Presidential Session: The Sociology of Youth Today

What is the Sociology of Youth today? Does this time honoured question need revisiting in 2023? Historically, the Sociology of Youth has had a chequered history. Since its origins, in the nineteenth century, the Child Studies movement has been buffeted by different fads and preoccupations including eugenics, criminology, urban space, and a passing parade of paradigms, including structural functionalism, deviance theory, Marxist class theory, feminist, queer and post-colonial theory. Most recently, we have seen repeated attempts to overcome the structure~agency binary.

Is the Sociology of Youth simply about ‘the study of youth’? Are we - or should we - be thinking in a more reflective and focussed way on, for example, relations between young people and elders. To what extent is - or should - the Sociology of Youth be about other people, groups, experts and associated institutions, or the exercise of power, the politics of space and colonialism (e.g. the Global South and Global North) species-being crises and who gets to describe-say what is happening and ‘who youth and young people are’?

We raise these questions as provocations. These questions have implications for youth research, how it is understood and practised, for ethical or professional conduct, how we understand the discipline, how youth are known and the lives of young people experienced. We welcome papers on all of these themes and others related to the state of the Sociology of Youth.