Schrödinger's Cat, Charlie, and the Youth Worker: Superpositionality and the State of Being Young.

The concept of superpositionality was developed in the first half of last century in quantum physics. Superpositionality describes a condition in which an object can be in two (or more) different and apparently inconsistent states at the same time. According to quantum theory, the state of superposition holds until observation and measurement establishes one state or the other, and the superposition ‘collapses’. The process of observation, description or representation and the instruments used to do these things are implicated in the final state of the object. The theory was famously illustrated through a parable posed by physicist Erwin Schrödinger in 1935 and now known as Schrödinger's cat.

The concept offers a perspective on the state of being a young person: young people occupy adult and non-adult, child and non-child, worker and non-worker, citizen and non-citizen, independent and non-independent positions at the same time. The paper explores the implications of the concept of superpositionality in our understanding of young people, the exercise of observation, assessment and measurement that engagement with young people involves, and the impact of collapsing superpositions on both the young person and the practitioner. It may also help in framing the persistent tension between structure and agency in the sociology of youth.