Handbook of the Sociology of Youth in BRICS Countries

Tom Dwyer, Mikhail K Gorshkov;Ishwar Modi;Chunling Li;Mokong Simon Mapadimeng

• Publisher: WSPC
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9789813148406
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Global Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

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Youth are, by definition, the future. This book brings initial analyses to bear on youth in the five BRICS countries: Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, which are home to nearly half of the world's youth. Very little is known about these youth outside of their own countries since the mainstream views on "youth" and "youth culture" are derived from the available literature on youth in the industrialized West, which is home to a small part of the world's youth. This book aims to help fill in this gap.

The handbook examines the state of youth, their past, present and permits the development of insights about future. The BRICS countries have all engaged in development processes and some remarkable improvements in young people's lives over recent decades are documented. However, the chapters also show that these gains can be undermined by instabilities, poor decisions and external factors in those countries. Periods of economic growth, political progress, cultural opening up and subsequent reversals rearticulate differently in each society. The future of youth is sharply impacted by recent transformations of economic, political and social realities. As new opportunities emerge and the influence of tradition on youth's lifestyles weakens and as their norms and values change, the youth enter into conflict with dominant expectations and power structures.

The topics covered in the book include politics, education, health, employment, leisure, Internet, identities, inequalities and demographics. The chapters provide original insights into the development of the BRICS countries, and place the varied mechanisms of youth development in context. This handbook serves as a reference to those who are interested in having a better understanding of today's youth. Readers will become acquainted with many issues that are faced today by young people and understand that through fertile dialogues and cooperation, youth can play a role in shaping the future of the world.

--> Contents:

• History of Concepts and Theoretical and Methodological Assumptions into Research on Youth:
• • Knowledge about Youth in Brazil and the Challenges in Consolidating This Field of Study (Marilia Pontes Sposito)
  • Historical, Theoretical and Methodological Background for Youth Studies in Russia (Mikhail K Gorshkov and Frants E Sheregi)
  • Sociology of Youth: Substantive and Conceptual Issues (N Jayaram)
  • Chinese Youth Studies in a Changing Society (Meng Lei)
  • Review of Historical and Contemporary Concepts and Theoretical Assumptions in Youth Studies of South Africa (Mokong Simon Mapadimeng)
• Demographic Characteristics of Youth:
• • Youth in Brazil: Concepts, Issues and Socio-Demographic Characteristics (Celi Scalon and Lygia Costa)
  • Demographics of Youth in Russia (Sergei V Zakharov and Ekaterina S Mitrofanova)
  • Indian Youth Population: Socio-Demographic Characteristics (Vinod Chandra)
  • Demographic Characteristics of Chinese Youth (Zhang Yi and Tian Feng)
  • The Demographic Profile of Youth in South Africa: Past, Present and Future (Martin E Palamuleni)
• Identity and Generation:
• • Youth Generations and Processes of Identity Formation in Brazil (Wivian Weller and Lucélia de Moraes Braga Bassalo)
  • Russian Youth: Specifics of Identities and Values (Svetlana V Mareeva)
  • Contemporary Youth: Change of Referent, Loss of Identity (Ashok Kaul and Chittaranjan Das Adhikary)
  • Youth Culture and Social Ecology: State, Market, Technology, and Grassroots Participation (Meng Lei)
  • South African Youth Identity and Generation (Jayanathan Govender)
• Consumption and Leisure:
• • Young Brazilians: Free Time, Leisure, and Sociabilities: An Analytical Mosaic of National Research Data (Elmir de Almeida, Juarez Dayrell and Paulo Carrano)
  • Consumption and Leisure in Russia (Polina M Kozyreva, Alfiya E Nizamova and Alexander I Smirnov)
  • Leisure and Consumption of Youth in India (Ishwar Modi and P S Vivek)
  • Consumption Patterns of the Contemporary Chinese Youth: Focusing on the Inter-Class and Rural–Urban Division (Zhu Di)
  • Leisure and Consumption: Youth Escapism in South Africa Through Illegal Substances (Claudia Martinez-Mullen and Mokong Simon Mapadimeng)
• Family, Marriage, and Sexuality:
• • Youth, Sexuality and the Family in Contemporary Brazil (Maria Luiza Heilborn)
  • Family, Marriage, and Sexuality in Russia (Polina M Kozyreva and Yulia P Lezhnina)
  • Family, Marriage, and Sexuality: Valuable Insights on 21st Century Youth (Sudeshna Basu Mukherjee)
  • Love, Marriage, Family and Sex: Contemporary Chinese Youth (Tian Feng)
  • The Role of Family Structure in Building Youth: Psychosocial Competence in South Africa (Acheampong Yaw Amoateng)
• The State and Political Values:
• • Political Culture and Political Values of the Brazilian Youth (Marcello Baquero and Rute Angelo Baquero)
  • The "Zero" Generation: Ideological and Political Participation (Vladimir V Petuhov)
  • Towards Understanding Youth and Politics in India (Anand Kumar)
  • A Study of Chinese Elite University Students and Graduates (Lu Peng)
  • Online and Offline Political Participation by South African Youth (Chilombo Mbenga)
• Education and Employment:
• • Brazilian Youth: In School and in Work (Maria Carla Corrochano and Marilena Nakano)
  • Education and Employment in Russia (David L Konstantinovskiy)
  • Youth, Education, and Employment in India: Harvesting Gold (Aarti Srivastava)
  • Education and Employment of Chinese Youth (Li Chunling)
  • Education, Skills, Economy, and Youth Unemployment in South Africa (Mokong Simon Mapadimeng)
• Internet Participation and Communication:
• • Internet, Youth, and Ideology in Brazil (Tom Dwyer)
  • Youth and Digital Space in Russia: Internet-Participation and Communications (Irina O Tyurina)
  • Internet Participation and Communication with a Focus on Youth (Rajesh Gill)
  • Youth and Internet Participation in Chinese Context: Forerunner of Civic Life Online (Shi Yunqing)
  • Youth and ICT in South Africa: Cell Phones, Social Media and Students' Academic Performance? (Kiran Odhav and Karabo Gloria Mohapanele)
• Conclusion and Perspectives for the Future:
• • Empirical Studies of Youth in Contemporary Brazilian Civilization and Some Implications for the BRICS (Tom Dwyer)
  • Young People in Russia and Their Life Plans: Present and Future (Mikhail K Gorshkov and Frants E Sheregi)
  • Conclusion and Future Perspectives in India (Ishwar Modi)
  • Conclusion: Chinese Youth Face Both Opportunities and Challenges (Li Peilin)
  • Conclusion on South African Youth and Future Prospects (Mokong Simon Mapadimeng and Jayanathan Govender)

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Readership: Academics, professionals, graduates and undergraduates interested in youth, policy development, youth culture, sociology, and social issues in the BRICS countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa). -->Keywords:Youth;Sociology;China;India;Brazil;Russia;South Africa;Social Sciences;BRICSReview:0

SECTION 1

History of Concepts and Theoretical and Methodological Assumptions into Research on Youth

Chapter 1

Knowledge about Youth in Brazil and the Challenges in Consolidating this Field of Study

Marilia Pontes Sposito

Brazil, a country of continental dimensions that faces persistent structural inequalities — social, regional, gender, and race related as well as extreme diversity, presents significant challenges in constituting a field of study about its youth. Despite the 2010 Census indicating that the population is aging, the segments of youth aged 15–29 constitute over 51 million inhabitants, in other words, 27% of the Brazilian population.¹

Besides having this immense population contingent, it is necessary to consider that it is distributed among regions with very large sociocultural and economic contrasts, which have, in some way, always guided the most recent studies on youth in the country, obliging researchers to set up categories for analysis that could, in some way, dialogue with this reality. The processes of accelerated urbanization as well as rural–urban migration have formed a scene of great contrasts in relation to youth. The national data from 2010 indicated that only 16% of the 15–24 year old population lived in the countryside, and the remainder in the cities. There are, however, strong regional differences, in the Northeastern region 27.5% live in rural areas, whereas in the Southeast only 7.1%.

As a starting point, other difficulties are involved. As Mauger (1994) stated, the first issue that comes up is that the concept of “youth”, as a category, is “epistemologically imprecise”, since it is virtually impossible for all researchers to use it in the same way.

One of the ways to solve this impasse, in order to make it a feasible area of study, is the recognition that the very definition of youth as a category includes a sociological problem susceptible to investigation, insofar as the criteria used is historical and cultural. Youth is not only a social condition, it is also a kind of representation (Peralva, 1997).

Proposing to overcome certain impasses, Dubet observes that, in order to establish an analytical framework for dealing with the concept of youth it is necessary firstly to recognize that the modern condition of youth includes an intrinsic tension. For this author, experience in this period of life is built around the setting up of a modern and relatively autonomous youth world and, simultaneously, it is a time when individuals are distributed in the social structure (Dubet, 1996).

Attias-Donfut sees social divisions that end up affirming themselves as age group divisions, without watering them down, but in fact, there is the risk of age groups being manipulated. For this author, the effervescent and essentially varying realities of youth cannot be reduced to a single dimension. Youth cannot be conceived adequately unless various perspectives are brought together to reveal their diverse facets and consider their complexity. According to Attias-Donfut there are three fulcrums that enable us to have a multi-directional approach to youth: (1) Youth as a period within the organization of all phases of the life course; (2) the analysis of youth within the family arena, which involves relationships with family members and inter-generational relations, this perspective implies that life chances are socially determined and distributed; (3) The formation of “social aggregations”, which becomes the origin of social movements or specific forms of action and expression, susceptible to exercising an influence on societies (Attias-Donfut, 1996).

The Pioneering Studies in Brazil

The recognition of the historic uniqueness of Brazilian society and the totality of its social processes establishes the perspective present in the first studies of youth in the country. It followed a tradition in the development of the social sciences, which started in the 1950s, at the same time as the country’s industrialization process got under way and the accelerated urbanization of Brazilian society began. One of the central ideas of this perspective, which directs research, is the premise that the movement of society as whole can be best understood by starting from its edges and periphery, thus enabling the verification of its structuring principles, and variations on these (Bastos, 2002: 184).

Situating youth as a social category, inspired by Karl Mannheim (1968, 1993) Marialice Foracchi, examined in her pioneering works the relative marginality of youth within the social structure and for the centers of authority. In this perspective, her research situated Brazilian university students as emerging players, within a dependent society, who became the protagonists of the political radicalism found in the student movements of the 1960s (Foracchi, 1965, 1972). The theme of youth radicalism was also dealt with during this period by Octavio Ianni, who proposes a strong interconnection between the history of the capitalist regime and the history of the political emergence of youth (Ianni, 1968). For these authors, the omissions, benefits, and tensions of a social configuration are examined by focusing on youth, which represents a social category which is especially sensitive to “the crises of the system” (Foracchi, 1972).

Structural Constraints Surrounding Studies of Brazilian Youth

The 1964 military coup and its implications for life in the universities strongly affected the social sciences. The forced retirement of university professors and exile imposed on researchers clouded over previous efforts. Over this period youth as a theme was submerged, very few studies were carried out and these only investigated city dwellers.

Both historically and socially, youth has been considered a phase in life marked by a certain instability, associated with certain “social problems”, but the manner in which these problems are conceptualized also undergoes change over time. In the article “What are we talking about when we talk of ‘the problem of youth’?” (Bourdieu, 1986) the ambiguities present in this expression are examined. Pais (1990a) calls attention to the differences existing between youth being defined as a social problem and youth being defined as a problem for social analysis. Studies of a psychological nature tend to give priority to the negative aspects of adolescence, such as instability, irreverence, insecurity, and revolt. Sociology sometimes invests in examining positive attributes of youth, seeing it as responsible for social change, but sometimes examines the negative dimensions of “social problems” and deviance.

In this manner, in the 1960s, youth was a “problem” insofar as it could be defined as protagonist of a crisis of values and intergenerational conflict, essentially situated in the fields of culture and ethics. In the 1970s and thereafter, the “problems” of employment and entering into adult life progressively started to become a major focus of studies, almost transforming youth into an economic category (Abramo, 1997; Pais, 1990a).

In Brazil, some of the visibility given to segments of youth over the following years — especially in the 1980s — was marked by the emergence of “social problems”: violence, unemployment, risk behavior related to sexuality and the consumption of illicit drugs.

The re-democratization of the country made the advancement in social science research possible and gradually, especially from the 1990s onwards, studies concerning youth. It is necessary to reiterate a peculiarity of this period, which carries over until today, it is located in the multiplicity of institutions responsible for carrying out research, such as universities, international bodies, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), private research institutes, and governmental organs.²

Within the university, a research agenda was consolidated in the study of youth in the workforce; it examined unemployment and the structural constraints that are affecting the access of the school system.

The expansion of schooling opportunities, in primary and secondary as well as in tertiary education, affected segments of the population characterized by their premature insertion into the labor market. As such, it overcame a tendency to resort to dichotomist analyses, sometimes focusing on youth as students and at other times, on youth as workers. Studies during this period deal with the double condition, which is, a student-worker, whose access to the educational system was achieved by going to night school (Cardoso and Sampaio, 1994; Sposito, 1989).

In Brazil, in the academic area, the sociology of youth reappears reasonably well integrated with the interests of the Sociology of Education centered on student learning. In this way, we can observe a marked interest in the schooling trajectories of urban youth, considering the access of youth to higher levels of schooling; in this manner, over the last five years, studies tend to value the theme of youth in universities, since they constitute one of the main expressions of these processes. Investigations into the consequences of recent affirmative action policies, especially expanded the possibilities of access to higher education (Sposito, 2002, 2010).

The presence of work as a structural element in the lives of youth in the majority of segments of the young population, as already observed, constitutes an important theme of studies. Data collected in a national survey (Guimarães, 2005; Sposito, 2005) had already highlighted that, in 2003, young Brazilians were closer to the working world than to schooling, even though the great majority was still within the school-age bracket. Even with the recent expansion of access to opportunities, the competition between work and enrollment in night school is the reality of many youngsters aged over 18 and of adolescents aged 14–17. This situation has unique features that make Brazil different to most Western European countries and the United States. To say this in another way, more than a transition from school to work — a recurrent theme in Europe — our sociology of youth has concentrated on the study of the combination or the alternation between school and work. Studies have also been carried out on youth that only works or that is unemployed and who are within the age bracket where they are targeted as potential students.

If it is almost an assumption, in western studies on youth, that “schools make youth” (Fanfani, 2000), that is, the constitution of this social category is related to the expansion of schooling while creating an autonomous universe for youth. In Brazil, it is necessary to recognize that “work also makes youth” (Dayrell, 2007; Sposito, 2005).

The extreme social inequalities and the processes of exclusion lived out by youth has attracted the attention of researchers who study both the various manners in which violence and youth can be understood and youth groups who enter into conflict with the law. Research themes on the multiple forms of violence that affect youth either as victims or as protagonists continue to be of importance. Studies on violence in the school have spread, incorporating international research, which is possible because the phenomenon has transnational characteristics. However, the emphasis given by the press to violent events involving schools, where youth is the protagonist, ends up directing public opinion, and creating a climate in which it is difficult to develop more scientific studies which, if carried out, could contribute towards understanding the complexities of these social problems.

As Michel Misse affirms, it is necessary to be cautious in dealing with violence, preferring always: “Violences, in the plural, because there is not ‘a’ violence, but many, diverse, with different functions, serving different outcomes. It is exactly the multiplicity of forms of ‘violence’ that makes it plural and demands great theoretical precaution in order to avoid seeing our analysis slide into the simplistic notion of ‘violence’” (Misse, 2008: 165).

The public sphere establishes a certain image of youth in Brazilian society based on these violences: poor, urban, black, and male (Abramo, 1997; Abramovoy and Castro, 2006). In efforts to control, to constrain or “to manage the risks” numerous programs and projects are developed for youth. There is also a great deal of effort to dismantle these negative images, considering that not all youngsters are violent and the very definition of a violent act is polysemic, this has been incorporated into public debates, into the actions of youth organizations and NGOs. But, it must be recognized that the complicated relations between youth and multiple violences, especially those that derive from the presence of criminal networks in close physical proximity in daily life, have been insufficiently investigated. The theme demands great theoretical consistency together with the setting up of research question that is not based on polarities, avoiding on the one hand the reiteration of the popular image of youth seen as marginal and dangerous and, on the other, considering these affected youth only as victims of inequality and therefore incapable of being agents endowed with some autonomy of choice as they build their own lives.

The Expansion of the Objects of Study: The Emphasis on Youths’ Capacities for Collective Action

Over recent years, within the ambit of social sciences, especially in anthropology and education, a set of important studies has sought to gauge the manners in which youth constructs its capacity for collective action either by examining participation in new student movements or in political activism that occurs in both political parties and in new forms of mobilization. Seeking to recover practices that are hidden from view, a multitude of diverse youth cultures, the groups that carry them and their visible manifestations have been the objects of study; especially hip-hop culture, the punk movement, and the groups connected to the rock and roll culture. The emergence of collective forms of cultural production, both in underground literature and poetry as well as in audiovisual production (cinema and video), have attracted innumerous youth communities, especially urban ones that are the focus of new research (Almeida, 2009).

Over the last decade there has been a large increase in studies that focus on rural youth as well as gender and race relations. In relation to the rural world, a part of these studies has dedicated itself to understanding the rural exodus, which is predominantly feminine. The recent processes whereby electricity supply has reached rural areas, schooling has become more readily available, as well as access to the mass media have contributed to altering youths’ perceptions of their own diverse experiences. It is also considered that the agrarian condition and the rural world itself is marked by contrasting processes. In Brazil, this can involve agro-business, small family farming, rural settlements, and a diverse range of social movements that fight for land ownership and thereby affecting the dynamics of local power.

The recent political debate on affirmative action policies, especially those that refer to racial and gender relations have aroused the interest in new investigations, both for the study of young black people as well as for the study of portrayals and practices of the relations between masculine and feminine in Brazilian society. Although macro-level and micro-level social processes in course indicate a horizon of more egalitarian relations, there is today a range of situations of sharp inequalities that affect, not only the poorest, but also the most vulnerable such as blacks and women.

All of the described phenomena lived out by Brazilian youth spark off debates on youth policy. In fact, it is only in the last decade the public sphere has made youth a question of interest. In spite of the visible need for research we can say that the theme is still little investigated.

New Challenges for Research

While research on rural youth is still recent, it is important to note that analyses of the degree of urbanization in Brazil lack precision. José Eli da Veiga (2003) affirms that the definition of what is rural or urban is anchored in legal and administrative criteria. It does not consider important dimensions relative to the size of the cities, population density, etc.

The predominance of investigations on youth in large metropolises could induce us to hasty and inaccurate generalizations about all Brazilian youth. It is necessary to consider living conditions in the small and middle-sized cities as well as the rural areas, which are not currently taken into consideration. There is an incipient academic production about youth and the rural world that needs to be stimulated. The few existing studies reveal the multiple temporalities that interconnect the social relations in our society; there are overlapping complementarity relations and tensions existing between city and country, both are frequently obscured by an excessively urban viewpoint (Carneiro and Castro, 2007; Strapasolas, 2006).

We observe that there is a dearth of studies dealing with the more transversal aspect of the lives of youths, which would establish a dialogue with different domains: family, school, work, friendship relations, and neighborhood among others. This transversal quality in studying youth, integrating various aspects of their daily e...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Foreword
• An Introduction to the Sociology of Youth in BRICS Countries
• List of Contributors
• SECTION 1 History of Concepts and Theoretical and Methodological Assumptions into Research on Youth
• SECTION 2 Demographic Characteristics of Youth
• SECTION 3 Identity and Generation
• SECTION 4 Consumption and Leisure
• SECTION 5 Family, Marriage, and Sexuality
• SECTION 6 The State and Political Values
• SECTION 7 Education and Employment
• SECTION 8 Internet Participation and Communication
• SECTION 9 Conclusion and Perspectives for the Future
• List of Tables and Figures
• References
• Index