Lecture 4:

Seeing vicariously: Youth

representations

Yuen Kok Leong

Dept of Anthropology & Sociology
Faculty of Social Sciences, UNIMAS

 When I was a kid

all I wanted to be was to be a grown up

Storm & Stress

Stanley Halls (1904) model of youth: still addressed by
psychologist
Insistence that a period of human evolution that are difficult
or tumultuous
Acknowledge individual differences:
ruder natures and older lands and conservative traditions
Influence of urbanization- need for sedentary life vs youth
exploration and need for activity
Failure in of home, school and religious organisations

Proponent: Anna Freud: to be normal during the adolescent

period is by itself abnormal

Storm & Stress

Three Key Elements
1) Conflict with parents

Tendency for rebeliousness

Resist authority
Parents still think the are child and tighten rein
Early adolescence: teenagers
Early ground testing permissions for late night out, alcohol, sex

2) Mood disruptions
1) Emotionally volatile
2) Extreme mood swings from one end to another
3) Experience Sampling Method: beeper method
1)

Anxiety, self conscious, embarrassed, awkward, lonely, nervous,

ignored

Storm & Stress

cognitive and abstract reasoning
Low popularity in school, poor academic performance and
problems at home

3) Risk behaviour

Reckless, norm breaking and antisocial behaviour

Cause disruption to social order
Carry behaviour that causes harm to themselves and others
Antisocial, norm breaking, criminal behaviours, substance use,
risky automobile driving, risky sexual behaviour
Peak late adolescence & emerging adulthood (esp at 18)

Criticism to S&S
Not universal, cultural differences: Meads research on
Samoan youths
Contending research by anthropologist (versus Halls
psychological research)

Non fully biological

Misquote by critics

preindustrial/traditional society experience lesser S&S

Growing independence as the cause of risky behaviour

Youth representation

problem / troubled (active)

at risk (passive)
The reigning Storm & Stress model (Stanley Hall)
In UK, changing in elite school system:
Male masculinity: virility and strength: military model
Female weakness and fragility
Eventually, the construction of heterosexuality phased out
homosexuality as deviance and sickness
-Parallel to our Asian archetypes of expectations?

Normal and ideal as: unspontaneous, conformist and

confident- white middle class males- but seen desirable to ALL
youths

 Post WWII, individual focused approach on psychology of

adolescence while sociological research emphasise on social
constructionist approach: youth crime, drug abuses.
On set, cases are set up as detective stories nature of problem
not asked but looking for causes
Victim-blaming thesis: problem solved if youth change their
attitude, appearance and behaviour
Eg: African American youth should alter their apperance and
behaviour in order to improve their employment prospects

 Two paradigms of youth framing:

Youth as trouble
Youth in trouble

Youth in trouble
Need for protection
Gullible young people susceptible to the evils of the world
Teenage kids exposure to pornography, violence and immoral
values in mass media
Policy implications (Doing it for their own good):
Liberal/progressive form of youth work, Helping troubled
youth- increase role of social reformers- education, welfare,
juvenile justice, labor market, sexuality and moral
Censorships Rehabilitation- juvenile schools
Control, restriction: minimal age of entry, minimal age of
consumption (beverages, entertainment venues)
Vocational schools for unemployed
Sex education

 Vocabulary of youth at risk:

Misinformed
Gullible / mentah
At risk/ Berisiko
Peer pressured (pengaruh rakan sebaya)

Seekor kerbau membawa lumpur, semuanya terpalit

Youth as trouble
A more conservative view- rational theory approach
Youth a the source of trouble- that problems could be solved
by correcting the youth- that they are free willed agents to
their own lives.
Usually with black/coloured youth- blacks, pakis, chavs,
pikeys- how about in Malaysia?
Vocabulary of youth as trouble:

Ganas
Membahayakan
Darah muda
Memberontak
Tidak bermoral
Kurang ajaran agama

-What else?

Stereotypes
Stereotypes are defined as: A widely held but fixed and
oversimplified image or idea of a particular type of person or
thing
It forms: prejudice:
preconceived opinion that is not based on reason or actual
experience

And subsequently, discrimination:

the unjust or prejudicial treatment of different categories of people
or things

-but isnt that how humans function? Forming categories and

identifying patterns?

Folk Devils and Moral Panic

Moral Panic: intense feeling expressed in a population about an issue that

appears to threaten the social order, an exaggerated or irrational response
Folk Devils: person or group of people who are portrayed in folklore or
the media as outsiders and deviant, and who are blamed for crimes or other
sorts of social problems, regarded as evil.
Based on Stanley Cohens work on mods and rockers in UK. Video:

Folk Devils and Moral Panic

Cohens Five Stages of Moral Panic:
1.Something or someone is defined as a threat to values or
interests- process of identification/ observation
2. Threat is depicted in an easily recognisable form by the media
usually defined by clothing, styles, languages, physical
manifestations
3. There is a rapid build-up of public concern by interest groups
and suddenly appearance of copycat events
4. There is a response from authorities or opinion makers
figureheads sought by media for opinions
5. The panic recedes or results in social changes either the issue
died out or something being done about it: raids, arrests and in
some cases, policy changes.

 Aspects of Moral Panic (Goode & Ben-Yehuda, 1994):

1) Concern. There must be a measurable increase in the level of anxiety
arising from the conviction that a groups behaviors pose a substantial
threat to society, a response seen by those who experience it as a
reasonable reaction to a definite social menace.
2. Hostility. The source of the alleged social menace must be viewed with
enmity or resentment as a readily identifiable group independently
responsible for the danger its behaviors pose to society.
3. Consensus. Substantial agreement that a threat to society exists need
not be achieved throughout society, but must be achieved within a
segment of the public large or powerful enough to defuse opposition to its
preferred definitions or policies.
4. Disproportionality. The intensity of public concern over a perceived
social threat must be out of proportion to the measurable or demonstrable
level of danger posed.
5. Volatility. Moral panics tend to arise suddenly and dissipate quickly,
sometimes leaving behind enduring social changes.

The role of mass media

International: Islamophobia, hoodies, black gangs (Crips &
Blood), neo-Nazis movement, white trash, Guidos, Jersey
Shore, anarchists.
Sensationalisation of Malaysian tabloid and mainstream media
90s: bohsia, bohjan, lepak, hiphop
2000s: pengkid, pesta seks, rempits, black metal, punks
2010s LGBT, mass conversions of Muslim youths, Alvivi &
bloggers, cybertroopers, Red Bean Army, khalwat, gengster
Cina & India, mat rempit Melayu, penagih Melayu, buang bayi.

Depiction of youth in movies:

Rural youth corrupted by the cities
Bunohan, Songlap, KAMI, KIL, Gila-Gila Remaja, Spinning Gasing,
Yasmin Ahmads movie

Causes
Profitability:
Public spending: 1985 National Association of Private Psychiatric
Hospitals defends fact that teens commit suicide every 90
minutes (5000/6000 a year)- 3 times the actual figure.
News sale-ability: tabloids and newspaper harping on youth as a
way to sell stories

Legitimization of policy:
War on Drugs in early 80s cited skyrocketing drug abuse when
teenage drug deaths were plummeting

Public control on youth

As a form of social control, surpassing parental role

Journalism pressure to cover negative stories

 Easy victimization of youth: social class, gender, ethnicity

Need for categorization: youth is seen as a identity-less and
thus defined as according to their consumption of style
Hijab + hipster= hijabster

Social constructivist understanding: the assumption of

uniformity of cases based on reality built from the past- visual
cues

Implications
Howard Beckers Labeling Theory of Deviance: secondary
deviance (self-fulfilling prophecy)
Latent manifestation leading to more social problems
Society create deviance by labeling them

Harder policies on youth:

Youth Societies and Youth Development Act 2007, Universities
and University Colleges Act 1971 (revised 2008)
Exertion of more control over youth movement

Turning youth against themselves

Approval seeking vs the rebels, online abuse.

Implications
Dilution of problems: just a phase
Social prejudices
Ex detainees, ethnic affiliation

Self-shaming of being in a social group/race

Lower class youth inferiority

References
Arnett, J.J. 1999. Adolescent storm and stress, reconsidered.
American Psychologist Vol 54(5).
Bashing Youth: http://fair.org/extra-online-articles/bashingyouth/
Clarke et al. Media Portrayal of Young People: Impact and
Influences. National Childrens Bureau
Griffin, C. 2004. Representations of the young in (Eds.) Roche
et al, Youth in Society: Contemporary Theory, Policy and
Practice. London: Sage Publications