Phil Cohen, Rethinking the Youth Question: Education, Labour and Cultural Studies. London: Macmillan, 1997, £16.99, xi+414 pp. (ISBN 0-333-63148-X).

Andy Furlong and Fred Cartmel, Young People and Social Change: Individualisation and Risk in Late Modernity. Buckingham: Open University Press, 1997, £45.00 (£14.99 pbk), viii+141 pp. (ISBN 0-335-194-656 hbk, 0-335-19464-8 pbk).

H. Decker Scott and Barrick Van Winkle, Life in the Gang: Family, Friends and Violence. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996, £45.00 (£15.95 pbk), xi+303 pp. (ISBN 0-521-56292-9 hbk, 0-521-56566-9 pbk).

John Hagan and Bill McCarthy, Mean Streets: Youth Crime and Homelessness. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997, £40.00 (£14.95 pbk), xv+299 pp. (ISBN 0-521-49743-4 hbk, 0-521-646-26X pbk).

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Kevin Rathunde and Samuel Whalen (with contribution by Maria Wong), Talented Teenagers: The Roots of Success and Failure. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997, £14.95, x+307 pp. (ISBN 0-521-57463-3 pbk).

Historically there have been continuing concerns about the everyday lives of young people which have been voiced vociferously by the press, politicians and the public alike. These concerns have oscillated along the careöcontrol continuum and reflect both political and personal confusions about the daily lives of young people and how they as both individuals and a group, in turn make sense of the social, political and economic structures created for them by ‘adult’ society. These ‘concerns’ have not always been reflected by academic writing and research, which has struggled over whether ‘youth’ were worthy of special attention in the first place or whether such writing should be integrated into general research and teaching.

Jean Curthoys, Feminist Amnesia: The Wake of Women's Liberation, London: Routledge, 1997, £40.00 (£12.99 paperback), xiv+200 pp. (ISBN 0-415-148073)

Mary Evans, Introducing Contemporary Feminist Thought, Cambridge: Polity Press, 1997, £39.50 (£11.95 paperback), 170 pp. (ISBN 07-456-14760)

Heidi Safia Mirza (ed.), Black British Feminism: A Reader, London: Routledge, 1997, £45.00 (£15.99 paperback), xiv+306 pp. (ISBN 0-415-152895)

All three books attempt, in different ways, to re-evaluate the feminist enterprise, reflecting on contemporary developments within feminism. Heidi Mirza's collection of essays represents developments in what she terms ‘Black British Feminism’. Jean Curthoys, on the other hand, criticises contemporary feminism, arguing that the ‘true spirit’ (sic) of feminism has been subverted by later developments in the academy. Mary Evans has written a history of the development of Western feminist thought in the academy. The two latter books focus on post-1970 developments in Western feminism, arriving, however, at opposite conclusions. Where Evans sees the 1970s as an important building block for contemporary feminist thought, Curthoys argues that the important insights of the 1970s have been abandoned. Both of these books, in one way or the other, acknowledge the multiplicity of voices within feminism today, and the need to pay attention to ‘difference’. However, neither of these books fully attends to contemporary debates within anti-racism and the critiques made by black and Third World feminists. Mirza's book, by contrast, claims to be the ‘first to be entirely dedicated to the writings of black women in a British context’.

With the election of a Labour government in 1997 many sociologists perceived the dawning of new opportunities for the discipline to contribute to the policy process. At the same time there have been signs of a growing receptiveness on the part of government to the results of academic research and reflection. Prominent sociologists have even been credited with significant influence on the overall direction of New Labour. All of this goes hand in hand with ESRC's continuing injunctions, inherited in part from the demands of the previous government, to engage users and beneficiaries in the research process.