Kelly, Peter 2008, Breath : allegory, knowledge practices, youth at-risk, in TASA 2008 : Re-imagining sociology : the Annual Conference of The Australian Sociological Association, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Vic., pp. 1-15.
Youth and risk are artefacts of expertise, constructed at the intersection of a wide range of knowledges about Youth and so-called Youth issues: an intersection marked by institutionalised, scientific representations of education, family, the life course, risk, and so on. In this paper I suggest that the messiness of human experiences and existence requires knowledge practices in the social sciences that can rethink what counts as truth. These interests – which are grounded in the knowledge practices that frame the work being undertaken in a large scale, qualitative investigation of the cultural drivers shaping the alcohol practices of 14 to 24 year old Australian’s - will be addressed through a discussion of the ways in which Tim Winton’s (2008) new novel Breath can be read as an allegorical tale about the terror of being ordinary: and of the teenage years as being a time in a life in which the fear of being ordinary compels Winton’s key characters to seek out, sometimes stumble upon, and embrace that which promises to make their’s a life less ordinary. In these recollections risk is something that breathes energy and purpose into lifeworlds that are dominated by the institutionalised ordinariness of family, school, and work.
Notes
Reproduced with the kind permission of the copyright owner.
ISBN
9780734039842
Language
eng
Field of Research
160805 Social Change
Socio Economic Objective
970116 Expanding Knowledge through Studies of Human Society
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