Young People’s Changing Conditions From Their Origins To Their David And Goliath Season. A Critical Review Of Youth Studies

It is widely acknowledged in the sociology of youth that the object under analysis – the youth – is particularly elusive, and its definition changes from time to time. In Italy, for instance, being young is a condition that never ends. Living in an overheated world is complicated too, especially if you are young. Individuals are constantly obliged not only to organize their own future, but also to reorganize their biographical paths in response to situations experienced and changing contexts. This is an accelerated world where everything, from communication to warfare and industrial production, takes place faster and has a broader impact than ever before. The aim of this work is to investigate what has led to a particular category of young people being construed (in Italy at least) as “penalized”, and their social conditions as “penalizing”. An effort is made to see what part the sociologists have played in this using the narrative of the four seasons of sociology of youth. To the end, we’ll see whether another phase in the sociology of youth is suggesting a new image of these young people. First we need to examine the quantitative data describing the young people of Europe and Italy. Then we can move on to deal with the issue of young people as a sociological object, summarizing the four seasons of youth studies to date. In drawing some conclusions, we can identify a fifth season of youth studies that could pave the way to a new, broad approach to the concept of generation and intergenerational issues.