ABSTRACT
In recent years youth has become a widely debated and increasingly contested term. Like culture, youth is now increasingly a discursive construct and, consequently, a term overlain with multiple and, in many cases, confl icting meanings. The meanings now attached to youth refl ect a variety of different political, ideological and aesthetic positions. Underlying each of these, however, is a common argument. Thus, the term youth is no longer regarded as straightforwardly linked with the condition of being young. Indeed, according to some observers, young people’s exclusive claim on the term youth has largely disappeared. Such views are grounded in the allegedly apolitical and apathetic outlook of contemporary youth. From this point of view, contemporary youth is seen to be lacking the perceived tendencies towards subversion and resistance deemed to have characterized the youth of previous generations from the 1950s onwards. For others, the exclusive association of youth with the young has become weakened due to the fact that many of the traits once connected with youth are now observed across a far broader age range. To some extent, this is attributed to changing sensibilities relating to ageing and the life course in late modern society. Similarly noted is the shifting demography of audiences for popular musics such as rock, punk and dance. Once defi ned as ‘youth’ musics, these genres now attract increasingly multi-generational followings. During the course of this chapter I will consider the signifi cance of these arguments for our understanding of the term youth in the context of contemporary society. In the concluding part of the chapter I will assess to what extent youth can still be regarded as a valid conceptual framework for the study and interpretation of cultural practices and collective sensibilities associated with the young.
