Abstract
This is an interesting and thought-provoking book that attempts to offer a rather different approach to the traditional format for youth studies textbooks that usually just survey recent literature in the field. Instead Cote offers insights into the underlying assumptions (around values, politics and theory) as a way of transcending what he suggests have become sterile debates between competing approaches in youth research. The reader is offered then not only a review of some recent studies in the usual areas of youth research but also a way of evaluating the different sides of debates around structure–agency, nature–nurture, critical-conservative politics, quantitative–qualitative methods and so on. The author’s background in social psychology perhaps enabled him to see more than others how youth researchers have become trapped in rather narrow disciplinary silos and how deleterious this can be for research.
The book begins with sections on the key debates in youth studies and introduces us to ideas around ontology and epistemology and how realist/nominalist or macro/micro assumptions that inform research can frame the nature of youth studies, its findings and ensuing controversies. The argument elaborated throughout the text is that an awareness of ‘meta’ assumptions can produce more sophisticated work that combines the strengths of competing research traditions. The bulk of the book covers familiar areas of research such as those structuring institutions of work, family and education and cultural processes such as youth politics and youth subcultures.
The author draws on his own research throughout the text, noting how a political economy approach to youth is one that is increasingly prescient in the era of austerity. An important feature of the book is the way Cote documents the many different ways that young people have lost out in recent decades as market reforms of welfare and economic restructuring have sown inequality and recast life chances for citizens. Although a curious blind spot in the writing is how neoliberalism works through cultural and moral domains to demonise the poor and the different. Readers expecting some sustained analysis of the youth underclass, sexual minorities or myths about welfare dependency will be disappointed.
Nevertheless a key strength of the book are the comparisons between the ways that psychologists and social scientists do their research – a feature that tends to be missing from most other youth texts. Such an approach is useful for undergraduate students who are often loath to read widely outside of their disciplinary homes. I was hoping that such a cross-disciplinary perspective would allow the author to explore the wider influence of psychology on youth research such as we see in the focus on wellbeing and life satisfaction that positive psychologists have developed. But this was an issue that was raised and then left at various points in the text without further development, which is a shame given the increasingly significant role of these issues in wider research and public policy.
There are some features of the book that some British readers may find rather quirky. There are some omissions from the literature reviews particularly educational research that has been influential in our understanding of social class, psychology and young people – the work of Diane Reay springs to mind here. Phil Brown’s research with various colleagues has also made important contributions to our understanding of how education and globalisation have shaped the lives of young people – one might some expect some engagement with this research given the focus on political economy in this text. Biographical and life course studies have also been important in recent years in youth studies but there is little discussion of their impact on efforts to transcend macro–micro, structure–agency divisions. These sorts of studies often use the work of Bourdieu and his concepts of habitus, field and capitals and a more sustained discussion of these studies and theories would make the book more relevant to British readers. Similarly British readers might be familiar with a range of literature that has been concerned with meta-theoretical debates in the social sciences from Giddens, Archer and Mouzelis, and might have expected these to feature in the author’s arguments. Margaret Archer’s and Andrew Sayer’s writings on critical realism have long examined the tensions in social science research and these would have been a useful addition to discussions developed in this text.
Overall this is an insightful, challenging text that will appeal to many advanced undergraduates as well as postgraduate and academic researchers in youth studies. It mostly achieves the difficult task of offering readers a traditional review of research whilst also conveying a more challenging argument about the state of youth studies and how it can be progressed.