Summary of Youth and Society (SOC500; Chapters 1-8)
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Course
SOC500 (SOC500)
Institution
Ryerson University (Ru
)
This document contains a comprehensive set of detailed notes taken from the textbook for SOC500 (Youth and Society; Chapters 1-8). The notes summarize key concepts, theories, and findings discussed in the chapters required for the course, providing a structured and accessible resource for studying ...
• Youth are likely to be viewed negatively, subjected to increasing controls and given little or no
positive feedback at a stage of their lives that is supposed to be full of hope and promise
• The Aim of This Book
○ We need to move away from dealing with youth as the problem to addressing the social,
economic, and political circumstances that are problematic
○ Overlapping power relations between capitalism, racism, patriarchy and heterosexism
○ Age is a significant basis for power differences
• Defining Youth
○ Many difference in defining youth, outlining the fluidity of age categories and the degree to
which they are contested globally
○ Youth overlaps with the category of "childhood" which is common defined as anyone under
18
○ The category of "youth" is elastic and covers a range of distinct age groupings
○ Most avoid defining youth as strictly specific categories, some define it as "not a particular
age range" but as "a social status," characterized by a period of life in which a person is
either partly or fully dependant on others, usually adults and member of ones family, for
material support
○ Youth is referred to as social processes whereby age is socially constructed, institutionalized
and controlled in historically and culturally specific ways
○ Youth may be considered a transitional stage
○ Tasks and processes associated with youth are linked to the particular shape of capitalism
and patriarchy, which limits young peoples choices
• Theories of Youth
○ In Western countries, youth is defined as a carefree stage of life, a time to develop a distinct
identify and place in society
○ Young people and women are the non-dominant minority and do not benefit equally from
societal resources and their voices are largely unheard
• Conservative Theories: Conformity
○ Many conservative theories are rooted in Darwinism; biological adaptation and natural
selection
○ Hormonal hurricanes refers to young people learning to adapt to their environment
○ Age strata, such as adolescents or youth, are seen to be beneficial adaptation to new
environmental conditions
○ Functionalist theories of youth see it as a necessary stage of life, characterized by
preparation to meet diverse societal needs
▪ It is accepted the prolonged education is necessary in order to prepare for adult life
▪ Youth is a stage for instilling conformity within the requirements of prevailing
economic and social conditions
▪ Conflict is detrimental to the system as a whole
○ All structural functionalists promote the idea of common good over narrower group
interests, which are seen to disrupt the orderly development of societies
○ Little attention is paid to the problems that youth face or any active role that young people
play in changing the group rules or creating their own interpretations of a successful
transition to adulthood
○ Hall created the "concept of adolescence as an autonomous age group"
▪ Proposed that human development from birth to death mirrored the evolutionary
path of the human race
Youth and Society Page 1
, path of the human race
▪ Developed his recapitulation theory, proposing that adolescence was a stage of
savagery, a period of Sturm and Drang; storm and stress
□ Proposed that as in human evolution, individual development and maturation
was a gradual process in which each stage was crucial in laying the stepping
stones to the next; stormy because they learn to subject their instincts to the
environment
○ Freud supported the Sturm and Drang approach
▪ He proposed that at each stage of human development, the narcissistic tendencies of
the human being are gradually subjected to controls
▪ Proposed psychosexual energies which become important in adolescence
▪ The onset of puberty drives the conflicting forces of dependence and independence;
the crisis is solved as new codes of societal conduct are internalized
○ Erikson and Piaget proposed a sequences of life stages in human development driven by
biology and leading toward a fully developed, mature human being
▪ The stage of development is seen as crucial for identity and sense of self
▪ They have to gradually internalize societal expectations
▪ An unsuccessful integration would lead to "prolonged identity confusion"
▪ One common strand is that unless one conforms, they will not be a fully integrated,
individuated human being
○ The physiological changes play a role in adolescence
▪ The psychosocial changes are linked to the biological and bodily changes
accompanying puberty; signify a transition
▪ Have a heightened awareness of the physiological and cognitive changes youth people
go through
○ Not just a purely biologically based theory of human life stages
▪ Combo of biological and environmental influences
▪ "Nature approaches"; biological determinist strand of analysis
○ Cultural determinism
▪ Mead proposed that adolescence need not be stamped with crisis and stress but by an
orderly process of gradual maturation through which individuals move toward adult
interests
○ Springhall points to problems with both biological and cultural determinism
▪ Adolescence needs to be a cultural definition of a certain stage in the life cycle with a
long history that still remains to be unraveled
○ The "life-course" perspective
▪ Structural functionalist in nature
▪ See youth as a series of processes in transition to adult life, which take place in
different settings
○ The "individualization thesis" by Beck argues that peoples lives are an individual project for
them to achieve in a competitive world
○ Youth can be a stage in which is seen as preparation toward something, and not a time
important for itself
○ Theories can be critized for putting too much pressure on young people to adapt to society
rather than changing societies to accommodate them
○ "Risk society" is often transformed into "youth at risk"
○ Functionalists promote the notion that youth is a stage for instilling conformity within the
requirements of prevailing economic and social conditions
▪ An important role is by the mother; socializes and educates children toward proper
roles in the economy and the family (known as primary socialization)
▪ Secondary socialization in through schools and peers
▪ Destructive actions of youth are seen to reflect "status frustration" arising from a
mismatch between "cultural goals" and "institutional means"
□ Youth subcultures are seen as a result of inadequate socialization of young
Youth and Society Page 2
, □ Youth subcultures are seen as a result of inadequate socialization of young
people into their proper position in society
In other words, if young people were made to understand their place,
they would not be troublesome
○ Structional-functionalist see education and media as necessary for creation of beneficial
social cohesion
• Critical Theories: Age and Stratification
○ Critical theories point to the institutionized powerlessness of youth
○ In the Marxist variant, economic inequalities are linked to age inequalities because of the
specific features of the capitalist economy
▪ The young are seen as the weakest segment of the working population
▪ Marxists view education and media as systems of brainwashing with the aim to turn
young people into willing participants in the machinery of capitalism
▪ The underlying idea is that capitalism is exploitive and we need to resist the
ideological machinery of the school system
○ Marxist theorists argue that youth have been disenfranchised
▪ Youth are deprived of full access to economic and political rights
▪ Youth are rendered into a state of dependency on adults or the state, and stripped of
political power and are increasingly seen as a problem to be controlled
○ Youth subcultures are seen either as a reaction to oppression, as a expression of youthful
creativity, as emotionally satisfying activities, or as a means toward an identify and a sense
of community
○ Youth subcultures can be co-opted with targeting of youth as a consumer group
○ Poverty, inequality and discrimination may be responsible for risky behaviours
• Postmodern Youth: Agency, Subjectivity, and Fragmentation
○ Youthful activity can be thought of as resistance, rebellion or even deviance implying protest
or delinquency
○ Raby relies on Foucault's concept of power , which is expressed in social relationships,
constantly changing and situationally dependant
▪ Different moments allow youth to resist, contest, or refuse to identify with the status
quo
▪ Raby proposes there is no one reality
○ Conservative theories emphasize the disruptive features of youth and social cohesion,
whereas critical theories emphasize youthful energy in positive terms and see young people
needing encouragement so they can both live fulfilling live4s and be an important source of
social change toward a more just and equal society
○ Postmodernist theories focus on agency and subjectivities
• Current Trends: Globalization and Citizenship
○ Four main aspects in which citizenship is played out
1) Preparation for and participation in wage work
2) Participation in family relationships
3) Civic and political participation
4) Participation in leisure, recreation and consumption
○ Each comes with an expectation that defines when one becomes a full citizen; financially
self-supporting and or able to form a domestic relationship, and exercises voting and
consumer rights
▪ Mostly excludes youth
Youth and Society Page 3
, Lecture 1
January-13-14 5:48 PM
• What is Sociology?
• Sociology = a study and analysis of the relationships which develop between
human beings as they organize themselves and are organized by others (Watson,
1980)
• “The mission of sociology is to understand the connections between history and
biography, between social structure and personal histories, between public issues
and private troubles” (C. Wright Mills, 1959).
• Competing Schools
• Paradigm = a school of thought that guides the scientist in choosing the problems to
be studied, selecting the methods for studying them, and explaining what is found
(T.S.Kuhn, 1962)
• Sociological Tools
• Concepts = abstractions of reality, used to classify social phenomena
e.g. immigrant youth, education
• Models= connected concepts, used to capture central relationships/links around
social phenomena (requires a hypothesis)
e.g. Caribbean immigrant youth in Canada are likely to experience difficulties
in the education system.
• Theorizing
• Theory = tentative explanation (“causes”) for social phenomena (requires a thesis
statement)
e.g. Caribbean immigrant youth in Canada are likely to experience difficulties in
the education system, due to discrimination
• In sum, theory amounts to “observables” (concepts + models) + “unobservables”
(perspectives about society)
• Macro Sociology
• Structural Analysis = the analysis of large-scale and long-term social processes,
treated as self-subsistent entities, such as ‘state’, ‘culture’, and ‘society’ (Collins,
1981)
• What Structures?
• Social structure = any recurring pattern of social behaviour; the ordered
interrelationships between different elements of a social system or society
• Social institution = structural components of a society through which the main
concerns and activities are organized and needs are met
• Culture = “The complex whole which includes knowledge, beliefs, art, customs, morals,
and any other capabilities and habits acquired and shared in common by the members of
a society. A group’s culture provides a blueprint for living which is transmitted to future
generations.” (Karp et al., 2004: 29-30)
• Main Approaches to Macro Sociology
• STRUCTURALISM/MODERNISM
○ societies are based and develop based on scientifically knowable laws
A. (Structural)-Functionalism
Youth and Society Page 4
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