Troubled Teens: Managing Disorders of Transition and Consumption

Abstract

This article focuses on the representation of youth as a key moment of transition in contemporary western societies, set between the dependent state of childhood and the supposed maturity and independence of adult status. Young people are viewed as gendered, racialized and sexualized beings who also occupy specific class locations, and are assumed to move through crucial points of transition as they leave full-time education and enter the job market, as well as the (hetero)sexual and marriage marketplaces. The article examines some of the main discursive configurations and treatment regimes through which ‘troubled teens’ are constructed and managed, especially in relation to notions about disordered patterns of consumption and transition. The paper considers the moment of the ‘discovery’ of adolescence in the late nineteenth century, going on to examine young women's particular relationships to discourses around consumption in the contemporary British youth research literature, and to debates about ‘disrupted transitions’ and citizenship in the 1990s. The article ends with a brief examination of one approach to the ‘problem of troubled teens’ in the USA: Specialty Schools that offer a combination of educational, therapeutic and correctional regimes aimed at young people who have been identified in relation to various disorders of transition and consumption.

Finnish Students’ Attitudes towards Commercialised Sex

“…Young people construct and manifest their identities, both physical and mental, via physical appearance: body, clothing and physical activity (e.g. Griffin 1997;Wilska 2002).…”

“…Leisure-time consumption and purchases of certain goods and services usually act as rights of passage to adulthood, such as going to bars and drinking alcohol, smoking, making-up, buying pornographic movies or magazines, purchasing a car, and so on (Griffin 1997;Miles 2000). Thereby, adult identity is actually identity of the adult consumer, whose purpose of life is to accumulate the desired collection of goods and services as a sign of 'good life' or 'right' identity (Wilska 2002, p. 198).…”

A good place to raise your children? The diversity of parents’ neighbourhood perceptions and parenting practices in a low-income, multi-ethnic neighbourhood

“…For boys, parental regulations were directed at risk behaviours -such as staying away from negative peers, not getting into fights or other trouble, and not using alcohol or drugs -whereas for girls they were more related to not going out after dark and avoiding dangerous places and people. In other words, boys were generally seen as 'youths as trouble' whereas girls were more passively stereotyped as 'youths in trouble' or at risk of becoming victimised (Green et al, 2000;Griffin, 1997;Mitchell et al, 2001). For example, Anny (grandmother of two grandsons aged 24 and 22 and two granddaughters aged 17 and 14, Dutch) told us:…”

Canadian Dream, Capitalism, and the State: Structural Conditions of Youth Gambling in Canada

“…In fact, to a large extent beginning of 'youth' is pinpointed by one's entry into the world of consumption (Griffin 1997). As Miles (2000, p. 107) writes, "Young people are, in effect, socialized into treating money and consumption as the doorway to life."…”