Community Services Training Package
CHCYTH402A Work Effectively with Young People in the Youth Work Context.
PERSPECTIVES ON YOUTH WORK
The Functionalist Perspective: Youth as a Transition
Functionalists see youth as a stage of transition from family to adult roles.
Young people are assisted to make this transition smoothly and
successfully by various agents of secondary socialisation. These include
formal bodies such as schools and youth groups and also more informal
peer groups such as groups of friends or gangs.
Functionalists have focused a great deal on the way in which such peer
groups provide young people with alternative forms of status, a selfidentity, room for role experimentation and the opportunity to try out
different sorts of relationships (such as living together). Peer groups
whether small scale (groups of friends) or larger (so-called youth culture)
allow most young people to be successf ully socialised into adulthood.
Though young people may occasionally (or even frequently) get involved
in deviant behaviour, eventually they will grow up into conformity with
dominant societal values. English writer Quentin Crisp, in his book How to
become a virgin (1981) remarks that:


the young have always had the same problem: how to rebel and
how to conform at the same time.
They’ve solved this by rebelling against their elders and copying
each other
The majority of young people seem to fairly closely reflect the views of
their parents, but Crisp’s statement does express some of the social
constraints on youth.
For functionalists young people have lower status in society because they
lack necessary knowledge and experience, which they will eventually
acquire through preparation, education and training. Functionalists would
see youth wages or other disadvantages suffered by young people as a
logical reflection of this lower status. Though the functionalist view of
youth reflects very much the common sense view of young people within
our culture, it has also frequently been criticised by other sociologists.
The main criticism, from conflict theorists (see below), is that
functionalism fails to consider the inequalities between young people
based on factors such as class, gender, disability, racism or place of
residence. While an affluent, white, well-educated young person from
North Sydney and an unemployed young refugee in the Western suburbs
might experience similar stages of social development; clearly their
everyday experiences of life and their position in Australian society are
very different.
Another criticism of the functionalist position is that it assumes a single
pattern of development for young people. It suggests that young people
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must eventually ‘grow up’ to adopt the dominant sets of ideas, behaviour
and values of our society or else be labelled as ‘deviant’:
The ‘correct way’ to do things was to get a job, save for a home, get
engaged, get married and then move into one’s own house [in that order]
(quoted in F. Mass, ‘Becoming adult’ Youth studies. Feb 1990)
As we have seen, such values are likely to be those of middle-class,
middle-aged, white, male, ‘middle Australia’. But there are always going
to be many young people who cannot or do not wish to adopt such a
lifestyle. Functionalists generally have difficulty coming to terms with
diversity, inequality or change in society. These factors are emphasised
by conflict sociologists.
Conflict Theorists: Youth and Structural Inequality
Functionalists and conflict theorists have at least one thing in common:
they each analyse society in a macro sociological way. They tend to focus
on the broader processes in society in order to understand the
experiences of individuals and groups within it. Functionalists, as you
have seen, focus on the ways in which young people come to generally
conform to the society of which they are a part. Conflict theorists seek to
explain how young people are constrained and shaped by the structures
of society: particularly the structural social inequalities of class, gender
and ethnicity. An eloquent and persuasive summary of the conflict
perspective can be found in the work of Rob White:
If young people are rebellious, if they are apathetic, if they are
attempting to shut out the outside world, if they are committing crimes, if
they are engaging in the politics of fear or of possibility, they are doing so
for specific reasons. The search for a space of their own is a response on
the part of working-class young people to a society in crisis, one that has
forsaken social principles of justice, equality and humanity for the benefit
of the wealthy and powerful. Ultimately the problems associated with the
‘broken transitions of youth’ cannot be reduced to a lack of discipline or
skill, or the impact of technology, they stem from and are a reflection of
social structures that privilege the powerful while consigning the less
powerful to poverty, alienation and the ignominious drudgery of hand-tomouth existence (White, R. No space of their own, Melbourne University
Press, 1990, p.213).
As you may have already worked out, the differences between
functionalist and conflict theories of youth reflect broader political and
professional differences in society. The functionalist approach reflects very
much a common sense approach to youth, whereby young people are
largely lumped together as ‘trainee adults’ who may cause a bit of trouble
but who will eventually, except for those regarded as ‘deviant’, assume
their proper position in society. Much welfare work is concerned with
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helping the ‘deviants’ and with ensuring that the majority don’t stray too
far from the path.
The conflict approach, on the other hand, is reflected in much
contemporary youth work and the rhetoric, if not the reality of
government policy. It recognises that young people are not all the same
and that some, such as Kooris or refugees or young women, suffer from
structural inequalities. There is much talk of targeting assistance at such
disadvantaged groups and at ‘empowering’ young people. Most of the
modules you have already studied or will study, deal with these sorts of
issues, and I’m sure you can see both perspectives reflected in what you
have read.
The Interactionist Perspective: Getting Your Hands Dirty
As already mentioned, both functionalists and conflict theorists adopt a
macro sociological approach to youth issues. However a great deal of the
sociology of youth has focussed on small groups of young people and
studied how they think and behave in their own environments. This micro
sociological approach often entails an interactionist perspective. (If you
are beginning to get confused by all these sociological terms, they will
become clearer as you read on and develop your knowledge and
awareness levels.
The interactionist approach involves looking at small scale interaction
between young people, usually within small groups like gangs or groups
of friends. A key element of this approach is that it focuses on the way in
which meanings are created. It is argued that people do not simply reflect
the culture or society of which they are a part. Rather they interact with
each other to create a shared world: one which incorporates elements of
the broader ‘culture’, but one that also creates its own definitions of
reality. The worlds of young people, with their distinctive music, slang,
behaviour and ‘styles’ (punks, rockabillies, surfies, skinheads and so on)
have always been of great interest to sociologists (and to journalists out
for a good ‘colour’ story).
Interactionist sociologists often use research techniques derived from
anthropology – youth groups are treated as if they were exotic tribes. The
sociologist may live with or just hang around with a group for a
considerable time to learn their secrets and enter into their worlds.
Interactionists argue that only a view from the participants’ own position
can adequately explain the reality of young people’s lives. Often the
seemingly strange, bizarre or apparently negative worlds of young people
are shown to be determined by societal rules and patterns just as is the
‘ordinary’ society.
Much of the most interesting sociology of young people is done from an
interactionist perspective. But interactionists in general have been
criticised for focussing too much on the minute detail of everyday life
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while ignoring the broader structures that constrain it. The best sociology
takes account of both the broader context and the way in which it affects
and is modified by what happens at the micro level.
This is an account of a very famous sociological study. It uses the
interactionist concept of labelling. This refers to the ways in which
individuals or groups in society can become labelled as ‘deviant’, mad,
bad or sick by those in power (I’m sure you’ve seen this process in
action). This reading shows how an interactionist understanding can be
combined with a conflict one: clearly the class backgrounds of the two
groups of boys was crucial to the way they were viewed and to the way in
which police and other in the community reacted to them.
The Feminist Perspective: Putting Girls into the Picture
Services directed at youth and the sociology of youth have in many ways
shared a similar outlook: a very male dominated one. When the word
‘youth’ is used the image that springs to mind is usually of a young male.
This is reflected in much of the sociology of youth and indeed in many of
the readings that you have already looked at for this module.
Sociologists have tended to focus very much on public, male dominated
sub-cultures and environments: the street, the playground, and the
factory. The lives of girls, which often have a more private and domestic
focus, have been largely ignored. This has also been the case in the
provision of services for young people.
In the last decade feminist sociologists have attempted to redress the
balance and have expanded the focus of youth studies to embrace the
experiences of others apart from the white, urban, working-class boys
that have been extensively written about in the past.
In regard to youth feminist sociology has focused on many issues, each of
which emphasises the experiences of young girls and young women.
These have included: the discrimination against girls in the education
system; lack of leisure provision for girls; the unequal participation of
girls in domestic work at home; inadequate employment and training
opportunities for girls; the representation of girls in the media… and so
on. In youth work these issues have had implications for practice: should
girls be worked with separately or together with boys, how can girls’ selfesteem and confidence be rebuilt, what are the most appropriate
messages regarding sexuality, what to do with boys?
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