Social Construction of Youth and Formation of Generational Awareness after Socialism
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| Year of publication | 2004 |
| Type | Chapter of a book |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
| Citation | |
| Description | The essay pursues the question of how the sensitivity/identity of youth has been constructed in social processes accompanying and following the 1989 political regime change in the Czech Republic, and in a post-communist context in general. This question is related throughout the essay to the process of articulation of inter-generational divisions stirred up by the revolutionary upheavals and by consequent societal developments. It contests the thesis that after socialism young people have been left in a state of institutional and cultural limbo, at least regarding their opportunities to develop a distinct sensitivity or identity of youth as a specific social category of actors. It is argued that, to the contrary, increasing autonomy and pluralism of choices for identifications with various representations of a youth culture are conducive to the social-psychological process of developing a distinct and socially effective identity of being no longer a child, and not yet an adult. Then the essay focuses upon an emerging generational division between the so called revolutionary young generation of 1989 and a post-revolutionary young generation of today, it describes some major differences in their socializing environments, and also some of the characteristics that distinguish one from the other. By way of this description, it also attempts to show how dramatic historical events intensify and accelerate the process of generation formation. |
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