This paper reports the findings of an eight-month ethnographic study of a small group of at-risk youths in a school of a southern coastal city in China. The process leading to the young students being marginalised by the school system and how they developed a "muddling through" subculture to counteract this marginalisation is revealed.…

The contradiction emerging between the lived experience of a minority of marginalised urban youth and the punitive operant conditioning of antisocial behaviour legislation is illustrative of the increasing gap between society's expectations of behaviour and the coming reality. In this paper, Loic Wacquant's sociology of advanced marginality is…

Focus groups and interviews with African American youth in Los Angeles and Afro-Caribbean youth in London found gangs to be one of their five top issues; identified social, educational, and employment factors fostering gang formation; and identified psychological, social, and economic functions of gangs for their members. (Contains 95 references.)…

In Nicaragua the rise of urban youth gangs has led the government to adopt a crime-control approach that focuses on containing adolescent violence. Yet efforts to foil youth gangs have been ineffectual, largely because the nature of gang membership is little understood. This article presents the results of a qualitative study of youth gang…

Explores the concept of youth culture in South Africa, examining its emergence and development. The historical background supports a framework to inform the debate on policy strategies to deal with negative aspects of current South African youth culture. An agenda is suggested for redirecting youth culture. (SLD)