"Understanding Youth in Late Modernity is a highly readable book which lends itself bothas a solid introduction and a reference point to the historical developments and theoreticaldebates taking place within the discipline of youth studies. This book provides a highly accessible text for anybody interested in the subject of youth and its changing role in late modernity. I thoroughly recommend it." Journal of Contemporary European Studies This illuminating new book embeds our understanding of the youth question within a historical context. It shows how the ideas of past political action, in conjunction with the diverse paradigms of social science disciplines, have shaped modern conceptions of the youth question. This relationship between the political and the academic is then explored through a detailed examination of contemporary debates about youth, in areas such as; transitions, education, crime policy and criminology, consumption and youth culture. From this analysis the book is able to show how the youth question in late modernity is being shaped. This important text includes: A historical overview of the making of modern youth, identifying major changes that took place over three centuries Examples of how political and academic responses construct youth as a social problem An evaluation of the impact of social change in late modernity on our understanding of the youth question and the everyday lives of the young. The book concludes by suggesting that in contemporary understandings of the youth question significant differences exist between the political and the academic. Major challenges exist if this gap is to be addressed and a new public social science needs to emerge that reconstitutes debates about youth within a form of communicative democracy. Understanding Youth in Late Modernity is key reading for students and academics interested in the historical conception of the youth problem, its evolution throughout modernity and endeavours to find a solution.

Literatuuropgave : p. 169-185. - Met reg. Topics include youth culture and subculture and their relation to popular and high culture; youth, the media and moral panics; and youth and literary texts.

This book explores the identities, embodied experiences, and personal relationships of young people experiencing homelessness, and analyses these in relation to the material and symbolic position that youth homelessness occupies in modern societies. Drawing on empirical research conducted in both urban and rural areas, the book situates young people’s experiences of homelessness within a theoretical framework that connects embodied identities and relationships with processes of social change. The book theorises a ‘symbolic economy of youth homelessness’ that encompasses the subjective, aesthetic, and relational dimensions of homelessness. This theory shows the personal, interpersonal and affective suffering that is caused by the relations of power and privilege that produce contemporary youth homelessness. The book is unique in the way in which it places youth homelessness within the wider contexts of inequality, and social change. Whilst contemporary discussions of youth homelessness understand the topic as a discrete ‘social problem’, this book demonstrates the position that youth homelessness occupies within wider social processes, inequalities, and theoretical debates, addressing theories of social change in late modernity and their relationship to the cultural construction of youth. These theoretical debates are made concrete by means of an exploration of an important form of contemporary inequality: youth homelessness.

This accessible book takes a fresh and original approach to the concept of youth, placing changes in the social construction of ‘youth’ within a more general story of the rise and fall of grand theory in social science. Gill Jones evaluates the current relevance of these wider social theories to understanding youth in late modernity in the light of key examples of empirical work on young people. Individual chapters are organized around the themes of action, identity, transition, inequality and dependence – conceptual themes which cross-cut young people’s lives. The book considers the validity of youth as a social concept and examines ways of identifying what is specific to young people without resorting to seeing them as a homogeneous group defined by their age; in so doing, it uncovers notions which are erroneously attributed to young people. Youth represents a thought-provoking challenge to a new generation of social science students, youth researchers and practitioners to distance themselves from the politically- and emotively-charged issue of youth in contemporary society and move further towards re-theorizing the concept of youth in ways which are relevant to young people’s lives today.

Understanding Youth: Perspectives, Identities and Practices addresses the changing context and nature of youth, encouraging readers to understand different conceptualizations of youth, issues of identity and the key social practices that give shape to young people's lives in the contemporary period.

Provides a sociolinguistic account of classroom interaction, based on research in an inner-city high school.

Our late modern era is marked by the rapidity of change; waxing pluralism; focus on the future, not the past; the elevation of personal choice over communal obligation; and, for some, a sense of spiritual and intellectual disorientation that can lead to resentment, fear, nostalgia, and/or a disordered desire for absolute certainty and rigid authority. How can religious traditions be maintained and even thrive in such an environment? How do they negotiate the fluidity of it all and transmit their beliefs and practices to future generations? What should be the role of academic authorities vis-a-vis religious authorities in this process? Finally, what can different religious traditions learn from one another on the general topic of tradition? This volume invites readers to participate in a candid ecumenical and interreligious conversation involving Christian, Jewish, and Muslim voices. The editor and contributors alike contend that the "Abrahamic" faiths, while having honest differences, face common challenges from contemporary culture, which often fosters incomprehension about the depth, breadth, and intellectual rigor of religious traditions. At the same time, traditions can become disengaged and moribund without attending to them with careful reflection, discernment, and conversation with others who hold different points of view.