Simon Bradford - Sociology, Youth and Youth Work Practice

This critical series engages with the theoretical debates that most directly impact on work with young people.

The books offer perspectives from a range of disciplines, including sociology, psychology, education, social policy and criminology, with a view to drawing out the enduring ideas and debates that frame practice. Individually the books present accessible insights into the ever-changing purpose and functions of work with young people, while highlighting the settings and policy that structure current practice.

Together they offer a unique opportunity for readers to explore and challenge the ideas that inform their understanding of young people as a distinct yet diverse social group, and the implications of this for practice.

Bradford: Sociology, Youth and Youth Work Practice

Spence, Issitt and Banks: Research Perspectives in Work with Young People

Sociology, Youth and Youth Work Practice

Simon Bradford

Simon Bradford 2012

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First published 2012 by

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ISBN: 9780230237988

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List of Figures and Tables

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to the series editors Jean Spence and Sarah Banks for the invitation to write this book. They have been exemplary in keeping the book (and me) on track and in helping to see it through to completion with a degree of confidence that, frankly, has sometimes eluded me. Much of the inspiration for the book has come from courses that I have taught, with others, over a number of years at Brunel University. Writing is never an individual effort or achievement. It always entails the encouragement, support and help of others. Several people deserve particular acknowledgement. Mick Brent and Paul Allender both made substantial contributions to courses at Brunel and I have developed ideas taken from their work. Peter Seglow, Bob Gutfreund, Bernard Down, Val Hey and Fiona Cullen helped me develop my own sociological imagination over many years and I have borrowed from them. Colleagues in the Centre for Youth Work Studies at Brunel University have always been supportive and generous: Pam Alldred, Craig Johnston, Michael Whelan, Laura Hills and Laura Green in particular. Students on various undergraduate and masters courses have, often inadvertently, given invaluable criticism of my ideas and work over the years and they have helped to ground some of these. My doctoral students have been a source of inspiration and encouragement. I am grateful to the support of colleagues more widely at Brunel, past and present, and in the Schools of Health Sciences and Social Care, and Sport and Education in particular.

I am grateful to editorial staff at Palgrave Macmillan; Catherine Gray and Katie Rauwerda in particular deserve acknowledgement and Bryony Allen has been forensic in copyediting.

As ever, the most important debts are personal. To my friends and family, and in particular, Katalin, Tams and Angela, thank you, and my sincere apologies for neglecting you at times when chapters needed completing.

Simon Bradford

Preface

This book explores sociology and the sociology of youth, and their significance for professionals working with young people. It is aimed at two constituencies. Principally, it addresses students on university courses preparing them for practitioner roles (youth workers, social workers, teachers, personal advisers, drugs workers and so on) and who are working to gain an understanding and capacity to theorize and explain young peoples lives and experiences. The book will also appeal to established practitioners who want to reflect on their own work in order to better understand and explain the complexity and nuances of young peoples lives by drawing on the sociology of youth. The book is intended to enhance an inquisitive and critical understanding of the concept of youth.

As a social category, youth as currently understood emerged as a consequence of rapid changes in the nineteenth century, associated particularly with shifts from so-called traditional societies to industrial, urban and capitalist modernity. Modern societies should not be seen as homogeneous. They are much more plural and ambiguous than some accounts suggest, with aspects of what is understood as modernity and tradition existing side by side. In such societies, young people became progressively positioned in a kind of structural no-persons land leading to them frequently being understood and represented in deeply problematic and pathological terms. Youth (in the West, at least) has historically been situated on the boundary between constancy and change and in that sense is a liminal category, symbolically powerful and dangerous. Recent events in North Africa, the Middle East and Europe, including the UK (in nation states that include variously articulated aspects of tradition and modernity that exist sometimes in tension and at others in harmony), have demonstrated young peoples capacity their agency to transgress some of the boundaries within which they have been locked. This makes the task of theorizing youth complex.

In some ways, generation relations in the West and elsewhere (as power relations) seem to have altered in certain respects in recent times. Youths cultural and social capitals, increasingly embodied in digital technologies and practices, partially displace the cultural authority of an adult elite, contribute to apparently widening social distance and in some circumstances lead to declining trust between generations. This is expressed in some young peoples visceral hatred of adults who symbolize illegitimate authority: politicians, police, teachers, social workers and others. Social policy has, too often, contributed to some young peoples marginal status.