Young, Michael (Lord Young of Dartington) (1915–2002) British sociologist, political activist, policy advocate in fields of health, poverty and education, also involved in founding the Consumers Association, the Open University, and other distance learning initiatives, Young set up the Institute of Community Studies, in 1952, from which he conducted most of his sociological work and policy research. One of its early publications was the influential book Family and Kinship in East London, written with Peter Willmott, published in 1957, an ethnographic study based on observation of, and interviews with, members of the working-class community of Bethnal Green. An early contribution to the genre of community studies in Britain, it subsequently provided a yardstick of traditional urban working-class life. Its sequel was a study of the ways of life of former residents who relocated to the suburbs (Family and Class in a London Suburb, 1960). Again with Willmott, he published also the much-quoted The Symmetrical Family: A Study of Work and Leisure in the London Region (1975). His satirical essay The Rise of the Meritocracy (1958) brought him greatest publicity for its social analysis in favor of equal opportunities in education. During the 1980s, besides more policy reports and public campaigning, he published work on understandings of time, including The Metronomic Society: Natural Rhythms and Human Timetables (1988). Young was a prime example of a sociologist oriented to the project of improving social conditions who also engaged in political activism and organizational innovation. ALAN WARDE

youth

At a general level, youth refers to a transitional period in the lifecycle between childhood and adulthood. The social definition of youth in anthropology and sociology developed against an explanation of physiological changes and maturation in young people's bodies as simply determined by nature or biology. While recognizing the interplay between biological and social dimensions, sociologists stress that the category of youth is complexly shaped within institutional settings by sociocultural, economic, and political factors. Hence, the term youth has a diverse range of meanings, both historically within a society and across different societies. The social definition of youth as an important stratified group experiencing shared processes of socialization developed within the specific conditions of urban industrial societies.