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Subjective wellbeing (i.e. life satisfaction and happiness) impacts youth's social, economic and political participation. Prior studies have documented cross-national variation in subjective wellbeing of adults but there is a lack of data on the prevalence and correlates of subjective wellbeing among youth in low and middle income countries. This paper utilizes data from an international dataset – Multiple Indicator Cluster Surveys to assess the influence of structural and micro-level factors on the subjective wellbeing of youth (ages 15–24) in 29 countries or regions in Eastern Europe, Latin America, Asia and Africa. We find that within countries, global life satisfaction and happiness are associated with age, education attainment, place of residence, marital status, household wealth and exposure to mass media. Significant interactions between age, gender and education are observed. However, none of the country level development indicators account for cross-national variation in youth's SWB although there is some indication that income inequities between countries may influence youth's SWB. The findings underscore the need for objective measures of subjective wellbeing to understand the conditions in LMICs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper employs the concepts of cultural narrative to examine career choice among post-Soviet Russian teenagers going into higher education. Drawing on insights from cultural sociology more broadly and the cultural autonomy thesis more specifically, we demonstrate how the cultural narrative of a university degree as a 'must-have at all costs' subjugates various career decision-making logics identified, while downplaying individual agency and reflexivity. We argue that, by misdirecting career choice from opportunities to constraints, the dominant narrative serves to limit, rather than diversify, young people's career choice and social mobility potential. We go on to theorise the interplay between culture and social institutions. Drawing on the cultural interpretation of Unified State Exam – a neoliberal educational governance tool – we show how cultural narrative hijacks institutional interpretations and usages, re-grounding neoliberal sensibilities in Soviet-era ones. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There has been increasing media and political questioning of the national loyalties and identities held by young British Muslims, with a particular focus on those seen to separate themselves through strict and religiously observant dress and lifestyles. This paper draws primarily on research focusing on the meanings of ‘Britishness’ held amongst a group of visibly observant young Muslim adults. Empirical evidence is provided to demonstrate that although these young adults demonstrated an explicit and visible sense of Muslim identity, this co-existed without any conscious conflict with their British identity. The young adults’ acknowledgement of their religious attachment developed from a positive and proactive identification with Islam rather than one in opposition or rebellion against a British identity. Therefore, in a wider context, their lives must not be analysed only through the lens of religion, dress and appearance as this has repercussions in relation to national policy formation and subsequent perceptions of wider society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper responds to critiques of the metrocentric nature of contemporary youth studies, situating both major traditions of youth research within a geographical framework with the aim of moving towards more spatialised youth sociology. The paper demonstrates that young people outside of major metropolitan centres have been marginalised from the dominant theoretical perspectives that frame both the transitions and the cultures traditions in youth studies, and explains this in terms of the metrocentric nature of sociological theory from the earliest theories driving work in the discipline. From the perspective of social change, the paper then situates the transitions and cultures of young people within a spatial perspective, demonstrating ways in which attention to the spatial dimensions of youth enriches analyses of both urban and rural youths. The transitions, and cultures, of young people in both urban and rural places are connected by macro-level processes which create the structural and cultural environments that young people from different places are negotiating. The paper concludes with a call for a more spatialised youth sociology that is sensitive to macro-level connections between different places, as well as the local ways in which young people are responding to social changes that shape the contemporary youth period as a whole. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Gang members and membership are oft displayed as fixed and stable entities that are only understood in the context of the gang. This paper purports that membership is a role learned through the process of street socialisation and that gangs should be understood as fluid entities situated within the larger context of street culture. Through member's perspectives, it reveals the main cultural transmitters which facilitated membership in Glasgow, Scotland as street socialisation, territorial othering and storytelling. In discussing the role of these transmitters, the journey into gang membership in Glasgow is told. Exploring the transmitters of membership allowed the meaning making process that members engaged in to emerge which allows gang membership to be understood as a meaningful social activity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper strives to explain the enactment and persistence of violent territorial conflict between groups of young people (predominantly young men) from neighbourhoods of multiple disadvantage. Young people clearly recognise that participating in violent territorial conflict risks severe injury, restricted mobility and criminalisation. So what are these young people fighting for? Drawing on the findings of an empirical study of young people and territoriality in six locations across Britain, this paper explores the risks and rewards that young people attach to violent territorial conflict. It finds that the rewards of such behaviour are articulated by young people in terms of respect, protection and excitement. However, these accounts should not be accepted at face value. The enactment of violent territorial practices requires to be interpreted as being framed by the structural exclusions manifest, and the cultural responses embedded, in these neighbourhoods. Moreover, violent territorial conflict requires to be understood as a socio-spatial practice that serves to secure and fuse important aspects of individual, social and place-based identities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores recent shifts in the meaning and culture of adolescent drug use, contrasting developments in the United Kingdom and Australia. Of particular interest will be the claim that drug use has become a normal feature of young people's life-experience. The paper draws upon Howard Parker's 'normalization thesis', arguing that Parker's approach has some value in accounting for the changing nature of adolescent drug use in Australia. Available epidemiological evidence indicates that young people's consumption of illicit substances has risen dramatically in Australia in the past decade, although not at quite the rates recorded in the United Kingdom. The paper also draws upon contemporary debates in sociology and cultural studies in an attempt to explain these shifts in adolescent drug use. I conclude that greater attention to consumption and identity formation within youth cultures offers important new ways of understanding recent changes in the culture and meaning of drug use for young people. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The issues of young people and drug taking have a long history, although recently the topic has been debated more intensely than ever before. Of key importance here has been the dramatic rise in the availability, range and consumption of illicit drugs, a factor that, in part, has been linked to the popularity of dance/club cultures. These changes have been interpreted by some, both within and without academia, as being indicative of a process of the 'normalization' of illicit drug use. This paper reports on qualitative research data that explored young people's youth cultural identification and experiences while also enquiring into how such experiences may be related to the use of illicit drugs. This paper critically examines normalization theory and draws attention to weaknesses on both an empirical and a theoretical level. It is suggested in this paper that, as it stands, normalization theory presents an overly simplistic account of young people's drug use. This paper argues instead for a more differentiated understanding of normalization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper focuses on the emergence of ‘positive youth development’ and its impact on older, more established practices of working with young people, such as youth work. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in England between 2004 and 2006, in particular young people's and youth workers' accounts of participating in youth work, the analysis engages with the social spaces in which youth work takes place and asks key questions about why young people might participate in youth spaces, what they get out of participating and how such spaces can promote cultures of participation. The analysis shows that such spaces provide young people and their communities with biographical continuity and time becomes a key component for sustaining such spaces. The argument is made for a more nuanced understanding of whatyoung peopleget out of their participation in youth spaces, and for an epistemological approach to youth praxis that embraces the messiness and inequalities of lived experience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper revisits the work on youth cultures and subcultures that emerged from Birmingham's Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (hereafter CCCS) during the 1970s. I engage with a number of recent critiques of the 'youth sub/cultures project', including Thornton's influential work on rave and club cultures and its troubled engagement with class. I argue that the focus of the youth sub/cultures project on mediated cultural practices through which young people constitute themselves and their (gendered, classed and racialised) positions remains of value, especially the emphasis on a 'symptomatic reading' that locates these processes in a 'conjunctural analysis'. I end by exploring the legacy of this project for understanding youth, class and culture in contemporary late modern society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ethnographic research on youth cultures, particularly at doctoral level, is often conducted by investigators with some degree of initial cultural proximity to the individuals or cultures under the microscope. Yet elaboration of the practical and epistemological implications of ‘insider research’ among such scholars has been somewhat limited. This article contributes to the development of such discussion through drawing together a range of previous writings and by drawing upon elements of the author's own experience of researching a contemporary youth subculture as a long-term participant of the grouping. In the face of theories emphasising the complexities of identity and the multiplicity of insider views, the paper argues for the continued use of the notion of insider research in a non-absolute sense. Subsequently, it is argued that researching youth cultures from such a position may offer significant potential advantages—in respect both of the research process and the types of understanding that might be generated. It is also suggested, however, that the realisation of such possible benefits and the avoidance of significant difficulties, requires a cautious and reflexive approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studies of young Western-born/raised Muslims show the multiple, complex and changing relationships they have with their religion, and what freedom and autonomy might mean in this context. Despite such evidence, popular and academic discourses of the emancipated and free female subject of neoliberal society eclipse such important themes for Muslim youth. Using qualitative evidence from a study of young Muslim women in Ireland, we identify how religio-cultural dimensions are central within young women's social lives and personal worlds. Our analysis of these young women's narratives draws on structuration theory to examine what can be described as theircircumscribedchoices and freedoms. Focusing on the gendered norms, meanings and sanctions that circulate within family and community, we suggest that their social and personal worlds reflect a gendered responsibility and agency, as structured through their religio-cultural system. Maintaining religious integrity is a key dimension, reinforced through close interactions, relationships and identity performances at home and with friends. The research was conducted with both female and male teenagers using participant-led interviews and a range of other qualitative methods. From a total 33 Muslim participants, this paper draws on the narratives of 15 young women, aged between 12 and 19 years. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The field of youth development, long given over to discussions of youth as a time of storm and stress, raging hormones and problem behavior, has increasingly turned to look at the 'sunny side' of youth - at their agency, insights, capabilities and contributions. Youth, we are now regularly told, are not problems but resources and assets. In this paper, we look critically at the new, positive youth development movement and argue that, although having many continuities with 'old' models of youth development, it should nevertheless be seen as a shift in dominant conceptualizations of youth that has been driven in large part by neoliberal ideology and human capital theory. In order to analyze and understand intellectual, cultural and social phenomena such as the recent positive youth development movement, we need to recognize that youth as a social category has long been double-sided. It is not just negative stereotypes of youth that need to be critically interrogated, but positive stereotypes as well. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the 1980s, Canadian legalized gambling has undergone a massive growth, resulting in numerous social problems such as crime, political corruption, and, most importantly, pathological gambling. When it comes to theorizing gambling in Canada, pathological gambling has been the centre of the attention for two related reasons: (1) the increasing concern with individual and social harms resulting from it; and (2) priority given by grant-giving institutions to 'useful' scholarly efforts related to it. A major drawback, however, has been that these explanations often overlook the impact of broader social conditions on gambling behaviour and, instead, provide politically and ideologically conservative, microlevel analyses that point to the individual gamblers as the source of the problem. These theories, therefore, present partial accounts of an enduring and growing, socially produced problem. The argument of this paper is that Canadians' gambling behaviour, and its consequences, must be understood primarily as a social problem and within the nexus of (a) the Canadian state's pro-gambling policies (prompted by the need to generate revenues); (b) the gap between commonly shared Canadian cultural values - monetary success - and legitimate means of achieving them; and (c) capitalist processes of profit-making and commodification. Only then can we have a better understanding of a persistent and growing problem. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores how motorcars and car-based cultural practices operate in the construction of young working-class masculine identities. It draws on ethnographic fieldwork conducted during the summer of 2002 with young male car modifiers from the Midlands and North Wales who associated with the British cruising scene. Although this study is broadly framed by the youth cultural world of cruising, it does not approach car modification as a collective cultural phenomenon or draw on subcultural theory, but instead examines young men's relationships with their cars in terms of general theories of consumption and identity and theories of cultural production. The car modifiers participating in this study frequently resisted calls to collectivity and repeatedly endorsed a heavily individualised discourse of consumption. As consumers of the motorcar, they constituted themselves as absolutely individual on the basis of their ownership of modified cars that they constituted as culturally unique. Car modification operated as a set of identity practices organised around the active consumption and symbolic manipulation of standard motorcars and the cultural production of idiosyncratic signifiers of masculine identity. Through car modification, young working-class men discursively distanced themselves from the mass of standard car-owning subjects and constituted themselves as 'unique' car-owning individuals who were culturally privileged. This claim to privilege was predicated on their capacity to produce highly conspicuous motorcars, which they viewed as a source of considerable cultural capital. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Young people's health is continuing to improve in line with historic trends. Death rates are low and falling, and most young people say they are healthy, happy and enjoying life. For most, social conditions and opportunities have got better. Health efforts need to focus on the minorities whose well-being is lagging behind, especially the disadvantaged and marginalised. This is the widely accepted story of young people's health. There is another very different story. It suggests young people's health may be declining - in contrast to historic trends. Mortality rates understate the importance of non-fatal, chronic ill-health, and self-reported health and happiness do not give an accurate picture of well-being. Mental illness and obesity-related health problems and risks have increased. The trends are not confined to the disadvantaged. The causes stem from fundamental social and cultural changes of the past several decades. Which story is the more accurate matters. Stories inform and define how governments and society as a whole address youth health issues. The usual narrative says interventions should target the minorities at risk. The new narrative argues that broader efforts to improve social conditions are also needed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

College drinking and its adverse consequences on students' health and safety are important public health concerns in the USA. Thus far, there is little attention on exploring and addressing the cultural dimensions of college drinking. This study examines the construction of meaning of drinking among students to understand their perspectives of the college drinking culture. From an analysis of a purposive sample of 232 US college newspaper articles covering alcohol-related news and associated readers’ responses, the study identified five major insights in the cultural meanings of college drinking: (1) drinking is central to the US college experience although this can and should change; (2) drinking has significant social and functional meanings to students' identities; (3) heavy drinking derives from a culture of risk taking; (4) college drinking is highly scripted and ritualized; and (5) various social motives drive students' drinking. The first implication for practice and research of college drinking prevention is that a cultural lens viewing drinking as socially and developmentally meaningful may contribute toward theorizing why students continue to drink heavily despite decades of multi-level interventions. Second, approaches that respect and incorporate students' meaning making of drinking may be hypothesized as viable and effective alternatives to existing interventions for reducing risky drinking behaviors. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this article, we report on a study in which 39 final-year students at two New Zealand high schools were interviewed about their adoption of alternative subject positions in relation to the prevailing norm of alcohol consumption. There were four ways in which participants in our study constituted themselves as non-drinkers in relation to this norm: (1) by constituting legitimate alternative subject positions such as ‘sporty’ and ‘healthy’ or by complying with other norms defined by participants’ cultural and/or religious practices; (2) by constructing alternative leisure identities; (3) by reconstituting the norm of alcohol consumption as abject, as a way of legitimating their non-drinking subject position; and (4) by ‘passing’ as a drinker in social spaces where alcohol was being consumed. We show how participants used these processes in constituting opposition to the norm of alcohol consumption. We conclude with some suggestions about how these theoretical insights might be put to practical use. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most adolescent deaths are caused by injury sustained in traffic crashes, and driver education does not necessarily reduce the problem. This multi-method, ethnographic study describes the logic and regulation of youth driving culture in a northern Ontario community. This included 40 hours of participant observation and a survey of 88 novice drivers. The survey results suggest that youth are aware of the risk of driving, intend to practice safe driving and hold positive meanings of driving. Driver education and graduated licensing were seen as critical opportunities to support these goals. However, the mapping of youth driving culture revealed system flaws such as mixed messages, missed opportunity for integration, lack of clear regulation, and society's negative images of youth. Results also suggest that most prevention efforts are attempted from the point of view of assigning individual blame to youth as risk-takers. Theoretical and practical implications for road safety and injury prevention are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]