Juventudes: o conceito na produção científica brasileira

Abstract

Metasynthesis about the concept of youth in brazilian scientific production in the Humanities Sciences and Applied Social Sciences scope. The theoretical and methodological assumption is socio-historical perspective, dialectical materialism, especially as presented by Vygotsky. To such end, are studied 189 scientific documents produced in the years 2007 to 2011: 37 papers identified in the virtual database Scientific Electronic Library Online - SciELO / Google Scholar, and 120 dissertations and 32 theses, by CAPES database. Use as descriptors to find documents: 'youth' and 'youth concept'. Criteria for selection of the sample: the presence of the word 'youth' in the title or the expression 'concept of youth' in the abstract, and explain in the summary or abstract the intention of discussing the concept of youth. The results appoint that: There is significant importance acquired by the subject in academic and scientific Brazil production, growing in the analyzed period in 23 of the 26 knowledge areas of Humanities Sciences, and Applied Social Sciences, specially in Education, Sociology and Psychology areas. Diversity in theoretical and methodological approach. Psychology has the largest proportion of studies about the concept of youth. The concept of youth in 189 documents analyzed develops sociological aspects considering roles, generational relations and juvenile political participation; biological aspects, from body changes with age; and psychological aspects, reflecting about the constitution of the individual person and their relationships with other. The concept of youth widens with increasing number of areas of interest that do studies about youth or that use those concepts already established. Moreover, there is a strong presence of operational issues that help define and locate the youth as a social category and specific research object: relationship between youth and adolescence, characteristics of the condition and youth situation, relationship with time and the 'becoming'. Some challenges present themselves to current studies of youth: the dialogue between the various sciences from a historical and cultural assumption; the identity process through which young people spend amid strong calls for a 'subordinate autonomy' to the market; a overlapping generations as space to generational transmition in favor of strengthening and accumulation of experience, and the young people relationship with other social categories, in an effort to understand contemporary society. The subsidies of this study are potentially useful to the theoretical and methodological reflection about the concept production, especially youth concept in the field of academic research, as well as to the intervention in youth policies.