Brief Introduction to the Trends of Contemporary Youth and Juvenile Studies in China by Jin Zhikun and Yang Xiong
September 18th, 2007
Brief Introduction to the Trends of Contemporary Youth and Juvenile Studies in China
by Jin Zhikun (Professor, Institute of Youth and Juvenile Studies, Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences ) and Yang Xiong (Director& Professor, Institute of Youth and Juvenile Studies, Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences)
The study of Chinese youth and juveniles emerged in the 1980’s as a modern discipline. The “cultural revolution” between 1966 and 1976 brought great changes to the whole society, making the problems experienced by youth and juveniles more salient. After the Cultural Revolution, the whole society showed concern for the problems experienced by youth and juveniles, so relevant studies and institutions were undertaken quickly. Since 1980, the Social Sciences research departments and the Communist Youth League system in China founded in succession more than 20 institutions engaged in studying youth and juveniles, including: the Communist Youth League system taking the Chinese Centre of the Study of Youth and Juveniles as its core; and the Social Sciences Academy system taking central and local institutes of the study of youth and juveniles, including the Institute of Youth and Juvenile Studies of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and the Institute of Youth and Juvenile Studies of the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences, as its representatives. From these efforts, a number of academic periodicals are now published, such as the Youth Study (edited by the Section of the Study of Youth and Juveniles, Sociology Institute, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences), Contemporary Youth Study (edited by the Institute of the Study of Youth and Juveniles, Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences), Chinese Youth Study (edited by the Chinese Centre of the Study of Youth and Juveniles) and the Southern Youth Study (edited by the Guangdong Institute of the Study of Youth and Juveniles).
The study of contemporary youth and juveniles in China attaches importance to application and countermeasure topics. With the end of the Cultural Revolution, the research focused on youth employment problems, youth marriage, youth values, youth social ideas, youth and juvenile delinquency, and the problem of moral education in youth and juvenile. Researchers developed a series of countermeasure studies in these areas. Entering the 1990’s, due to the great changes in the Chinese society, the whole society shifted from planned economy system to market economy system, from traditional society to modern society. Accordingly, the problems in the study of youth and juveniles got more holistic and deeper. The research orientation not only started from real issues, but paid greater attention to the macroscopic and integrated development of the Chinese society, studying youth and juveniles from how the youth and juveniles meet the demand of social development from the angle of overall human development. The problems the study of youth and juveniles dealt with in the past twenty years include both the problems specific to different ages in the whole course of the emergence and development of youth groups and the problems of the youth groups with different identities. At present, the foci of the study of Chinese youth and juveniles are the problems of the development of youth and juveniles, in the modernization process, such as the study of raising the quality of youth and juveniles, tapping human resources among youth and juveniles, and so on.
Moreover, the study of youth culture and youth trends of thought has special significance. China’s reforms and open policy create conditions for the exchange between Oriental and Western cultures, and also poses the question of how to absorb the advanced ideological, cultural and scientific modes of thinking in the world and carry forward the splendid traditions of national, culture, and the question of how to produce China’s own new and advanced cultural and rational modes of thinking. In addition, the sphere of research interests includes various new real issues in the society, such as the problem of the disadvantage groups of youth and juveniles spawned by imbalanced social development. The applicability such researches manifest in precisely the major trait of the study of contemporary Chinese youth and juveniles. Targeted on the salient problems of youth and juveniles, scholars analyze, study and explore their causes and evaluate their development trend and practical significance, this provides the governmental departments concerned with references for making relevant youth and juvenile policy, and promote actively the development of youth and juvenile work in China.
But as the study of Youth and juvenile started later than in other parts of the world, a lot of work in disciplinary construction and topic application is left to be done. To meet the need of teaching , the academics compiled in the 1990’s a batch of textbooks such theoretical writings as Youth studies, Modern Youth Studies, Youth Sociology, and Youth Psychology. But these writings, as a whole, make merely a periodic disentanglement, far from being ideal when judged for theoretical profoundness. And, the specialties and courses offered in institutions of higher learning are rather limited. Obviously, how to further open up original theories in the study of youth and juvenile and probe into the basic theories in the study of youth and juvenile on the basis of plenty applied studies is still a research task requiring the further effort of scholars studying Chinese youth. Directed against such a situation, many scholars suggest that the study of youth and juveniles should pay attention to both the study of current countermeasures and the opening up of middle and long-term basic theories; and carry out single-disciplinary study of special topics and creative study of inter-disciplinary and comprehensive major topics, so as to meet the need of disciplinary development.
In regard to the research method, the study of youth and juveniles, as a new discipline, adopts not only the traditional empirical study which applies many sociological investigatory patterns, but also the research methods specific to other disciplines such as psychology, education, ethics, jurisprudence, cultural anthropology and cerebral science, thereby enriching the results of the overall study of youth and juvenile.
Since the accession the Youth Sociology Research Committee of the International Sociology Association in 1992, China has enhanced international exchange in youth study and international comparative study, and since 1993, held six international academic seminars successively in Shanghai and other cities. This is conducive to the absorption of the advanced experiences of other countries so as to grasp better the traits of the study of the native youth and develop the youth study with national characteristics.
Entry Filed under: Youth Studies & Centers
