Content area
Full Text
AS THE PHILOSOPHY OF NEOUBERALISM ETCHES ITSELF INTO THE ECONOMIC, POLITICAL, and social landscape, studying its effects on those least capable of protecting themselves must become a focal concern. With over one billion children living in poverty, 400 million lacking clean drinking water, and 165 million under the age of five experiencing stunted growth because of malnutrition, it appears that neoliberal policies place youth in the most precarious situations (United Nations Development Programme 2007). Youth, who represent our future and yet are the most vunerable to the current system, must be at the center of the study of neoliberalism (Ossei-Owusu 2012). This article reviews literature on the various ways neoliberal shifts in the economy, social policy, and culture affect youth crime and its control by examining critical scholarship in three overlapping areas: juvenile justice, education, and consumerism. Following the review of current literature, this article discusses the important work of several social justice organizations whose work unsettles the very notions of the neoliberal project, providing hope that youth can be the "igniters of political change" (Badiou 2012,56). Although the challenges brought about by neoliberal trends are formidable, the existence of these organizations suggests that collective and democratic avenues for change have not been foreclosed.
Neoliberalism is a debated term that can be used to define a number of macro-level shifts occurring in today's globalized world. Neoliberalism should be considered a project consisting of three different interweaving and mutually supporting agendas: economic, social and cultural, and political. As an economic agenda, neoliberalism promotes market principles over reliance on the government (Arthur 2012; Muncie and Hughes 2002). Neoliberalism privileges the privatization of property and of public institutions (Harvey 2005), a free market devoid of any regulations or tariffs by the state, and the integration of global economies (Cabezas, Reese, and Waller 2007; Ossei-Owusu 2012). Politically, such a project plays out in the shrinking of government's involvement in civic concerns, which is now seen as a roadblock to achieving maximum success (Arthur 2012; Muncie and Hughes 2002; Reese 2007). The state experiences a redefinition of its responsibilities, shifting away from the interventionist and welfarist models toward a system more conducive to the accumulation of capital on a global scale (see Wacquant 2009) and more reliant on privatization. As...