Bad Boys and Wayward Girls: The Social Control of “Problem Youth”

Everyone worries about young people; we scrutinize their clothes, music, friends, grades, drugs, and sports. Families, schools, medicine, and psychology communicate what it means to be a "normal" young person. Reformatories and other disciplinary mechanisms convey the consequences for rule breaking. In this course, we will (1) look at the construction of childhood, the invention of delinquency, the creation of adolescence, and the ideas of normalcy embedded in these categories; (2) consider how class, race, and gender intersect with the mechanisms of social control exerted over those who deviate; and (3) explore how young people resist the social pressures to be good boys and docile girls. (Formerly SOAN 0475) (SOAN 0105 or SOAN 0288) 3 hrs. lect./disc.