Youth, Sex, and Government. - Review - book review

Adolescence, Spring, 2001

TAIT, Gordon. Youth, Sex, and Government. New York: Peter Lang Publishing, 2000. 256pp. $29.95 (p).

For nearly twenty-five years, the field of youth studies has employed the same conceptual tools to explain the conduct of young people, tools that inexorably lead to the same recurrent conclusions--youth equals resistance, youth equals alienation, youth equals problem. Youth, Sex, and Government offers a way out of this theoretical Groundhog Day. Starting with the familiar notion of youth subcultures, but also addressing topics such as young women's magazines, "at-risk" youth, anorexia nervosa, and HIV/AIDS programs, this book examines the way in which youth is produced as both a governmental object and a set of practices of the self. Employing the ideas of Foucault, Rose, and Mauss, this new approach attempts to reinvigorate what is an important--yet slumbering--area of research.