Dan Woodman

Generation, youth and social change in Australia

This article takes recent critiques of the conceptualisation of ‘youth as transition’ and explores the extent to which ‘generation’ offers a more effective way of conceptualising youth. There is an identifiable convergence of evidence for a ‘post-1970’ generation who have shaped a ‘new adulthood’. Yet current approaches inevitably identify education, work and family patterns of young peoples lives as evidence of their faulty, failed transitions, measured against the standard of the previous generation. A focus on generation shifts the emphasis from the assumption of linear development in which youth is a phase towards adulthood, to locate young people within the political, economic and cultural processes that both frame and shape their generation, and the meaning and experience of ‘youth’ in distinctive and enduring ways. In addition to traditional measures of patterns of life, we argue that young peoples subjectivities provide an insight into their active participation in and shaping of change processes, and to the nature and meaning of the post-1970 generation.

The mysterious case of the pervasive choice biography: Ulrich Beck, structure/agency, and the middling state of theory in the sociology of youth

This paper explores the emergence of the concept of choice biography, as it is linked to the work of Ulrich Beck, in youth research. The concept has been called a current pervasive theoretical orthodoxy. However, this article argues that the concept is most often taken up to critique, and Beck used mostly as a foil, through arguing that he overemphasizes agency and neglects structural constraints, in establishing or occupying a middle-ground theoretical position between structure and agency. I propose that the relationship and balance between structure and agency is of little interest to Beck and aim to discourage forcing his work into this frame. Instead of focusing on a shift towards agency, and proposing the concept of choice biographies to understand the shift, Beck is making the more complicated claim that at the very moment, and through the same processes, that some of the constraints placed on people are breaking down, the predictability and security that would allow these new options to function as deliberate choices also weaken. More importantly, Beck asks the question of whether the concepts developed by twentieth-century sociology are up to the task of theorizing the contemporary world.

Changing times, changing perspectives: Reconciling ‘transition’ and ‘cultural’ perspectives on youth and young adulthood:

This article explores the changing relationship between the ‘transitions’ and ‘cultural’ perspectives in youth studies. Changes in the relationship between the two approaches are currently being driven by shifting theoretical paradigms that place a greater weight on reflexive life management, thereby making it more difficult to maintain a theoretical distinction between structural and cultural analysis. Indeed, we argue that relationships between the two approaches are showing signs of convergence, partly as a consequence of the emergence of new ways of managing life contexts which frequently involve the blending of contexts, the search for new meanings and a changing sense of self in time. We trace the trends in the relationship between the ‘transitions’ and ‘cultural’ perspectives against the backdrop of changing opportunity structures. Focusing on contemporary contexts, we explore some of the ways in which recent socio-economic changes challenge traditional ways of interpreting subjectivities. We conclude by exploring the ways in which the sociology of youth can move forward using a social generation approach.

Youth and generation : rethinking change and inequality in the lives of young people

Chapter 1: Continuity and Change Individualisation Generation New Life Patterns Structure of the Book Chapter 2: Global Change and Inequality Education, Urbanisation and Employment Inequality Australia in a Changing World The Failure of the Neoliberal Promise Theory in Youth Studies Chapter 3: Individualisation Understanding Changing Patterns Bringing Zombie Categories Back to Life The Creation of the Choice Biography Holding Lives Together Researching the Making of Inequality in New Times Chapter 4: Generations The Emergence and Marginalisation of the Sociology of Generations What is a Generation? Intergenerational Relationships When does a Generation Emerge? Chapter 5: Transitions Youth Transitions and Development Transition Regimes and the Making of a Generations Research and Reflexivity Chapter 6: Cultures Concepts of Subculture Post-subcultures Continuity and Change in Cultures Research Generational Change, Cultures and Divisions Blurring Boundaries Chapter 7: Time Social Change and Synchronisation Sociality and the Digital Revolution Time, Youth Cultures and Inequality The Present, Past and Future Chapter 8: Place The Invisibility of Place Theorising Young People and Place Mobilities, Cultures and Place Making Place Visible Place and Global Generations Young People Making a Place for Themselves Chapter 9: Conclusion Generations, Transitions, Cultures Time, Place and the Future

Researching Youth in a Context of Social Change: A Reply to Roberts.

In our article ‘Generation, Youth and Social Change in Australia’ (Wyn & Woodman 2006), we set out a rationale for considering the issue of young people and social change through the lens of ‘social generation’. This approach places renewed emphasis on the historical context within which different cohorts of young people negotiate their lives, locating the experience and meaning of both youth and adulthood within particular historical, social and political contexts. The approach draws on insights generated through contemporary sociological theory about social change, including risk society (Beck 1992), individualisation (Beck & BeckGernsheim 2002), and identities (Giddens 1991; Melucci 1996). We agree with Pilcher, who draws on Mannheim’s insights to argue that individuals ‘both constitute historical configurations and are constituted historically by them’ (1994, p. 490). The concept of social generation (Mannheim 1952) can be used as a marker for the processes and outcomes of certain forms of being and of possible subject positions. Mannheim expanded his concept of generational consciousness by proposing that each social generation includes a number of age cohorts or generational units. Generational units are the groups that, although sharing the same generational consciousness, react in different ways due to their different social position within the social generation. This suggests a way to move beyond seeing a social generation as a group who share a particular homogeneous value set. This perspective instead places the focus on exploring questions of what have become the salient issues, and means of taking action, within a particular social generation around which other borders and divisions within social life then intersect. We contrasted this generational approach with what we called the ‘transitions’ perspective, which we argued has too readily assumed that shifting patterns are simply age effects, and uses, often a-historically, the previous social generation as the standard against which the new generation is measured, and hence tends towards discovering ‘delayed’ ‘extended’ or ‘failed’ transitions.

Young People and the Future Multiple Temporal Orientations Shaped in Interaction with Significant Others

Young people’s temporal orientation is now a major focus of youth studies. A central research question in this area is whether or not young people treat their futures as ‘choice biographies’ to be planned as a personal project. In this article I suggest that this focus has emerged in part from a misreading of contemporary sociological theory and I attempt to widen the focus of inquiry. Drawing on a qualitative interview with 50 young people in Australia aged 18 to 20, I highlight two significant elements of temporal orientation obscured by a focus on planning versus not planning. First, that young people mix multiple temporal orientations and strategies, of varying degrees of discursive explicitness, concurrently and as such can be present and future oriented at the same time. Second, that thinking about and shaping the future and enjoying, and coping in, the present are not individual pursuits but shaped collectively with significant others.

Flexible employment, flexible eating and health risks

Over the last 30 years, the risks to public health from working conditions have subtly shifted in line with new economic regimes, notably the shift towards contractualist, individualised market driven and ‘flexible’ regulation of employment associated with the neo-liberal project. Yet, the resulting transformation in temporal schedules has occurred without due consideration of potential health impacts. We contend that contemporary employment policies pose a threat to public health because of their impact on how time is valued, used and experienced. In particular, time matters for earning an income and for basic health behaviours, like healthy eating. The sociological theory of timescapes is used to interpret a qualitative study of food consumption and labour market engagement practices among three generations of Australians. We find that wide variability in individual employment schedules is accompanied by desynchronised social lives and less healthy eating practices. The research leads us to theorise that employment regimes that are flexible for employers require workers to live flexible or fluid cultural lives, disembedded from the temporal structure of previous social rituals, whether culinary, familial or friendship. The health consequences of this requirement remain unrecognised by policy-makers.

Youth Policy and Generations: Why Youth Policy Needs to ‘Rethink Youth’

There is an emerging consensus that new approaches are needed to take account of the impact of social conditions on young peoples lives. We argue that an approach informed by the sociology of generations can highlight the interrelationships between changing social context and life patterns. This approach enables policies that aim to enhance the social inclusion of youth at risk to recognise the intersections between individual and social transitions that shape the changing experience of youth. We argue that social change needs to be recognised in order to ensure that policies are based on a sound understanding of new patterns in young lives.

Researching 'Ordinary' Young People in a Changing World: The Sociology of Generations and the 'Missing Middle' in Youth Research

Several researchers have pointed to an overemphasis on ‘spectacular’ elements of youth culture and on ‘at-risk’ young people, arguing for greater attention to the ‘ordinary’ in sociological youth research. This article draws upon the Life Patterns Project, a 20-year longitudinal study of transitions in Australia, to argue that both understanding the ‘ordinary’ experience of youth and contemporary patterns of inequality between young people can be facilitated by a return to ideas from the undervalued legacy of the sociology of generations. Much youth research draws, often implicitly, on a model of youth where the adulthood that is the end point of transitions tends to be taken for granted. Yet, in the context of a rapidly changing labour market, the Life-Patterns participants have had to reshape the meaning of youth and adulthood as the field of possibilities open to them has changed. Understanding this remaking is the basis from which youth research can understand how some young people come to win or lose in contemporary conditions.

Prophet of a new modernity: Ulrich Beck’s legacy for sociology

Ulrich Beck was one of the most influential sociologists of recent decades. Concepts he developed – including risk society, individualization, cosmopolitanization, subpolitics and the democratization of science – are among the most cited, used and contested in contemporary sociology. In the wake of Beck’s recent death, this review article revisits his key contributions and legacy. He proposed that a momentous shift to a new modernity has begun and challenged sociologists as to whether the concepts they use are up to the task of tracing this emerging dynamic. Provocatively, Beck asked whether concepts like the nation-state, family and class are functioning as ‘zombie categories’, continuing on in sociology but no longer relevant to social experience. We argue that Beck was not denying the significance of such social factors, but setting a challenge to the discipline to show how the key concepts of sociology can be reimagined in the face of social change.