Changing Experiences Of Time, Changing Biographies And Youth Values Carmen

Changing experiences of time, changing biographies and youth values Carmen Leccardi University of Milano-Bicocca While the modern age constructed the meaning of time in relation to history and progress – essentially as an instrument with which to transform the world, to invest and use in a careful manner contemporary modernity defines it rather in relation to the dimensions of risk, uncertainty and, above all, speed. As a consequence, today the dimension of time ends up appearing in many respects more as a limit than as a resource. This new semantic framework also deeply shapes the ways and forms in which young people’s biographies come to be defined. The ‘life plan’ ceases to be the crucial principle through which biographies are structured and new ways of relating to time are delineated. Though starkly evident in the biographical constructions of young people, nonetheless, these forms of temporalisation do not involve a closure in the present so exclusive as to result in a complete loss of the past and future. Rather, as recent European research suggests, a large number of young people appear to be actively involved in the construction of forms of mediation between the need for subjective control over time and the risky and uncertain social environment of today. In the ‘accelerated society’ in which we live, in which urgency has become a new cult and the quest for the instantaneous an out-andout normative ideal, values in their turn cannot but undergo modification. As a consequence a transformation takes place in the criteria for evaluating action. Special importance, for example, is attributed to those capacities – like flexibility, the ability to make decisions in “live time” or the predisposition towards forgetfulness as opposed to memory – that are in keeping with the ‘fast’ social climate in which we happen to live. Carefully taking these transformations into consideration may offer a fundamental interpretative key not only for examining contemporary youth cultures but also for exploring the strategies for action that young people may adopt in the new century.