Challenging homogenous representations of rural youth through a reconceptualisation of young rural Tasmanian's sexual health strategies

摘要

Discussion and debate around how best to encourage health-enhancing behaviours perhaps inevitably becomes embroiled in discussion about risk and health-risk behaviour. This reflects Beck (1989, 1992a, 1992b, 1999) and Giddens' (1990, 1994, 1998) argument that our awareness of risk has become acutely intensified and we are now 'caught up in risk management' (Giddens, 1999). Within this climate there is little debate over which social group is considered the most 'at-risk', and therein the most likely to take risks: young people (see Kelly, 2000, 2001). Youth sexuality however, is seen as a particularly dangerous and 'risky business' (Sharland, 2006, p. 247).This paper focalises the Tasmanian context, where the above is often evidenced in the media. Consider the headline, 'Teen pregnancy, chlamydia rates raise concern' (Clifford, 2009) and one of columnist Van Ryn's (2009, p. 16) various pieces on 'alarming [sexual health] statistics', where she laments that 'Bells are ringing — unfortunately they are of the alarm variety, not the wedding kind' (2009, p. 16). This article reports on research that was partly motivated by this entrenched, alarmist tone, and which examined sexual risk perceptions among a group of young Tasmanians. My focus is on rural youth, specifically, the way in which they have been constructed as doubly 'at-risk', and the implications of this for their sexual risk interpretations and sexual health practices.