A charter for global South youth studies scholars

Abstract

There are three key complaints from Southern Youth Studies scholars. The first is the way in which Northern knowledge is assumed to be universal knowledge. The second is that when data from the South is extracted, it is often transported to the North for analysis and to be turned into theory using Northern lenses. The third is that Southern scholarship is frequently ghettoised, i.e. what is produced and theorised in the South remains in the South and is ignored by the North. None of these situations are tolerable. To address these complaints and transition to a Global Youth Studies, it is necessary for Southern scholars to develop their thinking and contribute to the global marketplace of ideas as equal partners. But how, exactly, do Southern Youth Studies scholars recreate their relationship with the North to make a global rather than parochial contribution? Southern scholars have to overcome, amongst other challenges, difficulties of confidence in producing theory, the precarity of their lives, the invisibility of much existing Southern scholarship and the dearth of communities of practice within the South and of egalitarian communities of practice between the North and the South. So how do we remake youth studies, from one that universalizes Northern perspectives into a truly Global Youth Studies and one that is enriched by and welcomes the contribution of Global South scholars on their own terms? This commentary offers a charter for Global South Youth studies scholars to guide action.