Does Our Movement Lack a Theory?
So I came across an entry today written back in July by Brent Allison, NYRA member and NYRA founder actually. In it he provides a critique of NYRA and the youth rights movement for focusing mostly on negative rights and lacking a clear “theory” or “narrative” for the movement. He says:
In short, the YR movement has found itself in relative paralysis because it only reacts to the hegemonic construct of youth. There’s no theorizing, reflecting upon, and directly undermining that construct with a narrative. Beyond being “the last civil rights movement” in a post-civil rights era, where does YR fit in that grand scheme? Movements for advancing the interests of women and people of color didn’t simply say, “We are equal.” They realized many of the reasons why the yoke of inequity was so short, tight, and all-encompassing for so long. This took an enormous project of inquiry and fortitude to not be defined by those holding the yoke.
I don’t disagree with your overall frame of the issue, but you make two assumptions that I feel should be addressed.
First, that NYRA is all there is to youth rights. What our representatives say on our forums, newsletter, and on TV is the final word on youth rights. There is a lot more out there than that. If you look through our website, specifically our library section you will find papers by individuals such as Sven Bonnichsen and Brian Dominick who could hardly be confused for classical liberals.
On Sven’s site (which sadly hasn’t been updated in quite a while) you’ll find a lot of really, really good arguments and theories that hit at what you are talking about. There are lots and lots of books out there too, I’m continually surprised to find new ones which try to flesh out such a theory. In various different ways of course.
Secondly, not only do you seem to miss some of the contributions of other non-NYRA folks to creating such a narrative, you also don’t accept responsibility, as a member of this movement, for creating such a narrative. NYRA is a distinct organization with a distinct set of goals and a distinct approach, but NYRA is but one organ of what at least should be a wider and more powerful movement. If you feel an important component to that movement is missing, then create it.
Perhaps start by fleshing out some theory (or explaining the lack of it) on the Youth Rights Network.
We’re all in this together. There aren’t that many of us, so we all need to do what we can.
October 1st, 2008 at 9:43 am
A dilemma here Alex is that the YR “movement” is barely a movement at all, in the traditional sense. Because of that it lacks the cohesiveness necessary to form a basic theory relating to belief, practice, and outcomes. I believe that our collective experiments with the Student Bill of Rights proves this out: with hundreds of contributors come hundreds of opinions.
Theory is generally laid down in print. In this movement, the only standardized literature about YR readily available to the 1000s of youth and adults who attach themselves to the movement comes from the NYRA website, and a lot of folks, regardless of their belief in YR, don’t lend the credence to Internet publications that they should be given. That leaves people lurching around in the dark looking for any kind of guidance as to how they should philosophically, morally and emotionally frame the debate. That’s not all bad: it drives many people towards Males and Holt and Llewellyn and others, and allows them to develop… their own analyses! I would also suggest that it drives more users to interact on NYRA’s discussion board - eff knows there are enough conversations on there where people are trying to hack out a theoretical statue from the rough stone.
Which in turn serves to differentiate the YR movement from others. Instead of having a top-heavy leadership which compels followers to adhere to a standardized company line, people are allowed and inadvertently encouraged to develop their own thinking and do their own theorization. (Personally, I believed for a long time that this was an extension of your own personal libertarianism.)
The challenge of that approach is that in turn, the YR movement will always look nascent, as if it was just born from the womb of the society around it. The rewards of that approach is that it gives the YR movement the ability to appear nimble and responsive to the generation and re-generations that it sees as a constituency.
A logical response to this challenge would be to write the YR manifesto that you and I have long plotted. Another would be to shore up NYRA’s ability to be agile, and continue to enshrine that in the organizational framework. And that’s my 10 cents. Oh, and if you’re in a reading mood you should read my reply to Brent’s post.
October 3rd, 2008 at 4:57 pm
I haven’t delved into any serious philosophy yet, but from what I’ve noticed in general, everyone seems to have a different idea of youth rights and a different motivation for supporting it. This results in very different ultimate goals and “utopias”. Such is to be expected, of course. We’re too small a movement to start splitting off based on long-term expectations while the short-term we’re more or less of similar mind. But it is true that the short-term is a lot of fixing some bad policies here and there, while any singular goal or even motivation is unclear or scattered in the ideologies of over 9,000 youth rights supporters. Thing is, at this point, what does that matter? That doesn’t really hinder us right now, though it pops up in a couple of areas, such as our ultra libertarian types thinking we shouldn’t be telling behavior mod facilities not to abuse teens or we shouldn’t be telling business not to limit their teen shoppers because, God forbid, anyone says a private business ever does anything wrong. Yet even that hasn’t been too much of an issue. So while a concern over a specific youth rights theory is maybe a concern depending on how you look at it, it’s not vital when it comes right down to it. At least not now.