Youth Culture

All ages and stages of the life course are mediated and elaborated through culture. There is a scale from weak to strong or from passive to active senses of culture, from loose norms and values to [Page 1711]pronounced activities, attitudes, and forms of expression. Although the term young people can represent a continuous range of ages up through adulthood, youth culture is a key means of distinguishing youth and secondary education from childhood and primary schooling. The culture of adolescents is typically construed as replacing play or at least reforming it into more sophisticated styles. Interestingly, only youth culture is imagined with its own age-specific title. Other age-related possibilities, such as child culture, adult culture, or elderly culture are rarely if ever referred to. The ...