency/choosing freedom).
Social policies/welfare regimes and agency of youth: Other factors also help
shape the contexts in which young people’s lives are lived: social policies and
welfare regimes, for example, may constrain opportunities, while the
assumptions embedded in cultures can promote agency or reinforce barriers.
- Core point pathways: Implicit in the idea of pathways is the assumption that, while
routes are structured by factors such as gender or social class, there are various
points at which people make decisions regarding routes.
- Core point trajectory: In contrast, the idea of a trajectory suggests very limited
scope for agency (destinations can be predicted with a high degree of accuracy using
information on origins). In modern contexts, it is recognized that individuals make key
decisions within contexts that constrain choices. Therefore, Evens says that agency
is bounded.
- Biographical approaches: Biographical approaches attempt to represent
consciousness and subjectivity, as well as the objective restrains that shape
individual lives.
- Reflexive life management = The emphasis on reflexive life management in the
navigation model is associated with biographical methodologies in which individuals
are asked to provide accounts of their lives and to interpret sequences of events.
Shift from normal to choice biography: From 1990 on, we went from a ‘normal
biography’ to a ‘choice biography’.
Choice biography = But, As du Bois-Reymond makes clear, the idea of a
‘choice biography’ does not necessarily involve free choice; paradoxically, the
freedom to choose may itself be a constraint. Young people may not feel
prepared to make choices or may find choices blocked or constrained at times
when they want to take action.
, No specific beginning or end of life stages: Individuals are constantly revising
and re-interpreting their biographical projects, it does introduce a greater
fluidity into the process and makes it increasingly difficult to identify end
points. There are no clear beginnings or finishing points of life stages.
Henderson: ‘adulthood does not exist, it has to be invented’
- Influence of individualization on agency and structure: In Beck’s view, late
modernity is characterized by a process of individualization whereby risk permeates
all aspects of life, and categories like social class become redundant (overbodig). In
these circumstances, young people find it increasingly difficult to identify others who
encounter the same sets of experiences as themselves, while lifestyles, attitudes and
forms of consciousness lose their association with social class.
Conclusion influence: Therefore, individualization is a process whereby
agency takes precedence and structures assume a secondary position. In late
modern contexts, in all aspects of their lives, people constantly have to
choose between different options, including the social groups with which they
wish to be identified.
V: The idea of generation:
- ‘Generation’ as a little used word: Perhaps surprisingly, it is relatively rare for youth
researchers to use the term generation as a way of distinguishing the experiences of
a group of people born in a particular era from those born in earlier or later periods.
- Theories about generation:
Focus early theorists: Early theorists were primarily concerned with social
dynamics and change and, in different ways, generational groups were
presented as agents of change or as associated with distinctive forms of
knowledge and consciousness.
Comte: conflict between generations: Comte’s position was that conflict
between generations ultimately led to social change as the conservatism of
the older generation was challenged by the younger age cohort.
Mannheim’s generational theory =
First scientist with regard to generation: Comte failed to develop or
elaborate these ideas and Mannheim can perhaps be regarded as the first
social scientist to fully engage with the idea of generation.
Main point theory: He suggested that groups of people who grew up at
particular points in time tended to share a set of formative experiences,
develop common ‘modes of behaviour, feeling and thought’ and a unique
consciousness.
Process of identifying with a generation: The process of identifying as
belonging to a particular generation is conditioned through the way in
which social change results in the emergence of new experiences which,
in turn, encourage the new generation to challenge the values of the older
generation.
Trigger action to promote awareness: The pace of change is an important
precondition of generational consciousness (which is by no means
inevitable), while social, economic or political crises can represent a
‘trigger action’ which helps promote an awareness of common interests,
especially when the young person begins the attempt to interpret the world
through their own experiences rather than those relayed to them indirectly
through the experiences of significant others (age 17).
Dunham summarizes Mannheim’s generational theory as follows:
a. Intergenerational continuity results from socialization into societal
values by one’s parents.
b. When fresh contact occurs, those values are challenged by
generational experiences.
The benefits of buying summaries with Stuvia:
Guaranteed quality through customer reviews
Stuvia customers have reviewed more than 700,000 summaries. This how you know that you are buying the best documents.
Quick and easy check-out
You can quickly pay through credit card or Stuvia-credit for the summaries. There is no membership needed.
Focus on what matters
Your fellow students write the study notes themselves, which is why the documents are always reliable and up-to-date. This ensures you quickly get to the core!
Frequently asked questions
What do I get when I buy this document?
You get a PDF, available immediately after your purchase. The purchased document is accessible anytime, anywhere and indefinitely through your profile.
Satisfaction guarantee: how does it work?
Our satisfaction guarantee ensures that you always find a study document that suits you well. You fill out a form, and our customer service team takes care of the rest.
Who am I buying these notes from?
Stuvia is a marketplace, so you are not buying this document from us, but from seller teun1105. Stuvia facilitates payment to the seller.
Will I be stuck with a subscription?
No, you only buy these notes for $6.22. You're not tied to anything after your purchase.
Can Stuvia be trusted?
4.6 stars on Google & Trustpilot (+1000 reviews)
51292 documents were sold in the last 30 days
Founded in 2010, the go-to place to buy study notes for 15 years now