"Woodman and Wyn have produced a text that offers conceptual clarity and real depth on debates in youth studies. The authors skilfully guide us through the main sociological theories on young people and furnish us with sophisticated critiques from which to rethink youth and generation in the contemporary moment." - Professor Anoop Nayak, Newcastle University The promise of youth studies is not in simply showing that class, gender and race continue to influence life chances, but to show how they shape young lives today. Dan Woodman and Johanna Wyn argue that understanding new forms of inequality in a context of increasing social change is a central challenge for youth researchers. Youth and Generation sets an agenda for youth studies building on the concepts of ‘social generation’ and ‘individualisation’ to suggest a framework for thinking about change and inequality in young lives in the emerging Asian Century.

The book presents a powerful reminder of adults' responsibility for the development of long-term attention (and thus of maturity) in children, particularly in the face of the techniques of attention-destruction practiced by the programming industries.

Brings together recent and new work on youth and youth cultures by social historians and American/cultural studies scholars. Chapters are arranged in chronological order within the 20th century. Subjects include youth and ethnicity in New York City high schools in the 1930s and 1940s, intercultural dance halls in post-WWII greater Los Angeles, art and activism in the Chicano Movement, the music of Public Enemy, the emergence of a lesbian, bisexual, and gay youth cyberculture, and zines and the making of underground community. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

The largest generation in history, the Millennial Generation are independent-- politically, socially, and philosophically-- and they are spearheading a period of sweeping change in America and around the world.

A New Youth? provides a cross-cultural perspective on the challenges and problems posed by young people's transition to adulthood. The authors address questions such as: What are the experiences of being young in different European countries? What can we learn about the differences of being young in non-European countries? Are young people developing new attitudes towards society? What are the risks associated with the transition of youth to adulthood? Can we identify new attitudes about citizenship? On a more general level, are there experiences and new social meanings associated with youth? The volume is comparative between various European and non-European countries in order to identify the emerging models of transition. These characteristics are connected with broader social, political and cultural changes: changes related to extended education, increasing women's participation in the labour market, changing welfare regimes, as well as changes in political regimes and in the representation and construction of individual identities and biographies, towards an increasing individualization. The work offers critical reflections in the realm of sociology of youth by providing broader understandings of the term 'youth'. The detailed analysis of new forms of marginality and social exclusion among young people offers valuable insight for policy development and political debate.

There is currently much discourse about generations in the public sphere. A sequence of letters conflates generations and age cohorts born in the last few decades (generation “X”, “Y” or “Z”) as well as multiple categories are used to describe today’s young people as a generation that is distinct from its predecessors. Despite the popularity of generational labels in media, politics, or even academia, the use of generation as a conceptual tool in youth studies has been controversial. This Special Issue allows readers to better understand the key issues regarding the use of generation as a theoretical concept and/or as a social category in the field of youth studies, shedding light on the controversies, trends, and cautions that go through it.

This social and cultural analysis provides a new understanding of Kazakhstan’s younger generations that emerged during the rule of Nursultan Nazarbayev, who has been presiding over Kazakhstan for the thirty years since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Half of Kazakhstan’s population was born after he took power and have no direct memory of the Soviet regime. Since the early 2000s, they have lived in a world of political stability and relative material affluence, and have developed a strong consumerist culture. Even with growing government restrictions on media, religion, and formal public expression, they have been raised in a comparatively free country. This book offers the first collective study of the “Nazarbayev Generation,” illuminating the diversity of the country’s younger generations and the transformations of social and cultural norms that have taken place over the course of three decades. The contributors to this collection move away from state-centric, top-down perspectives in favor of grassroots realities and bottom-up dynamics in order to better integrate sociological data.

Within contemporary youth research there are two dominant streams - a 'transitions' and a 'cultures' perspective. This collection shows that it is no longer possible to understand the experience of young people through these prisms and proposes new conceptual foundations for youth studies, capable of bridging the gap between these approaches.

Pollster-researcher George Barna has published the results of a nationwide survey of teens, giving an accurate picture of where today's youth are, and where they seem to be headed. It's the kind of information leaders need in order to relate and minister to teens.

This book provides an updated and fresh introduction to recent theoretical developments in youth studies. It expands upon these developments and introduces new discussions and perspectives. It presents three central theoretical traditions in youth studies, and explores the possibilities of redefining some of the central concepts, but also of combining different theoretical perspectives. After depicting the theoretical landscape of youth studies, the book explores generations and new subjectivities. Next, it examines subcultures and transitional spaces, mediatization and learning processes. One chapter is set aside for a discussion on the body, the self and habitus, and this is followed by a chapter on postcolonial spaces. Before presenting its conclusions, the book delves into the development of youth studies, theory and everyday life. All together the book taps into what is happening in the everyday lives of young people, and employs a methodology that can be used to create bridges between young people’s voices and experiences on the one hand and societal and cultural transformations on the other.