Reconstituting the youth as a political category and neo-liberal reason: The case of Community Volunteers Foundation

Abstract

In an effort to make sense of the new currents in civil society activities in Turkey, this study strove to put a magnifier on one of the biggest youth organizations, which works with a mission of youth empowerment, Community Volunteers Foundation (TOG). Within the general framework of neo-liberal transformation that Turkey has been undergoing since 1980s, the new citizenship models offered by civil society organizations were scrutinized. Neo-liberalism was treated as a “governmental regime” instead of an ideology. The alleged distinction between the state, the private sector and the civil society was interrogated. It was claimed that reconstitution of the youth as a political category with shared characteristics, problems and aspirations, make the government of the youth at a distance possible. Autonomization and responsibilization were regarded as the basic technologies of citizenship which are used simultaneously. Emergence of the new myth of ‘young active citizen’ was pointed out within the political and social spheres whose boundaries are being constantly discursively redrawn. A special emphasis was put on the tension between the super-imposed synthetic morality and subsequent norms and principles by the foundation on the one hand, and existing norms and values entrenched in the local on the other hand.