Introduction

There is a growing literature on gender and generation in the West that has arisen as a result of the recognition that the experience of youth is classed, raced and gendered and the experience of gender is mediated by class, race, ethnicity, sexuality and age. The commitment to exploring ‘difference and diversity’ is very real and in the area of youth studies these themes have replaced the notion of ‘resistance’ amongst those researchers seeking to challenge the discourses of deviance, disaffection, consumption and dependence which have dominated the mainstream debate (Griffin 1993:199– 200). Both radical and mainstream discourses have traditionally been rooted in perceived truisms about the alienating experience of modern societies. But simple resolutions of this modern condition (via class, ethnic or national consciousness) appear increasingly problematic. This is why the notion of ‘identity’ is important, since it is at the level of individual identity formation and reformation that the negotiation between different socio-cultural identities takes place. There is, in the times we live in, no collective social identity birthright; rather, identities of gender, generation, sexuality, class, race, ethnicity and religion are constructed in time and space.