In an interview for Shemine Gulamhusein’s excellent podcast, “Where Care Learned to Speak,” I was asked why I used the term radical in Radical Youthwork. I responded with an answer tied to the conditions of the field two decades ago when I coined the term. In my writing today, however, I propose that the term radical is even more urgent as a way of describing the work of youth and adults working together for common political purpose in our contemporary milieu.
The key word here for me is political. In using that term, I should note that is not entirely common to frame CYC work as political. We tend towards seeing our work as clinical or remediative, built on working with individual young people to assist them in becoming less problematic for adults in their lives. To be fair, that doesn’t mean that we don’t take their concerns or their pain and suffering seriously. We absolutely do.
But generally, we don’t think of our collaborations as political. Of course, there are notable exceptions such as the Kinship Rising project, or the Radical Youth Work programs and projects of Wes Robbins, or the writings of Kiaras Gharabaghi or Brian Belton among others. But these examples remain at the edges of the field with considerably less acknowledgement than traditional diagnostic models, psychological approaches, developmental thinking, humanistic psychology, trauma-based care, relational work, care-based practice, various behavioral approaches, and an abiding fascination with the architecture of the brain of young people or their neurology.
Over the past twenty years or so there have been significant political critiques of all these approaches, but such critique has really failed to have any real impact on their popularity and persistence as frameworks for understanding young people, their families, and communities. It is important to note that just because we don’t call something political doesn’t mean that it is neutral as a political force. All the approaches I have named above have political implications and, in most cases, have been responsive to specific historical moments and political struggles.
Developmental psychology, for example, emerged at the time of the industrial revolution. Before this radical shift in the organization of society, there was no real concept of childhood or even the child per se. The emergence of the concept of the child, as the foundation of the developmental approach, was related to social and economic changes in that historical period and laden with political implications Scholars of childhood such as Aries have noted that the figure of the child came about in response to changes in the economies of Europe driven by European colonization. As Beckert points out, the increase in the imports of silver created massive increases in wealth for the emerging capitalist class and the demand for textiles to clothe those enslaved in the Caribbean significantly altered the modes of production and daily activities of families in Europe.
The need for children of the emerging capitalist class to attend schools where they could learn to read, write, and handle accounts became critical to the new form of capitalist economy. In addition, changes in governance that included coalition between the monarchies and capitalists required new laws and court rulings which called for scribes and legal professionals to manage governance of the colonies, the infrastructure of the slave trade, and the emergent textile industry.
All of this required young people to go to school. Where children had previously been seen as simply members of their family with no real distinction from adults, now they began to develop a new identity as a child in need of external training. Over the next 200 years this would have immense political ramifications in the development of the social identity of the individual separable from the family who had rights of their own and could overthrow governments. My point here is that if we simply accept the developmental scientific definition of the child as a foregone biological construct, we can lose the historical social construction of the social category of the child.
Another example is the way that developmental stages entered our understanding of children’s development. Stage theory is another given for many of us in CYC as a framework for understanding the capacity of children as they face life’s challenges. However, I would note that the theories of developmental stages also reflect the industrial revolution as it manifested itself in factory production. The idea that childhood is teleological and progresses towards the idealized goal of adulthood is deeply tied to emerging models of industrial production.
As Wasiak points out, the ostensible father of developmentalism Piaget did not include teleological stage development in his explorations of children’s becoming. It was the developmentalists that came after him who applied the logic of Henry Ford’s assembly line to children’s growth and development. In doing so, childhood became standardized and measurable with newly established norms and related pathologies. Children were inherently incomplete adults and as such, needed shaping and control.
What is important to note is that the parameters for how children should develop were intimately tied to the logic of the society in which they were imbedded. There was no real scientific basis for what constituted normal development, particularly in the areas of psychological and emotional development. Because development was determined by the parameters of “normal and healthy” adulthood, the measures of childhood development were shaped to produce such adults.
Of course, what constituted normal and healthy adulthood was shaped by the demands and normative standards of industrial capitalism. For the capitalist system this meant measuring all growth and development against the capacity to participate in the accrual of wealth. Healthy growth and development is measured by how well a child is prepared for their role in producing and consuming within the parameters of a capitalist economy. This implies that developmental psychology is deeply entangled within the political project of capitalist development Indeed, Erica Burman makes the case that because of developmental psychology’s deep entanglement with capitalism as a social and economic system, the field has little to offer by way of liberatory projects that might challenge the existing system.
Similar arguments could be made about the other “non-political” approaches in our field. In fact, I would argue that any approach to human suffering that begins with a description of the sufferer is riddled with the politics of the dominant system of rule in any given historical period. When we begin with what is wrong or right in the constitution of the child or young person we encounter, we narrow our field of vision in such a way as to blind ourselves to the vectors of social force that create and perpetuate what we see as wrong (pathology) or right (assets or strengths). What we actually see is the effect of the society in which that child lives, rather than the society itself. It’s a bit like the old Zen saying about the finger that points at the moon. If we focus on the finger we miss the moon.
Similarly, if we focus on how well or poorly a young person is adapting or failing to adapt to the social system in which they are imbedded, we fail to ask ourselves whether adapting to the system is something worth doing. This is an element of relational care that often gets missed. Certainly, building a trusting relationship with a trustworthy adult seems a worthy endeavor. But what are the investments of the adult in that situation? Of course, CYC workers strive to be the kinds of adults that can offer unconditional care with integrity. However, can that be done by an adult deeply invested in the current political and economic system? When we as CYC workers collaborate with young people to succeed in their lives, how deeply-related is that to our own definitions of success as indicated by the aspirations we have for the good life? Are we unconscious missionaries for capitalism as a system that values the accrual of wealth over quality of life? How invested are we in our own lives in fitting in and making a living by staying politically safe? Are we worried about failing or succeeding according to a scale set by the society in which we live?
All of which is to say that the idea that we can somehow elude the political in our work with young people, their families and communities is an impossibility. The political forces that shape our society cannot help but shape the social services operating to the ostensible benefit of that society. There is no space in human relations that is free of the politics of a given historical period. The only real question is our relationship to the forces of domination and control that shape who we are and what we believe we are capable of doing. Is our work supportive of the logic of the dominant system and its effects? Or can we shape our work in such a way as to begin to develop an alternative form of society?
The question of how we relate to the politics of our age is crucial to everything we do in our work as CYC providers. The very definition of what it means to care is shaped by the definitions of what it means to care in our society. Is “care” unconditional or is it limited by ideas such as merit? Do we think that care is largely emotional support and psychological intervention, or do we understand care as meeting the material needs of everyone we encounter? Does a young person need to earn the right to such things as housing, food, and medical care? Do we only provide material support and a sense of belonging while they are associated with our programs or institutions or do we have a commitment to support young people as long as they need us? Even when they are in our care institutionally, do we teach the lesson that we care for one another unconditionally or do we only show demonstrable care if young people behave according to the rules and expectations we have set? Will we withdraw support and expel them from care if they behave in ways we find unacceptable?
As we enter the ever-shifting terrain of virtual global capitalism with its erosions of care at all levels, these questions become ever more pressing. It seems clear to me that the current system is showing itself to have less and less investment in any kind of real-world caring. All life is being threatened, with our children being no exception. Under such conditions I would argue that accommodation is not an option. To continually compromise with the death drive that is contemporary capitalism has real effects on the capacity of young people to survive much less thrive.
When I defined radical youthwork as youth and adults working together towards common political purpose, I hoped to imply a project that would investigate what conditions would need to be met for us to work together. For me that would include defining what we hold in common under conditions of mortal threat. Finally, we would define this work as political. That is work that is intended to shift the balance of power towards affirming life and all living things. I used the word radical to indicate that such a project would appear to be extreme within the context of accommodational politics that hopes to sustain the existing system, but in a kinder and gentler form. If I ever thought that was possible, I certainly do not see that as a possibility now.
The new forms of capitalism are extreme and radical in their own right, I would argue that our response needs to be radical in contradistinction. If there was ever a time for radical youthwork, it is now before we lose even more of us. It will take a collectivity to build a society that affirms life over death. It is a radical project whose trajectory is not for me to predict. That is up to future generations of all of us working together towards a radical shift in how we will live.
