Citizen Youth Culture, Activism, and Agency in a Neoliberal Era

What are the ties that bind the 'good youth citizen' and the youth activist in the twenty-first century? Contemporary young people are encouraged -- through education and other cultural sites -- to 'save the world' via community projects that resemble activism, yet increasingly risk arrest for public acts of dissent.Citizen Youth: culture, activism, and agency in a neoliberal era goes to the heart of these contradictions, exploring the dilemmas and cultural dynamics of being young and politically engaged. Through an ethnographic study of young people working on activist causes across the three largest urban centres in one of the wealthiest nations in the world (Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver, Canada), this book draws on Bourdieusian cultural sociology, feminist theories of agency, phenomenology, and political theories of the state and neoliberalism to understand what it means to be a certain kind of youth citizen in the twenty-first century. Accessibly written yet theoretically engaged, the book will be of interest to individuals both within academia and in the wider world of social movements and youth engagement.

Jacqueline Kennelly is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada.

“Citizen Youth” in the twenty-first century * Understanding youth political engagement: unpacking youth citizenship as governance * Constructing the good youth citizen: a history of the present * Good citizen/bad activist: the cultural role of the state in youth political participation * Class exclusions, racialized identities: the symbolic economy of youth activism * Becoming actors: agency and youth activist subcultures