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This chapter looks at the issue of “young” Muslims from the perspective of pious Muslim women in two European settings: France and Germany. It concentrates, on the one hand, on the ways in which these young women construct a notion of youthfulness in response to a dominant secular “emancipation” narrative of sexual freedom and also in negotiation with gendered norms in their families. On the other hand, it embeds the emerging alternative conceptions of youthfulness within the wider framework of national citizenship traditions and shows how the women in both countries have adopted and/or transformed notions of membership through recourse to national or supranational traditions.

Muslim youth have assumed a central, if complex, place in the politics and cultures and politics of the global South and North. Their cultural behavior can be understood as representing a new arena of contestation for power in a global era. In conventional wisdom, a combination of youth bulge, unemployment, marginality, and a general sentiment of deprivation has given Muslim youth an exceptional status. This chapter shows that although the majority of young Muslims share many common social, political, and economic misfortunes, they respond to their situations and express their youthfulness through remarkably diverse ways. Although groups of them have been drawn into radical Islam, others have embraced their religion more as an identity marker or lifestyle choice, whereas still others opt for secularism. Far from being “exceptional,” young Muslims in reality have as much in common with their non-Muslim global generational counterparts as they share among themselves. They are simultaneously objects, agents and victims on a world stage and are engaged in constant negotiation between being Muslim, modern, and young.

In Muslim societies, youth politics has espoused two contradictory sentiments: youth as a source of fear and hope. On the one hand, youths are seen as the foot soldiers of radical Islamism and violent politics, and on the other, as agents of democratic change and an open society. Through a comparative analysis of youth cultural politics in the Middle East—notably Iran, Egypt, and, somewhat, Saudi Arabia—this chapter first argues that political imaginations about the young—whether as radical Islamists or democratic reformers—are misconstrued. Second, by conceptually distinguishing between “young people” (as an age category) and “youth” (as a social category), this chapter postulates that “youth movements” are not necessarily about political change, but are essentially about “claiming youthfulness.” The political efficacy of youth movements depends to a large extent on the capacity of the adversaries—the political and moral authority—to accommodate the claims of youthfulness.

Youthfulness appears widely in Polybius as something whose failings and weakness can be disadvantageous for a leader, in spite of more positive examples of young men such as Aratus of Sicyon and Scipio Aemilianus. The presentation of the youth of Philip V in Books 4 and 5 is marked by negative expectations focalized from the point of view of various characters, expectations which are however undermined by Polybius' narrative which presents an impression of a successful and dynamic king. In his Social War narrative, Polybius shows how Philip's vigorous and effective kingship surpasses the expectations of foreign and domestic opponents, though the destruction of Thermum by Philip also gives a glance forward to his descent into tyranny. Polybius' literary artistry has in general remained underappreciated, and his narrative is far more artfully designed than is commonly appreciated.

This chapter analyzes the law that governs juvenile interrogation. The U.S. Supreme Court has emphasized that youthfulness heightens vulnerability and has directed the close scrutiny of juveniles' confessions. Despite concerns about youthfulness, the Court applies the legal standard for adults to evaluate juveniles' waivers of right. Most states require juveniles to understand the words and concepts the Miranda warning and to assert their rights as clearly as adults. While the law posits the same standard for children and adults, developmental psychologists question adolescents' competence to exercise rights and highlight their special vulnerabilities. Many juveniles unfortunately do not understand the Miranda warning. With impaired understanding, juveniles are at a comparative disadvantage and cannot meet adult performance standards. A disjuncture exists between legal expectations and developmental psychologists' research on adolescents' competence.

This chapter focuses on age work and its cultural meaning, ritual, and symbolism. It considers the experiences, feelings, and language produced by age constructions and their impact on the way we frame our lives and the stories we tell about ourselves. It suggests that age is persistently on the agenda of many societies, with particular reference to the business of birthdays, and points to the important role played by culture in the way we view age and ageing. It also looks at the ‘forever young’ industry with its marketing of age-defying products and procedures and discusses age as performance in relation to age work. Finally, it examines age masking as an intrinsic component of age work in societies where the appearance of youthfulness matters a lot.