How To Become a Youthologist? The 98’ Generation: Life Stories

Abstract

The article proposes a generational reading of a series of biographical interviews with eight of the most significant authors of Ibero-American ‘youthology’. We are referring to two precursors –Jesús Martín-Barbero and Néstor García  Canclini– and six members of the first  generation of youth researchers: José Antonio Pérez Islas, Rossana Reguillo, José Manuel Valenzuela, Sergio Balardini, Carlos Mario Perea and Ernesto Rodríguez. We call them “98’ generation” because the founding “moment” of the group was a meeting organized by the Mexican Youth Institute in 1998 in Ixtapan de la Sal – although there is also a play on words with the Spanish literary generation of 1898, which portrayed the end of the colonial empire. In some way it is, then, a generational manifesto.