Abstract
For some time, those who would study youth have been enjoined to be Janus-faced: on the one hand, to remember that ‘youth’, like ‘childhood’, is a social construction; but on the other, never to forget that children and youth are ‘social actors’ (James, Jenks and Prout, 1999; Jeffrey, 2010). As a social construction, ‘youth’ is to be interrogated, unmasked, exposed or critiqued; yet as social actors, young people need to be heard, brought in from the margins, respected, listened to — and even ‘empowered’. These contrasting arguments involve different methodological, analytical and epistemological approaches, but they also entail different positions for the researcher. So is it possible to resolve the apparent incompatibility between these two perspectives — or at least to find some way of theorizing the relationship between them?
My mum said she really wanted me to do it [take part in this research] because I’ve got a really good opinion on things and [….] she thinks that I’d be, like, a good representative of what people think. [Girl, aged 12, interview]
(Buckingham and Bragg, 2004)
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© 2014 Sara Bragg and David Buckingham
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Bragg, S., Buckingham, D. (2014). Conclusion: Elusive ‘Youth’. In: Buckingham, D., Bragg, S., Kehily, M.J. (eds) Youth Cultures in the Age of Global Media. Studies in Childhood and Youth. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137008152_17
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137008152_17
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
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