Identity, Youth, Crisis: the concept of crisis in youth theories

Abstract

The article proposes to reconstruct some theoretical narratives about youth, articulated around the concept of crisis. For this, it reviews the contributions of five authors of the twentieth century, from different disciplines, theoretical schools and crisis situations: Erik H. Erikson (1968) and his theory on youth as “normative crisis”; Stanley G. Hall (1904) and his theory on adolescence as a “storm and stress” phase; Antonio Gramsci (1929-31) and his theory on youth, hegemony and crisis of authority; Margaret Mead (1970) and her theory on the prefigurative capacity of the youth crisis; Dick Hebdige (1979) and his theory about punk as a metaphor for the crisis. The article concludes by asking what elements of these theories should be discarded and which can be rescued, to understand the metamorphosis of the juvenile condition after the aftermath of the last crisis and to design more effective
public and private policies to face it. The text incorporates a postscriptum about the crisis of coronavirus.