The present paper aims to discuss ways by which youth cultures have been presented, from cultural point of view. It argues that youth cultures have mobile and multiple senses, incorporating, mixing and inventing symbols and emblems, in a continual movement that makes it difficult to represent them. We firstly build on the assumption that there is a great diversity within the "youth" category, comprising: students, bands, punks, popular protestant religious people, small businessmen, ravers, unemployed people, "traffic dealers", all being children of the modern age with its crisis and disenchantement; secondly, we take into account the complex and highly changeable contemporary context, in which these young people live. The article is organised in three thematic axes: a) analysis of the discourses of those that have produced knowledge about youth; b) discussion of "new" sceneries of youth cultures, as well as its material and symbolic territories; c) perspectives and challenges that the field of studies concerning youth cultures has been posing to social sciences.
youth; youth cultures