Youth and Violent Performativities

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-ix

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2. Introduction: The Violent Performativities of Youth

   • Ben Arnold Lohmeyer

   Pages 1-13

3. The Subjects and Objects of Violence

   • Ben Arnold Lohmeyer

   Pages 15-33

4. Violence and Youth Studies in the 21st Century

   • Ben Arnold Lohmeyer

   Pages 35-53

5. Enacting Youthful Violence

   • Ben Arnold Lohmeyer

   Pages 55-77

6. Articulating Creative Resistance to Violence

   • Ben Arnold Lohmeyer

   Pages 79-100

7. Neoliberal Violence and Marketised Youth Services

   • Ben Arnold Lohmeyer

   Pages 101-123

8. Political Fractionality and Epistemological Violence

   • Ben Arnold Lohmeyer

   Pages 125-142

9. Participatory Methods: The Violence of Adult Centricity

   • Ben Arnold Lohmeyer

   Pages 143-162

10. Starting with Young People’s Stories of Violence

    • Ben Arnold Lohmeyer

    Pages 163-174

11. Back Matter

    Pages 175-177

    PDF

This book challenges the dominant narrative of young people being a uniquely violent group. Instead, the book critically examines how young people become violent as they enact and resist the available violent performativities in youth. It focuses on the experiences of 28 young people in Australia who are subjected to violence, who use violence and who resist violence. A critical analysis of these young people’s “messy” stories facilitates a reframing of the physical violence routinely attributed to young people as a product of violating systems and structures. 


The author constructs a converging theoretical landscape to re-examine youth, violence and resistance at the intersection of the sociology of violence and the sociology of youth. Drawing on interviews with young Australians, the book makes a valuable contribution to contemporary international scholarship on youth and violence, while also examining the potential for complicity to violence in youth research and practice. In doing so it offers youth scholars and practitioners a framework for reassessing their theoretical frameworks and methods for studying and working with young people in connection with violence.

• Hyper-governed young people in Australia
• Youth violence and resistance
• Youth participation in research
• Youth political participation
• Symbolic violence
• Structural and cultural violence
• Neoliberal violence
• Liberal-paternalist governance
• Relationships of power
• Protest and resistance movements
• Governing youth
• Sanctioning violence

“This book provides an original and highly valuable addition to the field of youth studies. It offers researchers, educators, students and practitioners with new ways of understanding and engaging with young people’s involvement in violence. Lohmeyer is to be commended for shifting the debate on youth violence beyond dichotomous and individualistic explanations … . Through critical questioning and provocation, bought to life by the research participants, Lohmeyer expertly navigates the reader through this terrain.” (Juliet Watson, Journal of Applied Youth Studies, Vol. 5 (2), 2022)

• Tabor, College of Higher Education, Flinders University, Adelaide, Australia

  Ben Arnold Lohmeyer

Dr Ben Lohmeyer is a youth sociologist and youth worker. He is an Adjunct Researcher at Flinders University and Head of Youth Work at Tabor. Ben’s research interests include youth, violence and youth work practice. Ben has worked in a range of youth work settings concerning issues of justice, violence and peacebuilding. He has published in international journals including the Journal of Youth Studies, Current Sociology and Qualitative Research. Ben holds a Ph.D. from Flinders University.

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