1st Edition

Youth Rising? The Politics of Youth in the Global Economy

By Mayssoun Sukarieh, Stuart Tannock Copyright 2015
    198 Pages
    by Routledge

    198 Pages
    by Routledge

    Over the last decade, "youth" has become increasingly central to policy, development, media and public debates and conflicts across the world – whether as an ideological symbol, social category or political actor. Set against a backdrop of contemporary political economy, Youth Rising? seeks to understand exactly how and why youth has become such a popular and productive social category and concept. The book provocatively argues that the rise and spread of global neoliberalism has not only led youth to become more politically and symbolically salient, but also to expand to encompass a growing range of ages and individuals of different class, race, ethnic, national and religious backgrounds.

    Employing both theoretical and historical analysis, authors Mayssoun Sukarieh and Stuart Tannock trace the development of youth within the context of capitalism, where it has long functioned as a category for social control. The book’s chapters critically analyze the growing fears of mass youth unemployment and a "lost generation" that spread around the world in the wake of the global financial crisis. They question as well the relentless focus on youth in the reporting and discussion of recent global protests and uprisings. By helping develop a better understanding of such phenomena and critically and reflexively investigating the very category and identity of youth, Youth Rising? offers a fresh and sobering challenge to the field of youth studies and to widespread claims about the relationship between youth and social change.

    List of Figures

    Series Editor Preface

    Acknowledgement

    Introduction

    Chapter One: The Neoliberal Embrace of Youth

    Chapter Two: Youth and Capitalism in History

    Chapter Three: The Spectre of Youth Unemployment

    Chapter Four: Youth as a Revolutionary Subject?

    Chapter Five: Education, Protest & the Continuing Extension of Youth

    Conclusion

    References

    Biography

    Mayssoun Sukarieh is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Cogut Center for the Humanities at Brown University.

    Stuart Tannock is a Senior Lecturer at the School of Social Sciences at Cardiff University. 

    "A much needed critique of neo-liberal use of "youth" to disguise class and nourish generational gaps. Dynamite in its implications." - Laura Nader, Professor of Anthropology, UC Berkeley

    "Sukarieh and Tannock have written a groundbreaking book that will help to redefine the field of youth studies by providing a much-needed political-economy analysis of youth. Their analysis positions young people—indeed the current concept of youth—within the neoliberal context of social control and exploitation, thereby challenging youth researchers to re-evaluate their excessively positive representations of the youth period." - James Côté, Professor of Sociology, The University of Western Ontario

    "Youth Rising? begins from the position that a critical engagement with the concept of youth is crucial in today’s political landscape...  Ultimately, the fetishization of youth is rejected for the argument that social transformation cannot emerge from any single group, abstracted from the broader racialized, gendered, and classed relations of society."— Sara Carpenter, Adult Education Quarterly