Faces of Dissent: An Appraisal of Kenneth Keniston’s Researches on Youth and Youth Cultures

The paper aims to analyse Kenneth Keniston’s researches on the forms of dissent that engaged the US youth between the late 1950s and early 1970s.

Through the continuum between alienation and commitment, the analysis allows to outline the complex interweaving among the processes of social and political change, the biographical dimension and the psychosocial development on which Keniston developed his analysis of the «faces of dissent».

The manifold suggestions, until the proposal of identifying the typical features of a «postmodern youth», and the innovative contribution that the analysis developed by Keniston offered, and continues to offer, to the debate on youth and youth cultures are thus highlighted.