Struggles for Subjectivity Identity, Action and Youth Experience [Paperback]

This book, first published in 2000, examines the urgent social and cultural questions faced by young people.This book explores the relationship between new experiences of selfhood and new patterns of social life. It does so through an encounter with young people who confront urgent social and cultural transformations, whose experience of selfhood is unclear, often shaped by social forces that while powerful, appear difficult, if not impossible to name. These young people live in a world where institutions are weakening and identities are fragmenting, where socialization into roles is being replaced by new imperatives of communication and self esteem.Their world is shaped by new forms of freedom, but also by new forms of social polarization and conflict. More than other social groups, young people confront the imperative of locating a sense of self and subjectivity, and this book is an account of this struggle in a context of profound social and cultural change.This book explores the relationship between new experiences of selfhood and new patterns of social life. It does so through an encounter with young people who confront urgent social and cultural transformations, whose experience of selfhood is unclear, often shaped by social forces that while powerful, appear difficult, if not impossible to name. These young people live in a world where institutions are weakening and identities are fragmenting, where socialization into roles is being replaced by new imperatives of communication and self esteem.Their world is shaped by new forms of freedom, but also by new forms of social polarization and conflict. More than other social groups, young people confront the imperative of locating a sense of self and subjectivity, and this book is an account of this struggle in a context of profound social and cultural change.This book explores the relationship between new experiences of selfhood and new patterns of social life. It does so through an encounter with young people whol“„