Youth, Sex, and Government

For nearly twenty-five years, the field of youth studies has employed the same conceptual tools to explain the conduct of young people, tools that inexorably lead to the same recurrent conclusions – youth equals resistance, youth equals alienation, youth equals problem. Youth, Sex, and Government offers a way out of this theoretical Groundhog Day. Starting with the familiar notion of youth subcultures, but also addressing topics such as young women's magazines, «at-risk» youth, anorexia nervosa, and HIV/AIDS programs, this book examines the way in which youth is produced as both a governmental object and a set of practices of the self. Employing the ideas of Foucault, Rose, and Mauss, this new approach attempts to reinvigorate what is an important – yet slumbering – area of research.