Introduction

We all want to matter: to be a person of significance and consequence in the world. The concept of mattering has received substantial attention in academic psychology during the 21st Century (see especially Elliott, 2009; Flett, 2018, 2022; Prilleltensky and Preilleltensky, 2021), but its impact on related disciplines – such as social theory and criminology – appears to remain relatively limited (there are exceptions – see, for example, Lewis, 2017). In this chapter, we make the case for the value and helpfulness of the concept of mattering for grasping the internal and external complexity of young people’s lives, particularly when it is deployed in a psycho-social mode – reckoning both with the intricacies of inner worlds and with the profound effects of social, economic and political structures. If the concept of social harm is a fruitful tool for considering the factors and forces which have a damaging effect on young people’s lives, we believe the concept of mattering is a fruitful tool for understanding the development of their subjectivity (in later chapters, we bring the two lenses together).

This chapter is in two parts:

• • First, we undertake a detailed exploration of ‘mattering’, deploying it as a psycho-social concept which can help us to understand the development of individuals’ subjectivity: the connections between a person’s inner world and the consequential relationships, social groupings, structures, institutions and systems which make up their outer world.

• • Second, we explore the wide-ranging social changes and global processes of the past fifty years which we think may well be making it harder for people to establish a secure sense of mattering.

As in Chapter 2, violence will not take centre stage. This and the previous chapter provide the conceptual and theoretical backdrop for the following chapters, in which we discuss connections between social harm, mattering and violence. Proceeding in this order is in keeping with our wider commitment to avoid defining young people by violence, and to ensure that the attention given to interpersonal physical violence is kept in proportion: if we are to improve the flourishing of children and young people in our society, it is imperative that we do not just look at their lives through the lens of violence.