Contemporary German Youth and Their Elders: A Generational Comparison

by Meredith W. Watts, Arthur Fischer, Werner Fuchs, Jurgen Zinnecker

Overview

Systematic research on the changing experience and social and political characteristics of German youth has been carried out in the Federal Republic of Germany on an ongoing basis since the early 1950s. Until now, however, the results of these long-term studies have not been made available in English. Six volumes of this research—including new analyses prepared especially for this book—are distilled in the present work, which offers a comprehensive and focused portrait of German youth of succeeding postwar generations from 1953 to the present.

Following an introductory survey of the scope and themes addressed in the study, the authors highlight the contrasting experiences of youth of the 1980s and those who came of age soon after the end of World War II. They examine the fundamental constituents of youth as a developmental period, with particular reference to changes in the recent era. Attitudinal scales are developed and applied to assessments of variations in social and political orientation among generations and between distinct subgroups of contemporary youth. Differences between young women in the early postwar period and the alternative era of the 1970s and 1980s are explored. Focusing on views of the future, the final chapter looks at the diversity of lifestyles that has become characteristic of youth over the last decade and at the increasing differentiation between generations. Providng a wealth of new material on an important body of research, this book makes a substantial contribution to the study of youth in advanced industrialized nations. An appropriate resource for courses or studies in various disciplines in sociology, geography, political science, and social history.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780313267413
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	08/07/1989
Series:	Contributions to the Study of Childhood and Youth , #5
Pages:	208
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.62(d)

About the Author

MEREDITH W. WATTS is Professor of Political Science at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. He edited Biopolitics: Ethological and Physiological Approaches and Biopolitics and Gender, and his articles have appeared in American Political Science Review, American Jourbanal of Political Science, Social Science Quarterly, and other scholarly publications.

ARTHUR FISCHER is a Psychologist and serves as Director of the Psydata Institute of Market, Social and Media Research of Frankfurt (Federal Republic of Germany). He is coauthor of Youth '81 (Jugend '81) and Youth and Adults '85 (Jugendliche and Erwachsene '85).

WERNER FUCHS is Professor of Sociology and Education at the University of Hagen (Federal Republic of Germany). He is coauthor of Youth '81 and Youth and Adults '85. He has published widely in Germany on biographical studies of youth and is currently directing a major research project that examines the life-course development of contemporary youth in Germany.

JURGEN ZINNECKER is Professor of Education at the University of Siegen (Federal Republic of Germany), specializing in the sociology of youth. He is coauthor of Youth '81 and Youth and Adults '85 and author of the recent book Jugendkultur which deals with the development of German youth culture from 1945 to the present.

Table of Contents

Preface
Introduction
The War and After: Autobiographical Attempts to Deal with the Past
Youth as a Biographical Phase
Models of Social Orientation: Images of the Self in the Social World
Youth Centrism and Relationships between the Generations
Changes in German Youth in the Postwar Period
Political Differences between Postwar and Alternative-Era Women
How Young People Feel about the Future: Politics of Optimism and Pessimism
References and Bibliography
Index