The youth category, in its modern form, has emerged under particular social and economic
conditions, under the influence of particular social institutions, shaped by particular discourses.
This thesis is an inquiry into the constitution of youth as a social category through an examination
of these factors.
Through a review of the historical and sociological literature, the thesis establishes the conditions
for the emergence of the modem concept of youth in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
The evidence suggests that the youth category came into being as a result of changes in the
industrial family, the industrial reforms which progressively excluded children and young people
fkom the workforce, and the establishment of compulsory schooling - especially secondary
schooling. Parallel with these developments, a variety of discourses about youth (or
"adolescence") were generated, establishing the emergent category in scientific terms. G. Stanley
Hall's theories of adolescence, developed around the turn of the century, were perhaps the most
influential of these, casting adolescence as a universal stage in life characterised by social and
psychological turmoil. In sociology, this theoretical frame has been the subject of longstanding
debate. The thesis explores this debate, and attempts to establish a sociological view of the youth
, category in the light of the historical and sociological evidence. In these explorations, "youth" is
established as a product of historical processes, a product of political economy and of scientific
discourse.
The analysis is brought into the present through a study of how youth are represented in a highcirculation
daily newspaper, The West Australian. Using standard media analysis techniques, the
study examines the construction of language around youth, and the kinds of stories in which they
appear in the newspaper, and finds a detailed discursive apparatus through which young people are
classified as good or bad, passive (victim, child) or active (perpetrator, adult). These
constructions vary with the institutional location of the news source, and with such factors as the
gender and ethnicity of the subject, while continuing to be underwritten by orthodox discourses of
adolescence. For its part, the newspaper overwhelmingly casts youth in a law and order frame,
driven by the appetites of audiences and the economies of news production.
The study explores the differences as well as the continuities in the concept of youth employed in
the patchwork of discourse that constitutes newspaper text. In these explorations, "youth" is
established in the present as a contested category, the subject of competing discourses. Competing
institutions and professions, in their interventions in the newspaper, try to secure a reading of the
youth phenomenon which is consistent with their professional and political objectives.
The thesis is about the constitution of youth. Through the analysis of historical and contemporary
discourse about youth, the thesis reveals how the subjection of this section of the adult population
is achieved and maintained, how they are established as a pliable, coercible and economically
dispensable population, and how the instruments of their governance are legitimated.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ADTP/221880 |
| Date | January 1996 |
| Creators | Howard Sercombe |
| Publisher | Murdoch University |
| Source Sets | Australiasian Digital Theses Program |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Rights | http://www.murdoch.edu.au/goto/CopyrightNotice, Copyright Howard Sercombe |
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