Published online by Cambridge University Press: 08 January 2010
Why arze good people unable to achieve for good what bad people can achieve for bad?
TolstoyIt is tempting to raise the same question when it comes to intervention in relation to teenagers and other youngsters who have developed a negative and delinquent lifestyle: Why are parents, educators, and social workers unable to achieve for good that which extreme youth movements seem to be able to achieve, sometimes for bad? Why do youngsters who are either unable to accept or opposed to normal codes of conduct and order sometimes become converts or get “snapped” into some extreme youth movement or sect where they seem to adapt and accept codes of conduct that can be far more demanding than the civil code they rejected earlier? Why are some of these movements successful in catching such youngsters psychologically, whereas the professional social and legal support systems very often seem to fail?
Some Examples of New Counterculture Youth Movements
What can we learn from studying these youth organizations? What do they offer that the professional social and educational support systems do not? Before proceeding, let us look at an example of what an insider of the house-culture reports on what is special about house parties:
It is where the music functions best, the atmosphere is highest, where sound and light together create a massive feeling of energy…. You do not need to invite anybody for dancing because everybody dances; it does not matter who you are or how you look, the important thing is that we all join in….[…]
To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.