The Politics of Social Discourses about Youth in New Zealand 1950-1965 and 1990-2005

Abstract

This thesis explores the politics of changing discourses around the youth question in New Zealand’s postwar (1950-1965) and near-contemporary history (1990-2005). Building on a modified Foucaultian framework, it examines for both periods anxieties over young people’s relationships with home, school and the wider society. It also contrasts the two periods to illustrate the ideological shift from the welfare state to neoliberalism, as it was played out through youth-related discourses. This thesis goes beyond the moral panic approach, especially regarding the postwar period. It will demonstrate that rethinking what is conventionally condensed and marginalised as ‘context’ is key to understanding the politics of youth discourses. Postwar debates about young people, because youth were conceived as being in social crisis, served to expose ideological differences that the welfare state had ostensibly overcome. That in turn destabilized the apparent moral consensus and opened up opportunities for resistance and subversion. By contrast, the liberal and emancipatory discourse of society in the 1990s and early 2000s served to insulate neoliberal politics from volatile public concerns. This in turn paradoxically provides a stronger and more efficient foundation for social control over youth.