The World’s Youth: Adolescence in Eight Regions of the Globe

Brown, Bradford B. and Larson, R.W. and Saraswathi, T.S. (eds.) (2002).
Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press; 369 pages. ISBN 0521006058.

The World’s Youth is one of three volumes of edited papers published in 2002 that reflect on current conditions and future possibilities for adolescents in the world. The series of commissioned papers in The World’s Youth focuses on eight particular nations and regions. The other two volumes focus on external institutions and societal changes, respectively.

It is often difficult to assess edited collections because the quality of contributions lacks consistency. To the editors’ credit, however, this is a tightly structured collection. The chapters are very cohesive in the themes they cover, each tackling issues that relate to family and peer relations, schooling, preparation for work, and physical and mental health, among others. To a large degree and as data allow, the authors provide empirically-based discussion in well-written and succinct chapters.

The surprisingly large degree of consistency in the book is good for its overall comparative structure, but inevitably leads to a somewhat pedestrian rendering of a topic that is important as much for its critical and emotive nuances as for its solid empirical framing. Authors who deviate even a little from the book’s overall structure provide interesting and creative insights to an otherwise tightly circumscribed composition. For example, Bame Nsamenang questions the implications of Anglo-American paradigms for understanding youth in Sub-Saharan Africa and provides, in their place, a theoretically complex relational Afrocentric perspective. Similarly, Marilyn Booth argues for the primacy of family and Islam for Arab adolescents and lets the predominance of those two institutions guide her chapter. This is different from Verma and Saraswathi’s chapter on India that rigidly follows the prescribed structure and for the most part eschews caste differences “… as a politically sensitive topic” (p. 106). Too bad! Contradictions between chapters are also illuminating. Stevenson and Zuma begin with the important point that in China and Japan, the terms “adolescent” and “teenager” are not as readily understood as they are in the English-speaking world. Alternatively, and somewhat surprisingly, Maria suggests that Southeast Asian countries for the most part accept the United Nations definition of “youth.”

The book begins with a metaphor of diversity and ends with policy implications. Chapter 1 suggests that adolescence may be viewed through a metaphor of the kaleidoscope, as a “varied and colorful set of moving pictures” (p. 2). This metaphor accurately represents the structure of the book: the authors skillfully twist and turn the structures they present so that we see the complexity of the large, inter-related and convoluted contexts of young people the world over. To this end, the book is a huge success structurally. However, it fails to appreciate the fluid, mobile, transnational, experiential and relational aspects of living as a young person in the world today. Chapter 2 is a sensitive account of larger global demographic trends that highlights some gross inequalities perpetuated by the excesses of contemporary Western neo-liberal agendas. There follows accounts from eight regions and nations: Sub-Saharan Africa, India, China and Japan, Southeast Asia, Arab nations, Russia, Latin America and, lastly, Western countries. This kind of cross-regional and cross-cultural comparison is difficult to achieve, and alone makes this volume a tour de force.

The book ends with a somewhat inevitable chapter on policy implications. Here, two of the editors reflect on larger institutional and global concerns. They then provide a framework for social policy in a series of bullet points that align with current concerns of the United Nations, the International Labor Organization (ILO), the World Health Organization and the World Bank, among others. The editors summarize the volume with the UN’s 1996 goals for youth policy and then add four bullets covering the need to reconsider family values, new media options, relevant school curricula and intervention programs.

Of course, the work reported in this volume is now seven years old (three years in the making and then published in 2002). Since then, there have been significant academic discussions on trans-nationalism and flows of global youth labor that muddy up the neat categories presented here. In addition, the global institutions whose values are reflected in the last chapter have come under increasing academic scrutiny. In particular, scholars have looked at the practical implications of the neo-liberal agendas of European and North American governments as they are reflected in institutions such as the World Bank and the ILO. Similarly, many scholars are increasingly suspicious of the ways data are used, and are concerned with proclamations such as “data or knowledge should be seen as a critical resource to youth development” (p. 355). It begs questions such as, whose data? To what ends is it used? Other data, such as ethnographies and oral histories, might suggest that accepted policies and conventional wisdoms are calamitous for many adolescents and their families; other analyses, such as a critical economic assessment, might point out policies that benefit multi-national corporations most.

Although I may appear overly critical at this point, I think The World’s Youth is useful to the extent that comparative empirical research of this kind is useful. For the most part, the authors are sensitive to social and spatial equity issues. They understand the control exerted by the media, self-serving politicians and neo-liberal and neo-conservative economic agendas. Clearly, the authors and the editors are committed to making the world a better place for youth. That said, empirical data are created with particular agendas in mind and to the extent that the data in this volume serve those larger global constituencies that do not prioritize the welfare of young people, I offer a cautionary note.

Anli Ataöv

Director, Center for Interdisciplinary Studies of Youth and Space (ISYS)
Department of Geography
San Diego State University

Stuart Aitken is Professor of Geography and Director of the Center for Interdisciplinary Studies on Youth and Space (ISYS) at San Diego State University. He is the author of Putting Children in Their Place (Edward Bros., 1994), Family Fantasies and Community Space (Rutgers University Press, 1998), Geographies of Young People: The Morally Contested Spaces of Identity (Routledge, 2001) and co-editor of Global Childhoods: Why Children? Why Now? (Routledge, 2007). Aitken is also the North American Commissioning Editor for the journal Children's Geographies: Advancing Interdisciplinary Studies of Younger People's Lives.