Sandra Legge

Youth and Violence: Phenomena and International Data.

The topic of youth, violence, and disintegration needs addressing because young women and men are the worlds greatest capital. They have the energy, talent, and creativity for building a future. But this group also suffers grave vulnerabilities. The time of adolescence includes important and difficult periods of life (for example, becoming more independent from the family, finding an adequate position in society, and starting a family of ones own). All of these points are strongly correlated with social integration, employment, and a place in the labor market--important factors in this context.This article gives an overview of the international development and the actual situation of socially harmful behavior among youths--both fatal violence (homicide) and nonfatal violence (such as bullying, fighting, and carrying weapons). The author shows that different kinds of youth violence represent social problems in every society. The data show that youths are not only perpetrators but also the group with the highest risk of becoming victims of violence. Furthermore, the data from around the world show that their vulnerability is not limited to this sphere. It arises also from their social conditions, especially their high risk of being disintegrated from the labor market. The parallels in the data underline the significance of a functioning institutional structure without positing a deterministic relationship between the risk of economic disintegration and violent behavior.

Anomia and Discrimination

Societies today are affected more than ever by acceleration processes, by an increase in pace and loss of time that threatens to blur the clarity of existing social norms and value systems. According to Thome and Birkel (2007), the phenomena of acceleration and loss of rules and boundaries encourage demoralization processes, for morality not only sets boundaries, it is also founded on them. It is these boundaries whose integrity and existence are threatened by the proliferation of options in a constantly changing material, symbolic, and social environment (Thome and Birkel, 2007, pp. 39–43; see also Durkheim, 1983). This impedes the process of building stable identities (Rosa, 2005). Individuals increasingly find themselves compelled to adapt to changing circumstances, and this can result in an identity-threatening loss of normative orientation or control in a given situation. Following Durkheim, this state can be termed anomia, or individual disorientation.

Ethnische Diskriminierung, Rassismus und gruppenbezogene Menschenfeindlichkeit

Die Qualitat einer (demokratischen) Gesellschaft bemisst sich – unabhangig davon, ob sich sie sich aus einer Bevolkerungsmehrheit und verschiedenen Minderheiten zusammensetzt oder ob es sich aufgrund von sozialen, kulturellen, ethnischen Ausdifferenzierungen um eine Multiminoritatengesellschaft handelt – u. a. an dem Umgang verschiedener Bevolkerungsgruppen untereinander (zur erwarteten Bevolkerungsentwicklung in der Bundesrepublik sowie zur Notwendigkeit der Zuwanderung aus dem Ausland zwecks der Erhaltung des quantitativen Bestands der Bevolkerung siehe Birg 1999).