Lecture 1:

Whos them Youth?

Yuen Kok Leong

Dept of Anthropology & Sociology
Faculty of Social Sciences, UNIMAS

Youth Defined
Who is youth?
Definition of youth:
the period between childhood and adult age
the qualities of vigour, freshness, or immaturity as
associated with being young (Oxford Dictionary)
Oxfords Word Trend: YOUTH:
Youth was once the ultimate state, envied and romanticized by those who had left
it behind, with youths themselves celebrated as the possessors of beauty and
potential. But that time has passed, with the Oxford English Corpus telling a sorry
tale of the state of todays youth: unemployed,disaffected, nuisance,
and drunken are some of the most common modifiers, while almost all of the
verbs associated with youths are violent or threatening,
with attack, smash, vandalize, intimidate, and assault all scoring highly.
And youths cannot simply meetthey congregate, gather, and
evenplague: intimidating gangs of baseball-capped youths congregating around
the newsagents a shopping parade plagued by nuisance youths. Teenagers fare
equally badly, commonly being the object of verbs such as kill, stab, arrest,
and molest and described as troubled, rebellious, spotty, or pregnant.

Youth as an adjective
What is the adjectives that pops in your mind when you think
of the word youth/youthfulness?
Youthfulness (Jones, 2009):
+ve: strength, beauty, idealism and energy
-ve: lack of wisdom, hotheaded, experimentation,
naivety, lack of maturity and sense

Youth vs Adolescent
Youth as an identifying group from social work/counselling (vs
adolescent)
Youth through industrialization and specific division of labour
Education as right and child/adolescent/juvenile laws through
the legal means.
Youth as sociological while adolescent as developmental

Youth Defined
Various definition of youth:
cultural (rites of passage)
legal (Juvenile Courts Act 1947)
political (MCA Youth, Pemuda UMNO)
biological (puberty & bodily functions)
psychological (adolescent)
institutional: United Nations UN
religion
Moving target definition: as the age of marriage gets later,
does youth group expanded? What is the clear defining
characteristics that could differentiate or show actual
differences? Consider also the role of increase of years in
education, which now include tertiary level.

Many faces of youth

The varying definition of youth shows how the word is a
concept in constant debate rather than a fixed indicator:
Cultural: youth defined as a cultural stage of life: e.g.
Lumbawang/Kelabit and Bidayuh. Other societies:
Rumspringa, rites of passage etc. Expectation of contribution
to family? Taking care of the elderly?

Legal: youth defined under a certain acts, in Malaysia:

Juveniles Act 1947 that defines youth as Other protection
such as under 18 censorship and entrance to a certain
premises such as casino or clubs. Also: Child Act 2001

Many faces of youth (cont)

Political: refers to the Youth wing of a political party, usually
the most vocal and expresses the extreme views of the
party. No agreed age, but according to
BN/UMNO/MCA/DAPsy, Pemuda Pas/Angkatan Muda
Keadilan
Biological: most primarily the development of sexual organs
during puberty: getting wet dreams or beginning of
menstruation.

Many faces of youth (cont)

Psychological: youth as a distinctive phase, for e.g. Freuds
psychosexual stages and how in adulthood, the peronality is
much set according to what happened during adolescence.
Institutional: UN- United Nations Convention on the Rights of
the Child- ratification binds the country by international law
(Malaysia: 1995) & UNICEF

Religion: custody, rights to choose own religion (a debatable

concepts, compare Malaysia with other countries),
inheritance, guardianship etc. How does the Syariah law
defines youth?

Youth in the making (1800/1900s)

Granville Stanley Hall (1844-1924)- paved
the way defining youth (adolescence).
Believed that pre-adolescent as savages
seeing individual development in a linear
fashion.
Youth to be an age of Storm and Stress
(Strum und Drang), characterised by:
Conflict with parents (rebellious/resist
authority)
Mood disruptions (emotionally volatile)
Risky behaviour (reckless disruptions)

Influence of work faded though regained some current interest.

-But how much does current mass media still uses this framework on youth?

 Halls work defines the thoughts on youth in 1800s/early 1900

(compare with Durkheims Anomie/Social Strain)
It denotes the time in history: Western Depression era, rise
in suicide. Anomie as social pathology due to change from
mechanical solidarity to organic solidarity
-economic changes too fast for moral regulation with increasing
differentiation and specialization.
People are less locked into their society- sense of
meaninglessness and disorder
Transition from a agricultural division of labour to the
demarcation of job during industrial revolution.

1950s/1960s
Subsequent researches and academic work strengthening
the concept of youth: Chicago Schools Street Corner Gangs,
Cohens Moral Panic and Folk Devils and CCCS (Birmingham
School) Subcultural Studies featuring Mods, Teddyboys and
Rastas (next slide).
Social movements post WWII, domestic protest instead of
nationalism take over, critical towards own government which
solidifies YOUTH as a concept.
Postwar Baby Boom and the Suburb
Technology and consumerism: youth as a market
Invention of teenager

1970s/1980s
Oil crisis: shaping triumph of conservative
Thatcherite/Reaganite policies
Welfare reform: nanny state in Western world
Invention of youth at risk: problematisation of youth:
against:
Countercultural Movements: births of various
subcultures/countercultures rejecting parental culture.
Alternative education: shift of trends towards different
education approach for children: home schooling, religious
schools, private schools
-MALAYSIA?

1990s
Neoliberalism and the myth of global youth culture
MTVs, local culture vs global youth culture

Professionalism of youth work

Further development of youth rehabilitation policies/facilities

Critical theories
Development of Marxist, Feminist and Conflict theories on Youth,
towards a more emphatic framework on youth, centering on
the question of POWER.

-MALAYSIA?

Youth in the world

UNITED NATIONS- Convention on the Rights of the Child 1989
-below the age of 18 years old

Malaysians reservation:

Article 2 on non-discrimination
Article 7 on name and nationality
Article 14 on freedom of thought, conscience and religion
Article 28(1)(a) on free and compulsory education at primary
level
Article 37 on torture and deprivation of liberty

Youth in Malaysia

Youth in Malaysia
Youth under :
i.
ii.
iii.
iv.
v.

Juvenile Act 1947

Women and Young Girls Protection Act 1973
Child Protection Act 1991
Child Act 2001 (consolidation of the i, ii & iii above)
Youth Societies and Youth Development Act 2007

Youth under Ministry of Youth and Sports

Sociological theories:
are critical analyses of society and inequality:

Asks about power dynamics

Look at class, gender, cultural and religious factors
Explore hegemony- usage of mass media indoctrination
And ask: why some groups get labelled and others not

So what does that makes of Sociology of Youth?

References:
Roches, J., Tucker, S., Thomson, R. & Flynn, R. (eds.) (2004). Youth
in Society, 2nd Edition. London: Sage Publications.
Jones, G. (2009). Youth. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Website: Ministry of Youth and Sports
http://www.kbs.gov.my/
Website: United Nations Childrens Rights and Emergency Relief
Organization
http://www.unicef.org/