ABSTRACT
The words nature and biology are two primary means by which the category of youth is “put into discourse” (Foucault, 1990, p. 11). In fact, for the Western world, the very term “youth” immediately connotes a biological reality. Young people (both children and adolescents) are foremost defined by their age and physiological development (or their “stage in the life-course”). Processes of biological and behavioral change are seen as germane to youth: so much so that their particular qualities are said to comprise their essential nature. Such processes of change must not only be monitored and understood, but managed in order to cultivate the best adult human possible. In this respect, our very idea of youth rests upon a dialectic: youth is both a “natural” and universal state of difference and a process of physiological change and development; youth is not only a time of freedom and experiment, but it is also a period of strict regimen and discipline in the biologically and socially guided activity of becoming an adult.
