Les jeunes et le changement social. De la nécessité de construire une autre société

Youth and Social Change. On the Necessity of Building Another Society
On three occasions youth became actors in movements of protest and/or mass demands (1986, 1990, 1994). The rise of new social actors has initiated the appearance and then the development of a new structure for action – coordination – which not only marked a very important change in the parameters of collective action but expressed transformations which were just as significant in the realm values.
But the young are only occasional actors: they demand or hope for a genuine recognition of their place which is precisely what is most often refused and thus there results a crisis of youth, a symptom of a crisis of society which swings between the risks of implosions and the risks of explosions. The young remind us that it is necessary to build another society based on another ethic and on other social relationships, a society which would accord the human being both his individuality and social identity. Thus a possible way out from the crisis emerges around this new way of acting and understanding together constituted by the system of co-action.