Struggles for Subjectivity

Identity, Action and Youth Experience

Kevin McDonald

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Year: 1999
• Print ISBN: 9780521662796
• eBook ISBN: 9781139118309
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Cultural & Social Anthropology
• Index: Social Sciences

This book, first published in 2000, explores the relationship between experiences of selfhood and patterns of social life. It does so through an encounter with young people who confront urgent social and cultural transformations, whose experience of selfhood is unclear, often shaped by social forces that while powerful, appear difficult, if not impossible to name. These young people live in a world where institutions are weakening and identities fragmenting, where socialisation into roles is being replaced by imperatives of communication and self-esteem. Their world is shaped by different forms of freedom, but also by different forms of social polarisation and conflict. More than other social groups, young people confront the imperative of locating a sense of self and subjectivity, and this book is an account of this struggle in a context of profound social and cultural change.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Dedication
• Struggles for Subjectivity
• Cambridge Cultural Social Studies
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Research participants
• 1: Introduction: subjectivity and social experience
• PART I: The end of a working-class experience
• PART II: Postmodern crisis: navigating the flow
• Bibliography
• Index