Youth in Society.
The Construction and Deconstruction of Youth in East and West Europe.
A new book by Claire Wallace and Sijka Kovatcheva
Macmillans UK, St. Martin`s Press, USA, 1998
What people have said about the book
Professor Ken Roberts, University of Liverpool, UK.
"This is the most important book on the sociology of youth to appear since
the 1970s. It is comparable to the classics that interpreted the post
World War 11 youth cultures. This book is a response, first, to
Europeanisation, and second, to the modernising forces that constructed
youth in earlier times being joined by and interacting with the new
deconstructing processes. What sets this book apart from other recent work
is the authorsÆ ability to draw authoritatively on material from all across
Europe, and to portray the diversities within and between countries while
identifying common underlying trends."
Professor Michiko Miyamoto, University of Chiba, Japan :
"I have been deeply impressed....I was excited to read about theories of
youth and data about them in Europe..... The manuscript of the book is
very clear and easy for foreigners to understand...... I will introduce
your ideas to Japanese readers . I believe it will influence youth issues."
Ola Stafseng,University of Oslo, President of the International
Sociological Association, Research Committee on Youth (1994-1998)
"This book will be one of the first after 1989 to describe the past and
present youth development in these exciting years. It is a book that has
been missing. ..The greatest confidence goes to the authors who have really
been working on various aspects of these issues and these countries. I
appreciate strongly that the book starts with an integration of the
previously excellent youth research in some of the actual Eastern European
countries, instead of the usual bad habit of the elimination of scientific
memories. These lines from the past will also be the best tools for the
ambitious project of the book, not only to describe and synthesize data
from the last yearsÆ development, but also to give an overall, holistic
interpretation of the present youth situation on both sides of the formerly
divided Europe......I can see that the theoretical models under discussion
will not stop with this book, but will set standards for forthcoming
studies of a wider Europe."
Professor Peter-Emil Mitev, University of Sofia and board of Bulgarian
Sociological Association
"This book is informative and at the same time heuristic. The erudition of
the authors is impressive and its actuality is inspiring. What is
remarkable is that the authors have managed to reach a viewpoint which
embraces the diverse processes and situations that characterise youth in
both East and West Europe."
This book is about the creation and reconstruction of the idea of youth in
Europe and the way this has affected the real lives of young people.
It draws upon a variety of sources to show how different ideas of "youth"
were constructed in East and West Europe in the course of modernisation
under both Communist and welfare capitalist regimes. More recently
"modern" concepts of youth have been de-constructed and re-constructed by
changes in state policies, the labour market, education and popular culture
so that it is no longer so clear who youth are or how they can be helped.
The big issue at the end of the twentieth century in Europe is the process
of Europeanisation, including the widening of Europe to East. What do
young people in different parts of Europe have in common? This book seeks
to explore how the lives of young people were shaped by the dramatic
changes taking place in Europe over the last hundred years. However, they
were not simply the passive products of such changes. Young people have at
all times had an active part in constructing these changes. The book looks
at processes of modernisation (industrialisation, development of welfare
states and education systems, urbanisation) and the different ways in which
this took place in the context of Communism and welfare capitalism and how
this "constructed" youth. It then goes on to consider the processes of
post-modernisation, including the fragmentation and privatisation of the
state, the reconstruction of labour market and education systems,
de-industrialisation, the importance of popular youth culture and how this
"deconstructed" youth.
The book brings a genuinely comparative approach to youth by focusing upon
a range of key topics from a comparative perspective (and not simply
juxtaposing accounts from different countries). The book draws upon ideas
developed in both Eastern and Western Europe in order to understand and
explain the situation of young people. Normally ideas are drawn from only
the dominant western European literature. It draws upon a range of surveys
and research material about youth (especially in Eastern Europe) which
was never before published in English, and in some cases never published at
all because it was considered to dangerous by the former Communist
authorities.
However, a text of 90 000 words cannot cover the whole of Europe in the
same depth. Therefore it concentrates mostly upon particular countries as
examples within a general framework. These are Britain and the Central
European countries of Germany, Austria, Bulgaria, Poland and the Czech
Republic. Other examples are drawn upon where material is available. One
problem is the lack of general comparative material about youth in Europe
and the books points towards the need for such material and the need for
systematic comparative research.
Contents:
Chapter 1:Towards and Understanding of Youth in Europe.
This chapter contains a brief revue of some of the theories of
modernisation and postmodernisation as trends rather than as philosophies
and their differential impacts in the different regions of Europe. There
follows a review of some of the dominant theories of "youth" including the
work of G. Stanley Hall, Mead and Mannheim, anthropological perspectives,
marxist and critical perspectives, individualisation. There is a section
about perspectives on youth in Eastern Europe, especially the work of Fred
Mahler and Peter Mitev. The argument is that these theories have
themselves been used to construct youth as a target of intervention and now
help to de-construct "youth".
Chapter 2:Modernisation and the Construction of Youth
This chapter looks at historical trends and the consequences of
industrialisation, urbanisation, education and the creation of centralised
state systems for the construction of youth in Europe. It considers the
important role of youth movements in this process. This chapter considers
the way in which youth were constructed as the transformers of society
under conditions of fascism and communism. Finally, it considers the role
of youth professionals under communist and welfare capitalist states.
Chapter 3 Transitions in Education, Training and Work
In this chapter is considered the way in which the education and training
systems have shaped the idea of youth. There is a description of the
changing labour market for young people and the various intervention and
training schemes, along with a consideration of how this affects different
genders and ethnic minorities. The main argument is that whilst the
construction of education and training systems brought mass education and a
standardised concept of youth, this is de-standardised through "post
fordist" tendencies in the education and labour markets. This has happened
in a more accelerated way in many Eastern European countries. There is
also increasing differentiation among young people including the creation
of a disadvantaged group who are excluded from the labour market whilst for
others, mobility is supported by the expansion and differentiation of the
education/training systems.
Chapter 4 Family Transitions
This chapter considers the way in which family relations and youth have
been structured in different parts of Europe, including different
traditions in leaving home, starting families, forming partnerships and so
on. As in education, we can see changes from a standardised to a more
destandardised and open model of family relations, both in the
relationships that young people form with each other, but also in the
relationships they develop with their parents and other older kin.
Chapter 5 Youth Culture and Consumerism
This chapter considers the development of youth cultures and consumer
culture as ways in which young people have constructed themselves, often in
opposition to dominant cultures and dominant official ideas of "youth".
The chapter traces the role of youth cultures as a subversive influence in
Eastern Europe and considers young women and ethnic sub-cultures. The
final argument is that consumer culture actually helps to dissolve the idea
of youth by making everyone aspire to a universal "youthfulness" - even
children are drawn in - but this is also increasingly commercially dominated.
Chapter 6 Young People`s Political Values and Participation
This chapter looks at the kind of political participation which young
people engage in and the ideas that they hold. Although for the most part,
young people are disengaged from mainstream politics, at certain pivotal
moments in history such as the revolutions of 1989, their mobilisation can
help to change society in quite radical ways. The chapter looks at the
similarities and differences between young peopleÆs engagement in politics
in Eastern and Western Europe.
Chapter 7 Postmodernisation and the de-construction of youth
This chapter summarises the main arguments of the book, showing the
tendencies towards the deconstruction of youth as a social category which
exist alongside the construction of youth by modern state systems in
Europe. Different models of youth are created in different contexts and
amongst different population groups. It considers the implications of the
collapse of the communist regimes in Eastern Europe with their "strong" and
rather homogenous model of youth, but which also privileged young people
and provided them with resources. These resources have disappeared at the
very time when young people have also lost traditional sources of support
in the labour market and the family. The contemporary domination of Europe
by a market society, along with the increasing commercialisation of
culture, education and other aspects of public life creates an idea of
individualism which means everyone can "choose" but must also fend for
themselves. It fosters the privatisation not just of institutions, but of
problems as well. Finally, the chapter speculates about the importance of
having concepts or models of youth in order to enable intervention and
support for young people and whether the European Union is able to take on
such a role when national welfare states are losing them.
Claire Wallace is Professor of Social Research at the University of Derby
and researcher at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Vienna. She has
worked for many years on the subject of youth research and has published a
range of books and articles on this topic. She is secretary of the
Research Committee on Youth for the International Sociological Association.
Sijka Kovatcheva is Assistant Professor at the University of Plovdiv,
Bulgaria. She studied sociology at Sofia and then later at the Central
European University in Prague and the University of Notre Dame in USA. She
has worked on a range of research projects about young people in Central
and Eastern Europe
To order this book:
This book is available in the United States and Canada from St. Martin`s
Press. Write to Marketing Dept. St. Martin`s Press Inc. 175 Fifth Avenue,
New York, NY 10010 Fax: (212) 982 3900
For order outside the United States contact Customer Services, Macmillans,
Houndmills, Basingstoke RG21 6XS, Fax: 01256 364733
ISBN: 0 -333-65225-8
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Claire Wallace
Department of Sociology
Institute for Advanced Studies
Stumpergasse 56,
1060-Vienna
Austria
Tel: +431 59991 ext. 213
Fax: +431 59991-191
email: [log in to unmask]
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