Egyptian Youth's Perception of Political, Social and Cultural Problems:
A Sociological Analysis Using Conflicted Rules Theory
Since the Egyptian society and most Arab countries are going through historical crises, they are unable to develop and face regional and international challenges, due to three types of problems related to state institutions and obstacles to democratic transformation, traditional problems related to local and national social and cultural structures, in addition to the challenges of digital transformation at the individual and group level. It is certain that the level of youth awareness of these crises will be influential in the future of Egyptian development in the medium and long term. Accordingly, the main research question came as follows:
How do Egyptian youth perceive the political, social and cultural problems facing their society?
Theoretically, the study is guided by Conflicted Rules Theory (CRT), which belongs to the Agency/Structure Approach in sociology, and attempts to overcome the epistemological and ontological problems that characterize the Western sociological heritage, by attempting to describe, explain, and predict the change that occurs in social life without focusing on specific societies or phenomena.
At the methodological level, the study adopts a mixed approach, quantitative and qualitative, where the researcher uses national and international databases to describe the youth’s state, besides using narrative interviews to reveal the level of awareness. The interview texts are analyzed using a new approach derived from (CRT), which the researcher calls: Four-dimensional Critical Discourse Analyses, which concede a development of Norman Fairclough’s critical discourse analysis.
Keywords: Egyptian youth, conflicted rules theory, mechanisms of social change, socio-political problems