Beyond the Moral Panic of Juvenile Vacuity. Exploring Ambivalences and Potentialities in Young People “Doing Nothing”
Language: English
This session seeks to shift the perspective on young people “doing nothing” – alone or together - from a deviant act to a meaningful aspect of youth experience, especially in a society obsessed with efficiency and performance. It aims at recognising “doing nothing” as an adaptation strategy for young people dealing with growing difficulties in transitions to adulthood and limited possibilities to participate in consumerist culture. Finally, it seeks to understand “doing nothing” as a practice allowing young people to momentarily escape acceleration, resist the performative demands of neoliberalism, and daydream/inform alternative futures.
With the ambition to recognise “doing nothing” as a space of generational agency, we welcome critical investigations considering, but not limited to, the following topics:
- different forms of “doing nothing”, including gender and other intersectional differences;
- young people’s own understandings of “doing nothing”, including comparisons between spatial and geographical contexts;
- “doing nothing” as a generational temporality in relation to reproductive choices, intimate relations, work orientation and wellbeing;
- the practices and functions of “doing nothing” together in online and offline youth collectivities;
- adults’ interpretations of and reactions to young people “doing nothing”;
- the analysis of public interventions and discourses on young people “doing nothing”.