Age Discrimination An Appraisal of Prosperity Discourse of Cultural Policy in Identification of Urban Youth

Age as a culturally partitioning category, disciplines citizens in age groups and it raises power relations in society. I have called this the ‘vivifier’ function of age groups. The ‘youth’ as one of the age periods, constitutes a disputed field of definitions, representation, and identification. The writers of this essay, having glanced through the dominant discourses concerning the youth and discourse analysis of policy-making institutions, attempt to answer the question that in identifying the Iranians, the discourse of cultural policy is based on what approaches? The indication of discourse approaches which are discussed in this essay should be seen as a chronology of the youth discourses. This essay shows that the cultural policy discourse has a tendency towards a dual approach consisting of: the problem-driven and the possibility-driven to the youth issue as reflected in the available and sensible statements. Such reasoning indirectly points to the causes why the social programs have been rather unsuccessful in attracting the youth’s participation.