This course explores conceptions of youth across a range of cultural and historical settings. In doing so, the course examines differences between contemporary Western understandings and definitions of youth and those found in other cultural and historical contexts. Case studies from twentieth-century Great Britain, North America and Australia (e.g., teddy boys, bodgies and widgies, mods, skinheads, hippies, punks, ravers, ferals and assorted other 'folk devils'), Papua New Guinea (Sambia puberty rites), Nepal ('teenagers' in Kathmandu), Africa (Masai age sets), preindustrial Europe (the 'discovery' of childhood in the seventeenth century) and classical Europe (the absence of 'adolescence' in Greco-Roman society) will be employed to illustrate course themes. The central aim of the course will be to problematise many of the taken-for-granted assumptions about youth that exist in contemporary Western academic, state and popular discourses (e.g., 'delinquency', 'deviance, 'resistance') through cross-cultural and historical comparison.

Tutorial participation (10%), 2500 word essay (45%) and take-home exam (45%).

2 hours of lectures and one hour of tutorial per week

Two first-year courses to the value of 12 units in Anthropology and/or Sociology.

There is no required preliminary reading but those interested in sampling some of the course content might consult the following work:
*Amit-Talai, V. and Wulff, H. (eds). Youth Cultures: A Cross-Cultural Perspective, London: Routledge 1995.