The sociological construction of youth - some contributions

Abstract

More and more, the sociological theory confronts the need for breaking away from current representations of youth. As a matter of fact, according to these representations, young people are assumed to be partakers of an «unitary» juvenile culture. However, besides thoroughly examining the possible or relative similarities among the young and groups of young (in what concerns their situation, expectations, hopes, cultural consumptions, for example), the central question for the sociology of youth is to explore the existing social differences. The sociology of youth has balanced between two tendencies: a) either the youth is related to a «stage of life», prevailing the search for more uniform and homogeneous features of that stage of life - features which would be part of a «juvenile culture», specific of a generation defined in terms of age; b) or the youth is taken as a social set necessarily diversified. The author uses the phrase «youth paradoxes» to refer to the different meanings of the word «youth» and to the opposite manifestations to be found among young people. Moreover, he reflects on such paradoxes, and starts with the most common representations in order to reach the notion of youth as a sociological construction.