A New Ontology and Youth Work Ethics in a Time of Planetary Crisis

• Published in: Ethics and social welfare 2024-04, Vol.18 (2), p.131-148
• Main Authors: Bessant, Judith, Watts, Rob
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Adolescents; Agency and structure; anthropocene; Ethics; Materialism; new materialism; Ontology; Youth work
• ISSN: 1749-6535; 1749-6543
• DOI: 10.1080/17496535.2024.2324313

Evidence of the far-reaching impact of the Anthropocene on young people presents youth work with opportunities to reflect on some long-standing issues. This pioneering exercise considers the implications for youth work practice and its ethical frameworks should it embrace the tenets of the 'new materialism'. We ask how youth work practice is currently understood, especially in 'British-influenced youth work' and whether there are problems with its conceptual, ethical and practice frameworks. We offer an account of 'new materialism' then consider the implications for the ethics of youth work practice if practitioners were to adopt this ontological perspective. Conceptually youth work would have a more relational orientation and rely less on essentialist universalised categories like 'child', 'adolescent' and 'adult'. It would jettison developmentalist narratives and the structure-agency impasse by elaborating new accounts of assemblages-contingency. Adopting this approach also entails an ethic of cultivation grounded in care for the world. Such an ethic would entail situational judgements about how to enact care in a world in which unexpected changes periodically emerge. This bears a close relationship to 'phronetic practice'.