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Rethinking Youth: Brics Perspectives, Conceptualizations, and Theories
Rethinking Youth: Brics Perspectives, Conceptualizations, and Theories
Wednesday, 13 July 2016: 14:15-15:45
Location: Hörsaal 07 (Main Building)
RC16 Sociological Theory (host committee) Language: English
Forty per cent of the world’s youth live in five countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa), providing a powerful platform to influence contemporary and classical sociology. Northern domination on the theoretical bases of sociological descriptions and explanations are, resultantly, vulnerable to disruption and displacement by an emerging BRICS’ impacts of new geo-political shifts.
BRICS’ political agendas, cultural exchanges, increased communication pathways and scientific collaboration strengthen challenging Northern hegemony. These result in forms of mélange, diffusion and hybridity among BRICS that mandate new explanations to be contextually relevant and appropriate.
Sociologists are challenged by such shifts to re-theorize people, nations, workers, women, the poor and the marginal in general, and youth in particular. Re-theorization entails developing conceptual apparatuses for a meta-understanding of youth in the Global South, and building theories to explain the impact on both the global and the local contexts.
Classical sociology thus needs to be reconsidered, by reinvigorating sociology with new conceptual apparatuses. It demands translating thinking into actions as they apply to such formations, in their inter- and intra-relations, forms and processes, and ultimately, for social science to understand an emerging “new world order” dominated by young persons. The call is for papers that outline the relevant theories for an understanding of BRICS youth.
Session Organizers: