dc.contributor.author | Pavlidis, Adele | |
dc.contributor.editor | Stewart Lockie, David Bissell, Alastair Greig, Maria Hynes, David Marsh, et al. | |
dc.date.accessioned | 2018-02-13T07:45:10Z | |
dc.date.available | 2018-02-13T07:45:10Z | |
dc.date.issued | 2009 | |
dc.identifier.uri | http://hdl.handle.net/10072/123814 | |
dc.description.abstract | For the past five years I have worked with young people who had been labelled as “at
risk”. I myself have entered into categories of “riskiness”, and I have often asked
myself: how do young people perceive risk in contemporary society? This question
forms the basis of this paper and from it stems other—no less important—questions
about risk and young people. Youth are commonly posited as ‘at-risk’ in various
literature, policy and legislation. This position of being ‘at-risk’ embeds young people
into the risk society. Beck states that through the process of individualisation ‘people
will be set free from the social forms of industrial society—class, stratification,
family, gender status of men and women’ and that they will now have to choose their
social identity (1992: 87 original italics). For Beck, this increase in choice is the
primary cause of people’s anxiety and fear (1992: 87). Beck’s work focused on the
‘disappearance’ of inequality from government policy and the ‘agenda of daily life’
(Beck 1992: 92), yet this focus has actually served to perpetuate the shift away from
inequality and structural concerns. For young people this movement away from
structure has had many consequences, most notably the shift from ‘locally defined and
enacted’ policy, to public policy focused on the ‘science of prevention’ (France 2008,
p. 1) and the emergence of ‘at-risk’ youth identities; it individualises risk and makes
youth and their families responsible for its effective management.
This research highlights key differences in the perception of risk between young
people involved in a youth advisory group and young people experiencing
homelessness. The young people who formed the youth advisory group expressed the
notion of risk in relation to their use of new technologies, such as the internet and
mobile phones, and articulated the ‘risks’ they see present in their world. Those young
people were specifically concerned with risks to their body: violence and disease.
According to Beck (2006) ‘risk’ is a way of being in the world, but, I argue, this
‘being’ is different according to a person’s social class and the resources available to
them. As such, Bourdieu’s concept of habitus can constitute an important addition to
discourses about risk and the risk society, particularly for those in marginalised
groups. Through a focus on habitus and the embeddedness of risk for young people
we can better listen to, and respond to, the risks articulated by them and start to
understand that the way young people perceive risk is dependent upon their habitus. | |
dc.description.peerreviewed | Yes | |
dc.language | English | |
dc.publisher | The Australian Sociological Association (TASA) | |
dc.publisher.place | Australia | |
dc.publisher.uri | https://tasa.org.au/tasa-conference/past-tasa-conferences/2009-tasa-conference/ | |
dc.relation.ispartofconferencename | 2009 TASA Conference | |
dc.relation.ispartofconferencetitle | Australian Sociological Association 2009 Annual Conference | |
dc.relation.ispartofdatefrom | 2009-12-01 | |
dc.relation.ispartofdateto | 2009-12-04 | |
dc.relation.ispartoflocation | Canberra, Australia | |
dc.subject.fieldofresearch | Social Change | |
dc.subject.fieldofresearch | Social Theory | |
dc.subject.fieldofresearchcode | 160805 | |
dc.subject.fieldofresearchcode | 160806 | |
dc.title | The diverse logics of risk: young people's negotiations of the risk society | |
dc.type | Conference output | |
dc.type.description | E1 - Conferences | |
dc.type.code | E - Conference Publications | |
dc.description.version | Version of Record (VoR) | |
gro.faculty | Arts, Education & Law Group, Griffith Centre for Social and Cultural Research | |
gro.rights.copyright | © The Author(s) 2009. The attached file is reproduced here with permission of the copyright owner(s) for your personal use only. No further distribution permitted. For information about this conference please refer to TASA website or contact the author(s). | |
gro.hasfulltext | Full Text | |
gro.griffith.author | Pavlidis, Adele | |