ABSTRACT
Ali Rattansi and Ann Phoenix end their substantial review of developments in research around identity and youth by arguing that ‘youth research is at a crucial turning point’. In recent years, developments in approaches to identity within the social sciences, especially in western Europe, North America and Australia, have led to some narrowing of the inter-disciplinary gap between psychology and sociology. Rattansi and Phoenix argue that this move has important implications for youth research. Both the Rattansi and Phoenix paper and Manuela du Bois-Reymond’s comments speak of the demise of the relatively static individualised concept of identity that characterised traditional psychological perspectives on youth/adolescence and which underpinned the Storm and Stress model. Feminist work did not only produce a new and different focus on young people’s lives in school, work and leisure, and a new interest in the realm of family life and sexuality.
