COUV ACTES - Psychologie communautaire

Community Psychology: Common Values, Diverse PracticesYouth ‘risk’ and ‘resilience’: contested values, beliefs andfunctionsby Cate Curtis 1In this paper I argue that concerns about youth risk reflect competing social values and anxieties rather thanissues of risk and resilience per se. Further, I will argue that the current plethora of policy initiatives focused on‘at risk’ youth is the corollary of a moral panic about out of control children. The initial findings of researchcurrently underway will be utilised to elucidate these arguments.The area of youth risk and resilience has been a topic of increasing concern over recent years, in part as acorollary of concern over anti-social behaviour. There exists a substantial body of research on risk and itsassociation with anti-social and criminal behaviour. However, significant problems with the risk factor approachremain, in particular in regards to the way conceptions of risk and resilience are socially constructed, and theanalysis of risk and protective factors in the absence of their historical, social and cultural location (Armstrong,2003).In New Zealand significant public monies are invested in programmes and research into risk and the developmentof resilience. However, as discussed by Massey, Cameron, Ouellettee & Fine (1998), studies of resilience andrisk have tended to be value-laden both in terms of how adversity is defined and how resilience is measured,such that resilience equals conformity and risk equals nonconformity. That is, the outcomes used to assessperformance in one context may represent only those characteristics that serve that context. For example,appropriate behaviour and compliance in a classroom setting may be construed as a lack of personal agency andindependence in another setting.Problems with the risk factor paradigmReductionism is implicit in the risk factor model. This operates on several levels. For example, at the biologicallevel, one of the most well-known writers on the topic, Michael Rutter, speculates that androgen and serotoninlevels are significant factors in male offending, while also acknowledging the lack of evidence to support thiscontention (Bessant, Hill, & Watts, 2003). At the psychological level, the individual is often reduced to sets ofpsychological traits and cognitive processes. At the social level, the meaning and context of rule-breaking isignored, for example, the continued wearing of religious symbols is banned in some schools.1Waikato University, New Zealand ccurtis@waikato.ac.nz293