Youth Condition, Identity and Deviance

An investigation of identity construction processes among young people considers the impact of increasingly mainstream marginal & deviant behavior on the "youth condition." In the last thirty years, the evolution of various symbolic values linked with the young person is traced. Youth in the 1950s-1960s emerged as significant, autonomous actors in the social scheme, gradually becoming in the 1960s-1970s characteristically more self-promoting & seeking to expand horizons. By the 1980s, young people were constructed as socially indifferent. A plurality of radical, subjectively defined existences developed, with open & flexible criteria for identity, including behaviors once considered deviant, or accepted only among marginal groups. 1 Table, 30 References. Adapted from the source document.