Abstract
The texts grouped in this volume account for two very relevant research topics in the field of Latin American youth. The book is a significant contribution to the comprehension of the youth-politics relations in this part of the American continent. Alvarado and Vommaro study the political practices of young men and women in various countries, during the past 50 years. The text is also a proof of the productivity resulting from the academic work and cooperation of the ‘Youth and new political practices in Latin America’ CLACSO Work Group which, for the past three years, has been advancing in the reflection and proposal of critical thinking about the present meanings, practices and discourses that have been emerging from the different ways in which young men and women participate in the construction of political order.
The significance of this work as a state of the art perhaps lies: first, in that it documents the studies carried out directly on the youth-politics relation in different contexts. A common factor in these contexts is the emergence of diverse forms and scenarios for citizenship to be exerted by the young. In the same sense, it is important to highlight the heterogeneity of the perspectives and anchorages on which the various chapters of the book were constructed. From a historical perspective, the characterizations of young men and women’s political practices have been achieved in definite times and places, as well as the journeys through multiple descriptions that have been shaping the lives of young people being in the various spatial and epochal contexts in Latin America.
The various perspectives gathered in this book contribute to the understanding of the social and political continuities and ruptures generated by the youngsters of the countries involved. At the centre of the book are young people’s politics and political meanings, the traditional political practices, the political character in the definition of how they want to live, the aesthetical perspectives involved in their political practices and the agencies with which the youths confront multiple forms of exclusion and violence. Accordingly, it is possible to speak about the irrelevance and difficulty to try general approaches, even in the same country, about male and female youths, youth in general and their political practices. Of importance in this compilation is the beginning of the discussion about the novelty or the alternative character of the present political practices of the new generations of men and women. This is relevant not only because these studies deeply succeed in highlighting the what is new, but also because reading the documents open up questions about the political meanings and discourses under construction. These research questions set up a clear agenda: the relation between youth, politics and culture; the construction of social order from the participation in the formulation of different types of public policies; the political matter of the present aesthetic agencies; what underlies the various forms of resistance that are being shaped in the continent, and so on.
Although in the document there are states of the art from seven countries which constitute an important contribution to the field of youth studies in Latin America, it goes without risk to affirm that research is still far from precisely showing the connections among the relations already mentioned. However, the lines of work of the CLACSO Group described in this book aims to keep on working on the understanding of the relationship between youth and politics not just with an academic purpose, but also with political responsibility when denouncing what affects youth and the visibilization of what happens to them and what mobilizes them.