Journal of Youth Studies

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Disentangled, decentred and democratised: Youth

Studies for the global South

Adam Cooper, Sharlene Swartz & Alude Mahali

To cite this article: Adam Cooper, Sharlene Swartz & Alude Mahali (2018): Disentangled,
decentred and democratised: Youth Studies for the global South, Journal of Youth Studies, DOI:
10.1080/13676261.2018.1471199

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/13676261.2018.1471199

Published online: 05 May 2018.

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JOURNAL OF YOUTH STUDIES
https://doi.org/10.1080/13676261.2018.1471199

Disentangled, decentred and democratised:

Youth Studies for the global South
Adam Cooper, Sharlene Swartz and Alude Mahali
Human Sciences Research Council, Stellenbosch University, Stellenbosch, South Africa

ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY

Youth Studies’ theories often assume universal generalisability Received 21 April 2017
despite rarely making the global South, or its youthful Accepted 26 April 2018
populations, ontologies, values and politics the focus of research.
KEYWORDS
This paper grapples with the idea of a Youth Studies ‘for’ the Epistemology; global south;
global South, questioning whether theories/approaches that sub-culture; theory
centre on the global North can be usefully applied in the global
South, how and for what purpose. After describing two
mainstream domains of Youth Studies scholarship, questioning
how they may become applicable to Africa, Latin America and
developing countries in Asia, we explicate the geo-politically
situated nature of knowledge production. We ask how theories
that originate elsewhere can be adapted and put to work in new
contexts, contributing towards a Youth Studies that enhances the
lives of youth on the global periphery. In Southern sites urgent
material challenges dominate young people’s lives, requiring
theories that are able to analyse the multi-dimensional contextual
constraints youth experience. Knowledges can be useful
regardless of where they originate, but only when they become
intentionally entangled in local realities and are adapted
accordingly. We argue, however, that a Youth Studies for the
global South needs to demonstrate its relevance beyond applying
theories to new local sites. It should be able to say something
more general about the human condition. In the current
conjuncture of economic instability, we believe that contexts
where youth have had to adapt, hustle and survive in precarious
conditions for an extended period of time might demonstrate
something unique about the human condition, but only if we
make these places the focus of our research gaze. The paper
concludes with suggestions to enable a Youth Studies for the
global South, one which may contribute to this emerging field
more effectively through intentional strategies of disentangling,
decentring and ultimately democratising the field.

Introduction
In our research with South African youth we regularly use theories from Western Europe
and North America (WENA) that illuminate components of the lives of young people with
whom we work. While these works are invaluable to us, they contain contextual assump-
tions that are at odds with the circumstances that confront youth in South Africa. We

CONTACT Alude Mahali amahali@hsrc.ac.za

© 2018 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
2 A. COOPER ET AL.

suspect that we are not the only Southern scholars who experience these kinds of discre-
pancies, as 90% of the world’s youth live in Africa, Latin America or developing countries in
Asia, while the overwhelming majority of research occurs at institutions in the global
North. Northern and Southern youth display many similarities and the global South is cer-
tainly not homogenous, making it difficult to express differences without resorting to false
binaries. These categories of young people are also not absolute, neither do they contain
sets of a priori features. Particularly since the 2008 global financial crisis, youth in the global
North have experienced increased poverty, unemployment, austerity and precarity and
ethnic minorities have endured greater persecution as right-wing politics gains ascen-
dency in certain quarters. However, broad and imperfectly demarcated regional differ-
ences do exist in terms of poverty levels, violence, educational attainment and the
proportion of youth in relation to the rest of the population, although trends are changing
rapidly (Punch 2016). Differences are partly due to many- if not most- of the territories of
Africa, Latin America and Southern Asia being previously colonised by European powers.
The effects of colonisation continue in the present. Although income poverty in the global
South is not completely a result of colonisation, the extraction of precious resources cer-
tainly contributes to contemporary differences in wealth.
Over 40% of most African populations live on less than 2USD per day (UNDP 2009).
Excluding China, almost all of the developing countries in Asia have 40% or more of
their inhabitants living in poverty, including 60%–80% of Indians. Excluding Chile and
Uruguay, between 6% and 40% of inhabitants of South American countries live on less
than 2USD per day. In all of Europe, North America and Australasia less than 2% of
these country’s populations live on less than 2USD per day (UNDP 2009). This is one
example of a crude trend, but it serves as one example of a difference that has a
profound effect on young people’s lives and the theories that are needed to make
sense of these lives.
With these broad trends in mind, in this paper we ask how such differences effect the
three threshold metaconcepts that Côté (2014) proposes shape Youth Studies researchers’
approach to their work. These metaconcepts are ontological assumptions, value priorities
and political agendas. Ontological assumptions refer to ideas about the nature of reality.
By political agendas Côté (2014) means whether researchers perceive the purpose of their
work to be radical change or maintaining the status quo, which is linked to value priorities,
for example whether science is prioritised ahead of activism. Ontologies, values and poli-
tics are influenced by geographical context, effecting how researchers approach their
work. Living in places with townships or favelas or slums that house large proportions
of our populations and being exposed to this rampant inequality on a daily basis, for
example, impacts our ontologies, politics and values as Southern Youth Studies research-
ers. This is not to deny that inequality exists in WENA, but its scale in parts of the global
South make issues like political economy, which have been tangential to Youth Studies
(Côté 2014), far more urgent.
In lieu of these geographical patterns and associated metaconcepts, this paper there-
fore asks how we, as Southern scholars, can find the space- institutional, intellectual
and relational- through a combination of collaboration and pioneering work, to develop
theory ‘for’ the global South. Theory ‘for’ the South draws on Burawoy’s (2010) distinction
between Sociology, or in this case Youth Studies, ‘in’, ‘of’ and ‘for’ the global South. Youth
Studies ‘in’ the South is Northern theory transplanted into Southern contexts, with its
 JOURNAL OF YOUTH STUDIES 3

universal relevance unquestioned. Youth Studies ‘of’ the South shows how the use of
theory in a different local context changes its meaning. What may be conservative or
true in one place may be radical or false in another. Sociology ‘for’ the South is not
content with showing local particularities, but moves towards universality in its theorising.
It considers theory in relation to local ontologies, values and politics and tries to say some-
thing more general about the human condition, something that applies to us all.
With the aim of developing a Youth Studies for the global South, we begin by doing a
Youth Studies ‘of’ the South, outlining two mainstream Youth Studies’ domains of theory
and research, showing how they are both useful but insufficient for conceptualising
Southern Youth. We call these the Socio-Cultural (our term) and Dynamic Systems (an
existing term) approaches. These sub-fields are by no means the only ones, or the only
way of characterising the field. This division or depiction might not look the same from
the vantage point of the global North, where different academic battles are fought and
political agendas are advanced. We are using these domains to describe a Youth
Studies ‘of’ the South, explicating some of the options available to us in using theory
from elsewhere in the work that we do, what these ideas mean in our context, and how
they are useful and also inadequate.
We then show how these domains of scholarship are mostly produced in edited books
and journal articles from the global North, containing specific ontological assumptions,
value priorities and political agendas associated with these regions. We are not the first
to make the assertion that Youth Studies’ theoretical base is largely European (See Farrugia
2014; Punch 2016). The purpose of this section is to show how these theories are under-
researched in relation to global South contexts such as ours and that they need to be rein-
terpreted in new contexts. This is not to imply that the research is poor in quality, but
rather to point out that the places in which scholars work and live influence the shape,
form, values, concepts and intentions of research.
In the final section we use Decolonial and Southern theories, and Subaltern studies, to
explore how to mould theory to fit our purposes, to make suggestions about what a Youth
Studies ‘for’ the global South might look like. We believe that this project, promoting
insights from and about the global South can benefit youth everywhere. In the current
conjuncture of economic instability, it may be the global South -places where for centuries
people have learnt to adapt and hustle in adversity- that offers alternative ‘ways of being’
for the world at large. We make preliminary suggestions about how a Youth Studies for the
global South might contribute to a disentangled, decentred and more democratic field
that is beneficial to young people and researchers globally.

Northern theory useful but insufficient for understanding Southern youth

We begin by describing two domains or broad areas that subsume a substantial portion of
Youth Studies research, which have emerged over the past 50 years: the Socio-Cultural
(our term) and Dynamic Systems approaches. These sub-fields are by no means the
only way of characterising the field. Our choice to concentrate on these two domains is
not based on a belief that these are perfect categories that represent the field, or that
they endorse similar ontologies, epistemologies or values. Much Socio-Cultural work has
challenged decontextualised, individualistic and positivistic approaches like Dynamic
Systems, a move that we applaud. However, we feel that these domains are products of
4 A. COOPER ET AL.

particular geographical contexts and that a Youth Studies ‘of’ and ‘for’ the global South
needs to ask what these approaches might mean elsewhere. Describing these two
domains enables us to engage with and critique a large proportion of mainstream
Youth Studies research, which often purports to study all youth, when certain geographi-
cally informed assumptions are made.
A further justification for this typology is that it aligns with much work that has come
out of two disciplines that have contributed immensely to the field, namely Sociology and
Psychology. In chapter one of his classic Youth Studies: an introduction, Furlong (2012) ded-
icates a substantial section to Psychological contributions to Youth Studies, naming Urie
Bronfenbrenner and Richard Lerner, two Dynamic Systems theorists, as making important
contributions to Youth Studies. Another reason for including a ‘domain’ of Dynamic
Systems in our review is that one of its associated theories, Positive Youth Development,
is the focus of 104 articles in the Journal of Youth and Adolescence, Youth and Society and
the Journal of Youth Studies combined. Similarly, a search on the academic database Ebs-
cohost using the Bronfenbrenner-inspired term ‘ecological model’ together with ‘youth’
yields 240 articles in these journals.

The socio-cultural approach to youth studies

Sociological and Cultural Studies approaches to studying youth generate links between
culture, social structure and the ways that young people make meaning out of, and
react to, their socio-historical contexts. The prevalence of this socio-cultural domain is
demonstrated by much early work on sub-culture by the Birmingham Centre for Contem-
porary Cultural Studies (CCCS) and associated traditions that have continued that line of
inquiry (including work on ‘generations’). ‘Sub-culture’ and ‘youth culture’ have been
central to Youth Studies, informing our choice of the term ‘socio-cultural’ approach. This
research tradition highlights the effects of social conditions on young people and docu-
ments individual biographies in relation to macro societal forces (Cohen and Ainley
2000). Socio-cultural theorists emphasise local contexts and youth agency in relation to
powerful structural forces, providing youth with opportunities to voice challenges they
face in their own words (Shildrick and MacDonald 2006; Dimitriadis 2008; Dillabough
and Kennelly 2010; Blackman 2005).
Can this approach be relevant to Southern Youth? This tradition admirably resists nega-
tive stereotypes of young people. Youth in the global South are often perceived in ‘deficit’
terms, associated with poverty, criminality and dependency, representations that lead to
repressive policy decisions (Imoh and Ame 2012). A good early example of positive por-
trayals of youth is Parsons (1942) research on youth romantic relations and experimen-
tation with adult roles, which contrasted with previous studies of ‘delinquents’ and
young ‘gang members’. Parsons was followed by studies that demonstrated unfair societal
portrayals of ‘immoral’ young people. Many of these studies recast representations of
youth using the concept of sub-culture. For example, Cohen’s (1972) classic Folk devils
and moral panics, a study of the British Mods and Rockers, illustrated how these two
British youth subcultures were constructed as ‘delinquent’.
These studies warned against scapegoating and reproducing negative stereotypes, an
important lesson for people studying and working with Southern youth. In Southern con-
texts, moral panics frequently involve youth, obfuscating societal problems and unfairly
 JOURNAL OF YOUTH STUDIES 5

pinpointing youth as the cause of social troubles. In South Africa, for example, the ‘crime
problem’, which is largely attributed to young black men, functions to divert attention
away from the lack of material and economic transformation in the post-apartheid
period (Cooper and Foster 2008; Samara 2011).
Socio-cultural approaches to identity formation may also be useful to theorising chal-
lenges Southern youth face. The solutions that working-class British youths generated,
in the form of sub-cultures, involved a ‘double-articulation’, positioning themselves in
relation to their parent culture (working-class) and then vis-a-vis the dominant middle
and upper-classes (Clarke et al. 1975). Cultural identity formation for many Southern
Youth also involves multiple articulations vis-à-vis the global centre, the culture of their
parents and national cultural forces. Southern youth negotiate identities out of complex
mixtures between local and Euro-American contexts, between binaries like tradition and
modernity. For Southern youth, identity construction means making sense of global
icons, cultural symbols, technologies, brands and ways of life by recontextualising these
from places on the periphery, by mixing local practices and objects. Clarke et al.’s
(1975) double-articulation requires research in a range of Southern contexts, investigating
its relevance and possible reform.
Socio-cultural approaches value to Youth Studies extends beyond unfair labels and
identity negotiation. ‘Sub-culture’ illuminates social struggles in particular socio-historical
contexts. Cohen’s (1972) post war explication of British economic restructuring and
fractured working-class solidarity showed how ‘subcultures’ explained the ideological
contradiction facing British youth. But sub-culture cannot solve material problems. As
Clarke et al state:
There is no ‘subcultural solution’ to working-class youth unemployment, educational disad-
vantage, compulsory miseducation, dead-end jobs, the routinisation and specialisation of
labour, low pay and the loss of skills. Sub-cultural strategies cannot match, meet or answer
the structuring dimensions … They ‘solve’, but in an imaginary way, problems (1975, 36-37)

Sub-culture offered youth expressive outlets and solidarity as class structures changed in
the 1960s. However, in places with urgent material problems of unemployment and
poverty, we have concerns about the relevance of theory that deals predominantly with
the symbolic realm. In the global South, resistance is not only ‘ritualistic’ (see Clarke
et al. 1975), it relates to survival. It could be argued that parts of the global North are begin-
ning to experience higher levels of unemployment, but these are still far lower than
countries in the global South (International Labour Organisation 2013), and have results
nowhere near the 2USD a day figures of the global South.
Descendants of the socio-cultural domain, like post sub-culture theory- a postmodern
approach that delves into the meaning of music, dance and style- also illustrate lacunae
between this approach and Southern youth’s needs (Bennett 2011; Blackman 2005). The
post-subcultural theory assertion that youth cultural studies can be encapsulated by a
‘supermarket of style’ (Muggleton and Weinzierl 2003, 7), or consumption identities in
the global era, negates many core challenges that Southern youth face. While good
work has been done on time–space reconfigurations that exacerbate material, racial
and gendered inequalities (see for example Ball, Maguire, and MacRae 2000; Shildrick
and MacDonald 2006; Dolby and Rivzi 2008), a dearth of research on the meaning of
these developments for Southern youth remains.
6 A. COOPER ET AL.

So how relevant are socio-cultural approaches to the study of Southern youth? They
reveal that healthy youth development is tied to young people’s need to be ‘agents’ in
their stories and successes. This tradition alerts people to negative portrayals of youth
usually saying more about the portrayers than the portrayed, in the process illuminating
elements of the socio-political contexts in which youth live. Socio-political contexts are
crucial to understanding young people’s challenges and require careful documentation.
However, sub-cultural theory needs translation into Southern contexts to be moulded
and transformed to suit the purposes of research in such settings. We should ask ‘what
new questions might emerge if the relationship between culture and social structure
were to be explored in Southern sites?’ Honwana and De Boeck (2005) begin this task
stating that while the CCCS showed that the actions of working-class British youth were
anti-structural and counter-hegemonic, the dire material circumstances in Africa mean
that ritualised rebellions do not alleviate tensions. This leads to more serious political
conflict, often led by youth, or the curtailment of adulthood as youth remain trapped in
a state of ‘waithood’, between childhood and adulthood, due to structural conditions
(Honwana 2012).
The socio-cultural approach to Youth Studies therefore requires further research, revi-
sion and radical translation, taking seriously what young people say about their own lives
and the socio-political contexts in which they live. As it stands the Socio-Cultural approach
contains universal assumptions about experiences, actions and subjectivities that have
been minimally researched in the global South.

Dynamic systems, risks and protective factors

The domain of Dynamic Systems predominantly emanates from American Psychology
departments and looks for solutions to material problems, often devising interventions
to ameliorate the challenges youth face. Dynamic Systems is more closely (although not
only) aligned with a positivist research paradigm that measures youth development con-
structs. The language used also differs significantly. While Sociological and Cultural theor-
ists stress agency, marginalisation, identity and power, Dynamic Systems scholars speak
about risks, protective factors, healthy development and pathways. We realise that the
values, ontologies, epistemological intentions and politics of these two approaches are
radically different. Earlier versions of this paper received a great deal of comment from
reviewers, some of whom defended the establishment of what we have called the ‘Socio-
cultural’ approach and its associated journals, as this move was perceived as an attempt to
deal with some of the decontextualised and ahistorical assumptions underpinning positi-
vist approaches. We endorse this move and are ourselves more closely aligned with Socio-
logical approaches to Youth Studies. Our intention is not to compare the value of
approaches, but to question what they might mean in relation to our own work, to
unpack how theory might be adapted and used in new contexts.
Dynamic Systems scholars now view developmental change as located in systemic
relations between individuals and environments (Lerner 2003). Environments, from this
perspective, are perceived as systems like parent–child interactions and community
relations, which impact on one another. Systems models are able to move beyond
youth as individual cognitions, emotions and motivations, generating theoretical possibi-
lities for change across the life-span (Lerner 2003). Two examples of the Dynamic Systems
 JOURNAL OF YOUTH STUDIES 7

approach are Bronfenbrenner’s (1979) Ecological Model of human development and the
Positive Youth Development framework (PYD) (Eccles and Gootman 2002). These theories
examine the multiple risk and protective factors that emerge in young people’s inter-
actions in/with different contexts. Risk factors increase the likelihood of undesirable out-
comes. Protective factors are individual or environmental safeguards that protect people.
The Ecological Model looks at bidirectional person-environment interactions. Youth
development, from an ecological perspective, is the interaction of multiple risk and protec-
tive factors – nested within one another like a set of Russian dolls – as they play out within
and between the young person and different environments. However, the Ecological
Model overlooks what risk-taking might mean in Southern contexts. Many Southern
youth need to hustle, improvise, navigate, capitalise on opportunities when they arise
and know when to, and the importance of, taking risks. For them risk-taking is often a ben-
eficial skill that is developed, not necessarily a sign of delinquency and pathology. Risk and
protection requires interpretation in historical, political and economic contexts. For
example, leaving school early to obtain temporary employment could mitigate the risk
of poverty or restrict opportunities for social mobility, functioning as both a risk and/or
a protective factor. Employment may be a protective factor, but if it is only short-term
and unfulfilling it could risk leading to frustration and rage. Understanding risk and protec-
tion requires a careful analysis of youths’ intentions and their contexts.
Cultural bias of the Ecological Model is observed in its placing the individual at the
centre of immediate and broader contexts. In African contexts, agency, identity and
forms of subjectivity are often defined by ‘relatedness’. Leaving school to contribute to
family support illustrates how subjectivity is enacted through inter-connectedness and
group identity. Although the Ecological Model does illustrate relationships to parents, tea-
chers and communities, this framework is designed to measure indicators that determine
whether individual children display forms of healthy development. In some contexts,
group solidarity and cohesion may be more important than individual health outcomes.
Despite these weaknesses, the ecological model is able to generate policy-related rec-
ommendations, something which studies of identity, biography and history rarely achieve.
The challenge is to use this dynamic, multi-setting model to develop nuanced understand-
ings of the multiple environments in which youth socialisation occurs, including political,
economic and cultural contexts.
The other Dynamic Systems example is the Positive Youth Development framework,
which portrays youth in positive terms as assets and resources (Roth and Brooks-Gunn
2003a, 2003b). We agree with this strategy but wonder what healthy contributions
might look like in contexts of rampant inequality, poverty and systemic violence. PYD pro-
motes programmes and environments that focus on the ‘5 Cs’: competence, confidence,
character, connection, and caring (Lerner 2003). However, this framework assumes a
degree of ‘Northern normalcy’ that is far-removed from many of the ‘abnormally-
normal’ Southern conditions like war-torn environments, slums, or places that have
been hit by natural disasters of flood, fire and drought. In such circumstances, features
of environments such as: ‘structure and limits … physical and psychological safety and
security … supportive relationships … good emotional and moral support … opportu-
nities to feel a sense of belonging … to be exposed to positive morals, values, and positive
social norms’ (Eccles and Gootman 2002, 117), seem far removed.
8 A. COOPER ET AL.

The dynamic systems perspective may therefore need to become more flexible and
cognisant of Southern contexts. Risks need to be understood as interpreted, by youth,
in relation to the range of settings they traverse. Risk-taking is often forced upon them
due to environmental circumstances, rather than individual flaws, as pointed out by the
UK based Young Lives team (Blum and Boyden 2018). Similarly in relation to PYD, abnor-
mally-normal circumstances often exist in the global South, such that the notion of ‘ideal
environments’ requires further thought. Swartz (2009) found that South African young
people’s moral ecologies, the decisions they made about what was right and wrong,
were highly paradoxical and context dependent, inseparable from the complex, unstable
and confusing worlds in which they lived. Further research in Southern contexts is required
to tease out these person-environment interactions more succinctly, in particular socio-
historical contexts.

Theory and theorists are geopolitically situated

We believe that these domains of Youth Studies research resonate but remain incongruent
with our context, because they are overwhelmingly produced in WENA, shaped by the
ontologies, political agendas and value priorities that accompany the production of knowl-
edge in those regions. Theories are produced by people that live in particular contexts and
circumstances and so it is only natural that these ideas will be informed and shaped by
geography. On a global level, knowledge production is heavily weighted in favour of
WENA. This is not a conspiracy by Northern scholars, but reflects material inequalities,
the position of powerful institutions like Northern universities and broader global flows
of cultural influence (Côté 2014). This phenomenon is not restricted to Youth Studies, as
academic fields/disciplines globally are shaped by WENA scholars and institutions, their
journals, conferences and epistemological genealogies.
The ways in which knowledge is created and disseminated through contemporary geo-
political circuits means that theories and ideas that originate in specific local contexts,
mainly WENA, are sometimes assumed to be universally applicable before they have
been extensively explored in other places. It would therefore be very easy to simply
take these ideas and conduct what we have called Youth Studies ‘in’ the global South,
making assumptions that these theories are relevant to our context. Youth Studies texts
sometimes give this impression that they are speaking about youth everywhere, when
they are actually referring to youth in specific regions. As an initial example, in the Post-
subcultural studies reader the editors say that the volume explores young people’s cultural
tastes, politics and music (Muggleton and Weinzierl 2003). This text is written by scholars
based in Australia, the United Kingdom, Canada, the United States, various European
countries and there is also a chapter from Japan. The edited collection claims to investi-
gate the ‘changing relationship between youth cultural tastes, politics and music in
today’s so-called ‘post-modern world’ … [to] retheorise and reconceptualise youth (sub)-
cultural phenomena on the shifting social terrain of the new millennium’ (Muggleton
and Weinzierl 2003, 3).
The editors question whether ‘subculture’ still aptly describes important issues related
to the study of youth, or whether the term has become obsolete. Without intending to
offend the contributors of this well researched and written text (many similar collections
exist), the editors do not say to which youth they refer. Young people who live in Africa,
 JOURNAL OF YOUTH STUDIES 9

Latin America and developing countries in Asia are left largely unconsidered. There is a
silence as to whether the concept of subculture is still (or ever was) helpful in describing
aspects of young lives in the global South. The difficulty for those of us who do research in
the global periphery is that we find such texts useful in their analysis of many issues that
also affect young people where we live and work and yet some of the geographical parti-
cularities of the work are taken for granted as ubiquitous.
Other examples reinforce the point that the overwhelming majority of published aca-
demic work on youth emanates from WENA. This trend impacts on associated theoretical
perspectives and ontological assumptions, meaning that a Youth Studies ‘of’ and ‘for’ the
global South requires that we interpret what these perspectives mean in other contexts.
The only chapter by an academic based at an institution outside of WENA or Australia
in the Routledge handbook of Youth Studies and young adulthood, is the one on HIV/
AIDS (Furlong 2009). An edited collection on the transition to adulthood for vulnerable
populations (Foster et al. 2005) consists of 27 American authors. Youth cultures: a cross-cul-
tural perspective (Amit-Talai and Wulff 1995) has only one out of eight of its contributors
based at a university in the South, as does Religion and youth (Collins-Mayo and Dandelion
2010). A book on youth transitions (Henderson et al. 2007) was written by scholars in the
UK. An edition that focuses on youth and technology (Looker and Naylor 2010), beginning
with ‘this book is about youth’, is written exclusively by Canadian academics. Youth work
scholars in the UK (Harrison et al. 2007) produced Leading work with young people. The
compilation Understanding youth: perspectives, identities and practices was written by scho-
lars at the Open University in the UK (Kehily 2007). Youth cultures in the age of global media
is written by academics in WENA and the editors of Researching youth (Bennett, Cieslik, and
Miles 2003) are all British. In terms of Dynamic Systems based edited collections, 28 scho-
lars from the United States wrote At the threshold: the developing adolescent. Similarly, the
Handbook of adolescent psychology is an all-American affair. It is therefore very easy to pick
up one of these texts and do Youth Studies ‘in’ the global South by assuming that the
theory and research is applicable to other contexts, without questioning what it means
when this ‘theory travels’. Some Youth Studies researchers do state that the field’s insti-
tutional and epistemological underpinnings are rooted in universities in developed
Western countries (Côté 2014), or that the lack of reliable evidence on youth in the
third world scuppers attempts to understand young people in these places (Jeffrey and
McDowell 2004). However, a great deal of published work assumes that the issues
described are universally applicable.
This trend of emphatic global North influence extends to academic journals. Only seven
out of 484 members of editorial boards of journals with the word ‘Youth’ or ‘Young’ in their
title are based at universities in Africa, Latin America or developing countries in Asia.1 In
our analysis of the 103 issues of one leading youth studies journal between 1998 and
June 2016, only 35 articles or 4% had at least one author based at a university in the
global South. To reiterate, we are not saying that the skewed geographical location of
authors of these texts and journals is an intentional plot to exclude Southern scholars,
or that these works hold no value. A deep set of material, institutional and epistemological
inequalities exist globally due to historical events and circumstances that oppress people
everywhere. However, these geopolitical influences and trends will naturally effect the
kind of theory that is produced and its relevance when it is applied to other contexts.
10 A. COOPER ET AL.

Turning to collections that actually focus on Southern youth, in Navigating youth, gen-
erating adulthood: social becoming in an African context (Christiansen et al. 2006), the
editors speak about African youth’s ‘volatile and precarious’ life chances without an analy-
sis of the socio-historical context. The role of colonialism in Africa, contemporary unequal
geo-political trade relations, or external influences on local conflicts are not mentioned.
The book’s focus is a set of imported concepts like ‘youthscapes’, and ‘sociogenerational
categories’, without justifying what relevance these have to Africa, or Youth Studies for
Africans. A Youth Studies for the global South needs to make these contexts and their
interests part of the analysis. On the other hand, Youth and the city in the global South, pro-
duced by a group of Danish Anthropologists (Hansen 2008), sponsored by the Danish Min-
istry of Foreign Affairs as part of a wider poverty reduction strategy, speaks more directly
to issues of Southern concern. It is largely descriptive in its focus, but takes an interesting
and insightful approach, analysing youth in three cities, historicising the contexts of youth
on the global periphery and being critical of dominant welfare discourses and depictions
of ‘youth as problems’. This project is a good set of empirical case studies, but we feel that
it needs to engage more overtly with what these findings mean, theoretically, for Youth
Studies ‘for’ the global South.
One way to advance a Youth Studies for the global South project is to include Southern
scholars in collaborative projects and some interesting compilations have recently
emerged, adding immense value to the field. In Contemporary youth research: local
expressions and global connections, editors Helve and Holm (2005) acknowledge that
youth research has focused mainly on young people in WENA. This text is a rigorous col-
laborative project that contributes to democratising the field by inviting Southern scholars
to add other perspectives and enrich the debates. Similarly, the Springer handbook of Chil-
dren and Youth Studies brings together scholars from a wide range of contexts, including
the global South, focusing on under-researched topics and populations with an intentional
ambition to disrupt the status quo. Two excellent editions both involving Carlos Feixa
(Feixa, Leccardi, and Nilan 2016; Nilan and Feixa 2006) attempt to incorporate Southern
scholars from places like Nigeria, Egypt, Chile and Colombia. These collections show
how, in a range of contexts, young people’s worlds have become truly transnational.
The first book focuses on hybridity and plural worlds, emphasising identity construction
and cultural consumption. The second uses the concept of the chronotope to explore
the space/time dimensions of young people’s contemporary social practices. These colla-
borative efforts to broaden the focus of the work and democratise the field add great value
to understanding youth in different contexts and have been invaluable resources to us in
our own research endeavours.
However, we believe that in addition to collaborative efforts it would be useful for
Southern scholars, in different contexts, to assert their own agendas and knowledges’
and develop their theories, on their own terms, pinpointing the different concerns of
youth and researchers on the global periphery. Nancy Fraser (1992, 1995) calls such alli-
ances ‘subaltern counterpublics’, arenas adjacent to the main public sphere where subor-
dinated groups may produce and introduce counter-discourses, without the risk of their
interests being co-opted by more powerful groups (Fraser 1992, 1995). South African,
freedom-fighter Biko (2015) also highlighted the value of marginalised groups consulting
in solidarity in certain instances, such that strategies for resistance could be agreed upon.
We believe that South-South networks can bolster a Youth Studies for the global South by
 JOURNAL OF YOUTH STUDIES 11

starting with concepts and agendas of local concern, rather than beginning in the North
and working outwards to demonstrate global commonalities. This would add to terms like
identity, culture and subjectivity, which appear to be central to scholars in WENA.
Some impressive developments have begun amongst Southern scholars, adding rigour
and new foci to the field. Ugor and Mawuko-Yevugah’s (2015) compilation is exclusively
dedicated to the study of youth in Africa. The authors focus their introduction on the
effects of neoliberalism on African youth and the ‘frightening repercussions of contempor-
ary global financial capitalism’ (Ugor and Mawuko-Yevugah 2015, 1). They highlight the
centrality of political economy, for example the ways that African youth live and cope
under a market mentality, in conditions of extreme precarity, as integral to the study of
African youth. While these issues are certainly covered by Northern scholars, they are
sometimes peripheral, something which Southern scholarship could address. These con-
cerns are echoed by Argentinian scholar Canclini (2013), in his study of ‘precarious crea-
tivity’, another rare example of Southern youth scholarship. Writing about industrial and
post-industrial forms of production and circulation, Canclini (2013), like the African
authors, urges us to link the study of culture to the economy. Further support for Southern
youth having different concerns to their Northern counterparts is provided by DeSouza,
Kumar, and Shastri (2009) whose survey research found that poverty and unemployment
are the two biggest challenges for Indian youth. The authors add that the youth-adult dis-
tinction does not manifest in the same way in India, as it does in the global North.
The shape and form of dominant theories or domains of Youth Studies work, like those
we have called Socio-Cultural and Dynamic Systems, is therefore partly the result of edited
collections and academic journals in the field being overwhelmingly produced and written
by scholars based in the global North. By highlighting this trend we are not saying that the
research is poor in quality because it is written by Northern scholars, or that Northern scho-
lars writing about the South is inauthentic because the authors are ‘outsiders’. This issue is
not simply about essentialist claims that ‘where’ researchers come from determines their
views or their scholarship. It is to acknowledge, as we show shortly with Southern and
Decolonial theories, that the places in which we work and live are shaped by- and
shape- ontological assumptions, value priorities and political agendas. We are arguing
that the contextual circumstances of the people we research and the environments in
which we work, influence in profound ways the concepts that we use, our foci and inten-
tions. Knowledge is geographically situated, validated, disseminated and used, as
described in Decolonial and Southern theories and Subaltern Studies, theoretical
approaches that we believe can help build a Youth Studies for the global South.

Subaltern studies, Decolonial and Southern theories

Insights from Subaltern Studies, Decolonial and Southern Theories illuminate relations
between theory and geography, between ideas, values and the geo-politics of knowledge
production. Subaltern studies shows how theory can be translated into new contexts and
used accordingly. Dipesh Chakrabarty (2009, 2012) argues that Europe needs to be ‘pro-
vincialised’ when studying political modernity, his field, in other regions. Chakrabarty
(2009, 2012) explains how political studies scholars cannot think about modernity
without concepts like ‘citizen’, ‘democracy’ and ‘justice’. Yet, these terms are often incon-
gruent when used in India, where ‘modern’ citizens are simultaneously influenced by
12 A. COOPER ET AL.

supposedly irrational religious insights, as well as what the West might call modern ration-
ality. Concepts therefore need to be rethought in new places that contain different world-
views, historical circumstances and subjectivities.
Similarly, Youth Studies researchers need to make reference to foundational works
regardless of geography. Even the concept of youth, as a Sociological stage between ado-
lescence and adulthood, originated as the West displayed extended transitions into adult-
hood, as industrial society created structural conditions that shaped life courses in new
ways. While theories from WENA capture something that applies to all youth, other
crucial components of young people’s lives are often neglected. Provincialising Europe
or Youth Studies therefore means recentring our focus with Africa, Latin America or Asia
as our primary reference point. This should be done without negating the influence
that theory from WENA has had on our own formative ontological and epistemological
predispositions.
However, complementing the translation of theory into new contexts, Youth Studies for
the global South means finding appropriate values and politics for doing research in
Southern sites. This is central to Decolonial Theory, which shows how scholarship is pro-
duced from a particular location in the structures of power, with knowledges, and their
weight/reception always situated (Harraway 1988; Grosfoguel 2007). As Grosfoguel
(2007, 213) argues, this is not an issue of knowledge being partial, rather it relates to
the ‘locus of enunciation … the geo-political and body-political location of the subject
that speaks.’
The locus of enunciation indicates how knowledges intersect with geo-political realities
in regions where they are produced. This does not mean, as Grosfoguel says, that knowl-
edges are relative, but that geo-political contexts shape how knowledge is, can and should
be used. The point is reinforced by Decolonial thinker Mignolo (1999), who turns Descartes
on his head in the title of a provocative article ‘I am where I think’, illustrating the connec-
tion between ontology, epistemological production and how the use of ideas is tied to
geographical locations. Theories should be occluded due to their place of origin.
However, in line with Decolonial theory, loci of enunciation needs to become part of inter-
preting the meaning, relevance and usefulness of knowledge, as we attempt to produce
Youth Studies ‘for’ the global South. This challenge has methodological implications too,
as Smith (2013) points out, as the places that constitute former colonies are fraught with
unequal power relations that complicate research in those contexts. Being cognisant of
‘how’ we do research is as important as reflecting on ‘where’ we think and write.
Southern Theory also insists that ‘place’ matters, stating that the production of knowl-
edge is linked to place-specific material resources, cultural influences and networks that
enable the legitimacy of ideas. It is within Southern Theory debates that we can more for-
cefully trace what a Youth Studies ‘for’ the global South might look like. Connell (2007) and
Jean and John Comaroff (2012) are foundational texts in the emerging field of Southern
Theory. Connell uses Sociology’s founding fathers of Marx, Weber and Durkheim to
argue that the perspectives and agendas of what she calls ‘metropolitan society’ may
present themselves as universal knowledge, when in fact they are a particular trajectories
of local knowledge. She shows how the hegemony of modern disciplinary knowledge
represses theory from the global South, which is instead seen to produce case-studies,
add-ons to supplement theory generated elsewhere. While we agree that disciplinary
knowledge creates narratives that may be assumed to be universal trajectories of
 JOURNAL OF YOUTH STUDIES 13

thought and that Southern thinking should not become case studies added on to North-
ern theory, this does not mean that Marx, Weber and Durkheim do not have profound rel-
evance elsewhere. It is, however, important to understand the contexts in which these
theorists were working and the places into which we transport them.
Theory ‘for’ the global South centres itself on the ontologies, politics and values associ-
ated with Southern sites, but it does so in order to say something more general about
humanity. Some Southern and Decolonial theorists have focused on these regions to chal-
lenge the enlightenment narrative of progress, development and ‘life getting better’, expli-
cating what they call ‘the dark side of modernity’ (Comaroff and Comaroff 2012). The dark
side of modernity describes how technological, industrial and scientific progress was
established with certain coterminous silences. Through colonialism, European explorers
violently extracted raw materials, used cheap or free labour and destroyed landscapes
and ways of life. This is not the same critique as postmodern challenges to positivism
and science that say that knowledge is perspectival. The dark side of modernity takes
materialism, political economy, geography and colonialism seriously, stating that ‘pro-
gress’ for some has always been a double-edged sword.
What does this have to do with Youth Studies? As the world changes and capital looks
for new markets from which to profit, former privileged populations’ labour power begins
to wane and certain right-wing groups try to recreate past privileges and ideas about
‘great nations’, perhaps it is time to learn from groups whose lives have always been pre-
carious. Comaroff and Comaroff (2012) argue that in the current conjuncture of economic
instability it may be the global South, places where people have for centuries learnt to
adapt and hustle in adversity, that generates useful insight into ‘ways of being’ for the
world at large. We believe that it is in contexts where youth have had to adapt and
survive in precarious conditions for an extended period of time, living and being
human within the dark side of modernity, that we might learn something unique about
the human condition. This can only be achieved if we make the places in which these
groups live, as well as the associated ontologies, politics and values, the focus of our gaze.

Strategies for disentangling, democratising and mainstreaming youth

studies scholarship for the global South
A first step towards Youth Studies for the global South means disentangling the lived rea-
lities of Southern youth and reinterpreting theory in the light of these conditions. This
should be accompanied by strengthening existing global collaborations, creating new
South-South alliances and mainstreaming Southern scholarship. These suggestions form
part of a three pronged strategy that we advocate as a starting point to disentangle,
decentre and democratise Youth Studies scholarship.

Disentangling the local and global, the universal and particular

Disentangling the local and global, the universal and particular means critiquing theory
that is assumed to be universally relevant, showing how it can be usefully put to work
in new, as yet unconsidered contexts and where it requires revision. We have attempted
to demonstrate two examples of this in our analysis of the socio-cultural and dynamic
systems approaches. Constitutive characteristics of Southern Youth’s lives need to be
14 A. COOPER ET AL.

identified and interpreted through contextually relevant theoretical lenses. We have

begun this process elsewhere (Cooper, Swartz and Ramphalile forthcoming), arguing
that Southern Youth contend with greater levels of adversity, including lower incomes,
increased populations, higher levels of violence and inequality and that they have
access to fewer resources to buttress their well-being. Disentangling epistemic trajectories
requires that Southern scholars challenge their Northern counterparts at conferences
and in publications, showing where ‘global assumptions’ are unjustifiably made. Further-
more, Southern scholars need to begin to assess and promote the global relevance of
their own work.

Democratising through cooperation and new alliances

New cooperative projects are already starting to document, comparatively, the diverse
contexts and experiences that youth face globally. Many of the issues facing youth and
academics are global in their genesis and reach, meaning that alliances are needed.
This process has begun and it urgently needs to be strengthened and supported.
However, as mentioned, new South-South alliances or subaltern counterpublics need to
be forged. A joint strategy of cooperation and strategic alliances is therefore needed.

Decentring Northern scholarship

The global North is experiencing unprecedented levels of unemployment and insecurity,
conditions that have existed in Southern sites for hundreds of years (Comaroff and Comar-
off 2012). Since the beginning of the colonial era, many Southern youth have been forced
to contend with competition for scarce resources, insecure living conditions, the presence
of people born elsewhere and forms of systemic violence. Young people in these regions
have developed expert knowledges of how to cope with and in adversity, as they hustle to
survive and adapt to circumstances of rapid change. Deliberate mainstreaming of
Southern scholarship therefore means decentring WENA as the theoretical hegemon, elu-
cidating the potential of Southern scholarship for youth globally. The current global con-
juncture, one in which space/time has been reconfigured as sites on the former global
periphery have become new centres of cultural and economic production, provides a
fertile context for mainstreaming Southern thought. Promoting Southern scholarship
means challenging how and what we identify as knowledge, contesting which ideas are
worth sharing and advocating for a wider range of experiences as constitutive of the
human condition.

Conclusion
Youth Studies for the global South, a project in which the interests and conditions of
people and places on the global periphery take centre stage, requires rigorous analysis
of what theory that is generated in WENA means in other sites. We have argued that
two domains of Youth Studies scholarship need to be reworked in relation to the ontolo-
gies, politics and values that exist elsewhere, before they can be used effectively. While
sociological and cultural accounts of Youth Studies provide useful insights regarding
how young people position themselves in relation to mainstream cultural forces, we
 JOURNAL OF YOUTH STUDIES 15

believe that the primacy of material challenges renders this kind of research limited in
Southern contexts. Similarly, Dynamic Systems approaches illuminate person-environ-
ment interactions but often fail to delve into the socio-political meaning of behaviours
involving risk and protection. These theories are therefore useful but inadequate to devel-
oping a full account of Southern youth.
To be clear, we are not saying that theories should be occluded due to their place of
origin or that people in the global North cannot describe the lives of people in the
global South. It is important to use Northern theories when they do fit and are useful.
Chakrabarty (2009, 2012) laments that it is disconcerting when Eurocentric theories that
describe all people actually do resonate in our contexts, when applied to peoples that
the theoreticians do not even know, or acknowledge, exist. However these theories
need to be recalibrated when used in contexts much different from the places in which
they were conceived.
This is only the first step towards producing a Youth Studies for the global South, a
project which aspires to generate new knowledge that is widely applicable, rather than
simply reinterpreting theories in new contexts. We believe that places saturated by
what we have called ‘the dark side of modernity’ hold much potential to illuminate
aspects of Southern youths’ lives, insights that can be applied to Northern contexts,
places where uncertainty and economic hardship are becoming more prominent. This
kind of theory therefore holds the potential not only to illuminate a fuller range of
human experiences, but also to produce knowledge that may be used for the politics
and struggles of people globally, in efforts to work towards a more democratic world
order.

Note
1. Journals analysed include: Journal of Youth Studies, Journal of Youth and Adolescence, Young,
Youth and Policy, Youth and Society, Child and Youth Care Forum, Youth Violence and Juvenile
Justice and Child and Youth Services.

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Funding
This work was supported by DST-NRF Centre of Excellence in Human Development [grant number
P20150003] and [grant number P20160001].

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