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Understanding Youth
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Understanding Youth
Perspectives, Identities & Practices

Edited by:


February 2007 | 368 pages | SAGE Publications Ltd
The lives of young people in the UK, as elsewhere in the world, have changed in dramatic ways in recent years. Important changes have taken place in the social structures and processes shaping young people's lives, including changes in schooling and in higher education, the loss of the traditional youth labor market, and shifts in the nature of family and intimate relationships.

Understanding Youth: Perspectives, Identities and Practices addresses the changing context and nature of youth, encouraging readers to understand different conceptualizations of youth, issues of identity and the key social practices that give shape to young people's lives in the contemporary period.

Key Features:
  • Introduces the key perspectives, identities, and practices involved in understanding youth
  • Offers a holistic and interdisciplinary approach to young people's lives
  • Draws upon rich biographical case studies of young people, emphasizing young people's own voices
  • Provides a comprehensive overview of youth in the late modernity
  • Presents a clear and accessible approach to complex issues
This invaluable book will be essential reading for students and practitioners concerned with youth and youth work, and of particular relevance for undergraduate courses across a range of social science and education disciplines focusing on youth in changing times.

 
Introduction
 
PERSPECTIVES
Mary Jane Kehily
A Cultural Perspective
Heather Montgomery
A Comparative Perspective
Rachel Thomson
A Biographical Perspective
 
IDENTITIES
Martin Robb
Gender
Rachel Thomson
Belonging
Martin Robb
Well-being
 
PRACTICES
Rachel Thomson
Working
Mary Jane Kehily
Playing
Heather Montgomery
Moving
Martin Robb
Relating
 
Conclusion

This book will become an essential text within several of our modules on our various community youth work programmes. Split into meaningful sections with easy to read and illustrated chapters, our students have responded well to this text. In my own teaching Chapter 1 gives a very valuable introduction to cultural perspectives on youth. I make very clear to students that this text is the starting point for their reading as it will guide them in the right direction.

Mr ALASTAIR SCOTT-MCKINLEY
Community Youth Work, Ulster University
July 16, 2011

Mary Jane Kehily's Understanding Youth is an extremely useful undergraduate text. Its problem based focus and wealth of examples and excercises, coupled with decent photographic illustrations, make it an ideal teaching resource. Its well stocked thematic repertoire usefully demonstrates to students some of the range of methods and theories available in the study of youth.

Dr Patrick Turner
Department of Education, London Metropolitan University
May 6, 2011

Useful exercises for reflection and embedding learning.

Mrs Wendy Bannerman
Childhood and Youth, Northampton University
March 10, 2010
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