Over the last decade, "youth" has become increasingly central to policy, development, media and public debates and conflicts across the world - whether as an ideological symbol, social category or political actor. Set against a backdrop of contemporary political economy, Youth Rising? seeks to understand exactly how and why youth has become such a popular and productive social category and concept. The book provocatively argues that the rise and spread of global neoliberalism has not only led youth to become more politically and symbolically salient, but also to expand to encompass a growing range of ages and individuals of different class, race, ethnic, national and religious backgrounds. Employing both theoretical and historical analysis, authors Mayssoun Sukarieh and Stuart Tannock trace the development of youth within the context of capitalism, where it has long functioned as a category for social control. The book's chapters critically analyze the growing fears of mass youth unemployment and a "lost generation" that spread around the world in the wake of the global financial crisis. They question as well the relentless focus on youth in the reporting and discussion of recent global protests and uprisings. By helping develop a better understanding of such phenomena and critically and reflexively investigating the very category and identity of youth, Youth Rising? offers a fresh and sobering challenge to the field of youth studies and to widespread claims about the relationship between youth and social change.

A Global Idea outlines how youth—as shown by the Arab Spring uprisings and subsequent state responses—became a prominent social and political category during the first two decades of the twenty-first century in the Middle East. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork, interview data, and textual analysis, Mayssoun Sukarieh explains that the spread of youth as an important category is linked to the operation of a "global youth development complex," a diverse transnational network of state, private sector, civil society, and international development aid organizations that worked through key urban areas such as Washington, DC, Amman, and Dubai. In its analysis of the arrival, extension, and embedding of the youth development complex in the Middle East during this period, A Global Idea addresses a broader question that is of global and not just regional concern. How are certain ideas that are central to the working and reproduction of global capitalism able to travel the world so that they are found virtually everywhere?

Over the last decade, "youth" has become increasingly central to policy, development, media and public debates and conflicts across the world - whether as an ideological symbol, social category or political actor. Set against a backdrop of contemporary political economy, Youth Rising? seeks to understand exactly how and why youth has become such a popular and productive social category and concept. The book provocatively argues that the rise and spread of global neoliberalism has not only led youth to become more politically and symbolically salient, but also to expand to encompass a growing range of ages and individuals of different class, race, ethnic, national and religious backgrounds. Employing both theoretical and historical analysis, authors Mayssoun Sukarieh and Stuart Tannock trace the development of youth within the context of capitalism, where it has long functioned as a category for social control. The book's chapters critically analyze the growing fears of mass youth unemployment and a "lost generation" that spread around the world in the wake of the global financial crisis. They question as well the relentless focus on youth in the reporting and discussion of recent global protests and uprisings. By helping develop a better understanding of such phenomena and critically and reflexively investigating the very category and identity of youth, Youth Rising? offers a fresh and sobering challenge to the field of youth studies and to widespread claims about the relationship between youth and social change.

A Global Idea outlines how youth—as shown by the Arab Spring uprisings and subsequent state responses—became a prominent social and political category during the first two decades of the twenty-first century in the Middle East. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork, interview data, and textual analysis, Mayssoun Sukarieh explains that the spread of youth as an important category is linked to the operation of a "global youth development complex," a diverse transnational network of state, private sector, civil society, and international development aid organizations that worked through key urban areas such as Washington, DC, Amman, and Dubai. In its analysis of the arrival, extension, and embedding of the youth development complex in the Middle East during this period, A Global Idea addresses a broader question that is of global and not just regional concern. How are certain ideas that are central to the working and reproduction of global capitalism able to travel the world so that they are found virtually everywhere?