Spelling suggestions: "subject:"young 6people anda apolitics"" "subject:"young 6people anda bpolitics""
1 |
Young People and Politics: Apathetic and Disengaged? A Qualitative InquiryManning, Nathan Paul, nathan.manning@adelaide.edu.au January 2007 (has links)
This thesis is an examination of the prominent discourse which claims young people are apathetic and disengaged from politics. It is argued that this discourse is based upon two faulty conceptual assumptions, firstly, that youth is a period of linear transition to adulthood, and secondly, that the discourse unreflexively applies an unproblematised notion of politics which has its origin in the eighteenth century Scottish Enlightenment. The research used in-depth qualitative interviews to explore the ways in which young people operating across the political spectrum understand and practice politics. These qualitative findings add to existing studies of young people and politics, which are predominantly quantitative in approach. The findings suggest that the Scottish Enlightenments narrow, regulatory, liberal model of politics is the hegemonic model of politics for participants. However, this hegemony is challenged by participants own political practices, the collapse of liberalisms public/private divide under conditions of late modernity, and an interconnected sense of self. Moreover, contrary to the discourse of apathetic and disengaged youth, that there are a number of ways of understanding and practicing politics, particularly in light of social processes such as individualisation, new social movements, and consumerism driving recent social change.
|
Page generated in 0.0836 seconds