Latin American Meeting of RC 34 during the Latin American Sociology Association Conference (ALAS) 1-4 September, 2009 Federal University of Buenos Aires (UBA), Argentina


This is a report of the activities of the activities of youth researchers which were a part of those of Working Group 22 ‘Sociology of Childhood and Youth’ at the bi-annual Latin American Sociology Association (ALAS) Conference. Coordinated by Mariela Macri (Instituto Gino Germani, UBA), Silvia Guemureman (Instituto Gino Germani, UBA) and Tom Dwyer (Vice President RC34 Latin America, Unicamp, Brazil). The meetings of our group were held in the impressive ‘Centro Cultural de la Cooperación’. Numerically the most important number of contributions came from Argentina and its neighbours: Brazil, Chile and Uruguay, however papers were presented from many other South and Central American countries. A wide variety of theoretical approaches were presented, and methodological ones also. The variety of countries represented permitted a rich comparative perspective to be developed in specific cases.

Of the 141 papers presented: 95 treated issues strictly related to the sociology of youth, 12 treated questions related to both youth and childhood and 34 were about issues classified as the sociology of childhood. I shall firstly mention some issues relating to the division between youth and childhood as defined by ISA, before concentrating on issues that lie at the intersection of ALAS GT 22 and ISA RC 34.

This fact that 12 (9%) of papers examined questions that involve both youth and children bears witness to the impossibility of insisting on the strict separating between the two areas of study (eg. Child and adolescent prostitution, problems of definition of whether a person is a child or an adolescent, historical studies) and also to the importance of comparative research on the treatment of the two theoretical objects, this is particularly evident with relation to the different legal status of the two age groups in most countries. Fully 24% of papers (34) treated childhood issues, the difference in proportions with youth studies (67%) shows an under-representation of childhood relative to youth studies. However, the ontological, epistemological and even legal differences between the two objects of study were at the centre of many debates, eg. questions related to legislation (legislative advances in nearly all of the region have led to children having more specific legislation and being more protected than adolescents), the validity of applying certain qualitative methods originally designed to research adults (and which are applicable for youth) to research children.

It seems to me that the area of childhood studies in Latin American sociology today dependends on its being incorporated into a more general area of ‘youth and childhood’ as is being done at the ALAS and is common in many parts of the world. However, it is important for us to recognise that the autonomy of the object ‘childhood’, imposes a different scientific treatment for childhood to youth studies in most cases. Indeed it is this fact that lies behind the separation made by ISA of youth and childhood studies into two separate RCs, where there is a critical mass of sociologists in each area, which is not our case.

This rest of this report concentrates on the sessions where RC 34 concerns were most commonly debated. I shall try to be succinct, and hope that at a later stage some participants will produce a work of much greater theoretical density on the research commission.

Much of the research produced in our group is relevant to policy initiatives, especially in education, labour market, social control and political participation. One tension observed in many texts is between the necessity to produce theoretical explanations for observable social phenomena on one hand and the need to produce another type of knowledge, which is not produced in isolation from the previous type, which leads to the critique and production of public policies that are designed to resolve pre-defined problems. This tension is permanent in the Sociology of youth in most countries and was present in our group.

A great deal of research is being conducted on contemporary youth issues, as witnessed by session titles: youth and political participation, processes and contexts of socialization, policy-related issues surrounding youth and childhood rights, social control and penal institutions, formation of identity and subjectivity, consumption and violence, educational paths and insertion in the labour force, legal issues surrounding regulation of youth and childhood, vulnerability and relational dimensions and cultural practices. Many papers recognised that we live in times of great complexity, and sought to understand contemporary youth as inserted within, at they same time as they are actors who play a role in producing this complexity. Between the defence of theoretical models inherited from the past and the acceptance of the challenges of developing understandings appropriate for our times, a great number of papers preferred the latter approach. It was possible to observe that ideological positions were on the wane and that empirical research and intellectual labour were the order of the day. This indeed is a healthy development. The major challenge is certainly to link the many fragments of knowledge presented during the sessions of our research group (through many case studies) about the ‘parts’, to a vision of the ‘whole’ (eg. With theories which treat the macro level, with national social statistics), however we observed that few researchers did this.

However, I think it is possible to have a certain degree of optimism about the possibilities of producing a ‘new sociology of youth’ in Latin America. A large variety of research techniques are being employed: ethnographic research, content analysis, historical research, surveys etc. The paper presenters chose a wide range of authors and employed their theories as their authors attempted to advance beyond merely descriptive understandings of the data presented.

Beyond the regular work of the research group two sessions were held on the work of Clacso’s working group ‘Youth and Political Participation’. In addition a large audience appeared to accompany the Round table discussion on “Social, Political and Cultural Practices of Latin American Youth, co-organised by ALAS and CLACSO. Researchers from Chile, Columbia, Cuba, Argentina and Brazil discussed built up a rich panorama of youth research, and considered future research agendas in the region.

When we consider the quality of the presentations made, the influx of young researchers into the area, the vigour of the debates held and the number of participants, we can forsee a successful future for the Sociology of Youth in Latin America, what we need to do is to make sure that the analyses developed come to be better known in the so-called ‘mainstream’ sociology.

Tom Dwyer
Coordinator of ALAS Working Group 22 ‘Sociology of Childhood and Youth’
Vice President for Latin America of ISA’s RC 34,
Sociology Department, Unicamp, Brazil