Refiguring aspirations: young people in Brazil and England

Groarke, AMM, 2004. Refiguring aspirations: young people in Brazil and England. PhD, Nottingham Trent University.

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Abstract

This thesis aims to explain how Brazilian and English young people from working, middle, and upper class backgrounds shape and construct their aspirations in life. Aspirations here refer to projections of the self onto the future, forms of becoming which can only be assembled, selected, left out, in non deterministic and non absolute ways. The articulation of aspiration can only be understood properly if Ricoeur's notion of temporality is considered, in other words, the past through memory, the present through attention and experience, and the future through expectation.

Aspiration is a central concept of this thesis, defined as a narration of future projections that articulate different identities in the arena of young people's daily routine. The most relevant aspects to be debated throughout this thesis are the following: (a) to go beyond the fixed categorisation of youth culture as an homogeneous category within society, by showing how young people are highly differentiated and inherently unstable; (b) to understand aspirations not as consequences of wider social and cultural transformations like modernity, late modernity, and risk society. 1 attempt to define the ways which people re-create and reproduce meanings and expectations in everyday life, taking into account their categories of identity and their space of location, which intersects the local, the regional, the national, and the global, across time; and (c) to address young people's life-opportunities, challenges, and creativity encountered in their daily routines. From this perspective, 1 aim to identify young peoples' 'tactics', their more definite strategies to cope with obstacles, fulfil their lives, care for the well being of others, and participate in the more institutionalised sphere of politics. Possibilities of innovation are explored within the arena of young people's daily experiences.

Item Type:	Thesis
Creators:	Groarke, A.M.M.
Date:	2004
ISBN:	9781369313345
Identifiers:	Number Type PQ10183042 Other
Divisions:	Schools > School of Arts and Humanities
Record created by:	Linda Sullivan
Date Added:	28 Aug 2020 15:10
Last Modified:	22 Jun 2023 09:21
URI:	https://irep.ntu.ac.uk/id/eprint/40598

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