Complex Worlds, Complex Identities: Complexity in Youth Studies

Abstract

This chapter starts with the fundamental sociological premise that youth is a social relationship rather than simply being a universal and essential category. Making this point in 1997, we argued that the ‘apparent symmetry between biological and social processes’ was one of the most significant issues confronting youth studies because it naturalizes and universalizes youth as a phase of life, obscuring age as a social relation (Wyn and White 1997: 9). Drawing on our more recent work (White and Wyn 2013), we revisit this question in the context of recent developments and agendas in youth sociology. These include a convergence between youth transitions and youth cultures approaches, recognition of the need to move beyond theoretical orthodoxies, and the emergence of youth studies as a central field of research and scholarship exploring the significance of social change, globalizing processes, new youth mobilities, and climate change.