Mapping the theoretical latin-american discourse on youth

Abstract

The passages and the approaches of the studies on youth today cover the track of the transformations that operate in the society life, searching for its trends. And specially, looking for the understanding and for the explanation of this mosaic of nuances and perspectives that opens to the reading of the living and behavior of this significant and instigated part of the planet: the youth. All the knowledge given by the action is to analyze and to interpret at the same time the world where we live. This implies a slow and misty process to establish some “beliefs”, in the threshold of many doubts and inaccuracies. In this subject, we point out what has been produced (in the academic scope) on youths, in the landmark of the Latin American society, from the analysis of some publications of representative authors of this thematic field. Thus also the objectives of this text are configured: a preliminary mapping of the Latin American productions, whose thematic clipping will explore the “regularities” of the speeches, that is, to identify the topical repertoire that these authors have constructed, but at the same time to base the study and the research on the theme of youth (s). The bibliographical analysis of the productions aimed to socially evidence the main “tracks” and “territories” which the authors have explored and discovered on this subject historically and socially placed in second plain. It was observed that even in the diversity of areas, the academic speeches of anthropologic, of sociological and of educational origin transit in common theoretical and thematic fields, perhaps searching to establish a theoretical picture that configures the youth as a sociological and a political category endowed with proper statute. The attempt to overcome old dichotomies in the approach and in the analytical treatment on the youthful cultures, with emphasis to the complementary and to the interdisciplinary character of the knowledge and of the fields in the understanding of the youth, also flourishes as a clarifying principle to this homogeneous trend observed in the productions.

Key words – Theoretical youth. Productions. Latin America.