Search for other papers by Shannon Philip in
Current site
Google Scholar
PubMed
All currencies in US Dollar
Abstract
Young lives in the Global South are shaped by myriad dynamics of colonialism, economic inequalities, race, class, caste, and gendered and generational inequalities. In particular, the colonial legacies and contemporary capitalist inequalities within the global order have powerfully redefined what youth lives are in many countries of the Global South today. In this commentary piece, I argue that there is great value in thinking about youth through empirical, historical, and relational perspectives from the Global South, primarily for analytical sophistication but also to enrich mainstream youth sociology itself. This commentary piece also opens a dialogue between “youth sociology” and “connected sociologies” in order to produce some decolonial Global South perspectives on youth. Through focusing on changing youth cultures in India and South Africa, this commentary explores how neocolonial and neoliberal processes shape youth cultures and the many global relationalities, connections, and inequalities that emerge from thinking comparatively.
Contributor Notes
Shannon Philip is a Lecturer in Sociology at the University of East Anglia and a Research Associate at the University of Johannesburg. He recently published his first monograph, Becoming Young Men in a New India: Masculinities, Gender Relations and Violence in the Postcolony (2022). His new research project comparatively explores youth, sexualities, urban transformations, and gender in South Africa and India. He has recently completed one year of ethnographic fieldwork in Johannesburg for this new project and is working on his second monograph on decolonial youth cultures of the Global South. Email: s.philip@uea.ac.uk