Deconstructing youth : youth discourses at the limits of sense / Fleur Gabriel, Monash University, Australia.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Gabriel, Fleur, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

At-risk youth.

Adolescence.

Physical Description:

vi, 197 pages ; 23 cm

Place of Publication:

New York, NY : Palgrave Macmillan, 2013.

Summary:

Young people are regularly cast as a threat to social order. Deconstructing Youth argues that this is due in part to the way the notion of youth is conceptualised in Western society. Drawing on Derridean deconstruction, Gabriel analyses the limits of dominant youth discourses, revealing the ways in which commonsense assumptions about young people are marked by contradictory expectations that actually function to create youth as a 'problem'. With case studies on youth sexuality, violence and developmental neuroscience, she details how these contradictions go unrecognised in attempts to make sense of young people's identities and actions. Gabriel argues that this leads to the misattribution of blame to young people who are then taken to operate outside the boundaries of acceptable conduct. In response, she argues that deconstruction offers a much more fluid and productive approach to understanding youth through its critique of existing forms of categorisation. Book jacket.

Contents:

Acknowledgements

Introduction

The state of contemporary youth : conceptual underpinnings of dominant youth discourses

Deconstruction and the question of identity

Reasonable unreasoning

Presumed innocent : the paradox of "coming of age"

Normal abnormality : coming to terms with teen violence and the undecidability of youth

Conclusion

Notes

References.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780230363335

0230363334

OCLC:

848162693