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Youth Cultures Essay

¶ … Youth at Risk: Processes of individualisation and responsibilisation in the risk society" provides information meant to open people's eyes with regard to how youth-at-risk discourses are meant to function as a tool to control young people and to shape their thinking in order to make them hesitant about becoming delinquent, deviant, or disadvantaged. The article practically emphasizes how youth-at-risk ideas are purposed to identify a series of problems that young people are likely to come across and to address these respective problems in order for society to have as little troubled youths as possible. Discourses of youth typically focus on promoting the concept that adolescence is a period in which individuals must go from being children to being adults. These people should apparently abandon their childish thinking and concentrate on behaving like adults during this time-frame.

While youth at risk discourses are essentially meant to have society turn into a better place, the fact that they promote the idea that every young person is predisposed to putting across deviant behavior means that they are actually meant to regulate youthful identities. By installing new forms of modernization and standardization, the social order is apparently trying to shape young people's personalities and have them behave in a certain way in order to avoid suffering as a result of their vulnerability.

Hook's article "KIDS: Transgressive...

Kids's producers have apparently intended to have viewers acknowledge the delicate state of teenagers in the present. However, this might influence some children watching the film to believe that it would be perfectly normal for children to be corrupt. The film practically promotes the idea that there is nothing wrong with children who engage in deviant behavior, as adolescence is a period during which young people are likely to do some of the craziest things in their lives (Hooks, 81).
Some youth discourses are, according to Kelly, intended to persuade young people to think that they are at a point where they need to choose the best option available in order for them to be more likely to live normal lives. However, such ideas can make some people consider that there is something wrong with them and that youth-at-risk discussions are simply meant to emphasize that they are different from the rest of the social order (Kelly, 26).

Kitty te Riele's article further supports Kelly's point-of-view by showing how youth discourses can make some young people feel marginalized. These discussions practically divide young people in two different camps -- one that is normal and one that is predisposed to putting across deviant…

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Works cited:

Hooks, b. (2009) "KIDS: Transgressive Subject Matter " Reactionary Film" Reel to Real: Race, Class and Sex at the Movies, New York and London: Routledge, pp. 75-85.

Kelly, P. (2001) "Youth at Risk: Processes of Individualization and Responsibilisation in the Risk Society" Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education 22, 1, pp. 23-33

Powell, A. (2007) 'Youth at Risk? Young People, Sexual Health and Consent' Youth Studies Australia 26, 4, pp. 21-28.

te Riele, K. (2006) 'Youth "At Risk": Further Marginalizing the Marginalized?' Journal of Education Policy 21, 2, pp. 129-145.
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