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Identity, youth and post-modern social landscapes

Contemporary society celebrates ideas of change, flexibility and self-reliance. These attitudes form part of a landscape of expectations of contemporary adulthood. Is there a class dimension to growing up with uncertainty? This paper draws on the constructivist developmental psychologist Robert Kegan to demonstrate a link between post-modern celebration of liberation of the subject and a neo-liberal neglect of the needs of the young. Sidorenko proposes a bridge between sociological characterisation of contemporary society and a focus on psychological processes involved in adolescence in to create a theoretically sound rationale for political interventions into the lives of the young.