How can we ensure that adolescent research is really assisting the optimal developmental transitions of young people, now and in the near future? Reframing Adolescent Research suggests that what is needed is a 'paradigm-shift', a movement towards implementing more systemic, innovative and inter-disciplinary approaches to youth research, which are more suited to resolving the real issues that young people face in the twenty-first century. Contributions from world-class academics examine theoretical concerns and methodological challenges to substantive areas in the field, considering possible limitations and weaknesses in current approaches. They argue for the need for 'unorthodox,' systemic inter-disciplinary research which looks beyond the social sciences to consider innovations and novel approaches to the study of adolescence and development across the lifespan. New theories, methods and interventions are presented that are essential to advancing the project of understanding adolescents and how they develop on a global stage. This ground-breaking volume will encourage debate and dialogue on the future of youth research. It is valuable reading for advanced students and researchers in adolescent development and developmental psychology.

We live in a globalized world in which children live in extreme poverty, experience stunted growth, are denied access to education, live as refugees, are subjected to violence, are employed as unskilled workers and even face threats from terror organizations. Drawing attention to these critical challenges, this edited collection develops holistic solutions towards achieving improved conditions and rights of children globally. Taking an interdisciplinary perspective spanning disciplines such as psychology, geography, history, philosophy, theology, education, social law and literature, Being a Child in a Global World includes over twenty chapters which delve into the concept and place of the child in the social order, as well as economic, humanitarian, and political dimensions. Featuring authorship from around the world, and combining the perspectives and knowledge of different disciplines, this edited collection is a truly ground-breaking and comprehensive multidisciplinary study. Providing answers to an urgent challenge of our time, the collection is a must-read for scholars who are interested in the global condition of childhood.

In this book, a range of interesting and diverse papers are presented, which demonstrate the importance of the psychosocial domain to adolescents, as well as the need for intervention programs to facilitate the passage through adolescence to adulthood for young people experiencing difficulties with this developmental transition. The chapters are based on recent research conducted in different countries around the world (eg: Australia, Canada, Israel, Scotland, Ireland and Poland). The book trifurcates into three separate areas, which are reflective of the adolescent domain: the first area highlights the importance of a successful transition from preadolescence to adolescents; the second area highlights the types of difficulties that some adolescents experience when trying to find their identity and sense of place within society; and the third area provides insights into the types of interventions that can be put in place to help adolescents successfully transition into adulthood.

Sudhir Venkatesh the young sociologist who became famous in Freakonomics (Why do drug dealers still live with their moms?) describes his time living with the gangs on the Southside of Chicago and answers another question: what's it like to live in hell?

In the Robert Taylor Homes projects on Chicago's South Side, Sudhir befriends J.T., a gang leader for the Black Kings. As he slowly gains J.T.'s trust, one day, in order to convince Sudhir of his own CEO-like qualities, J.T. makes him leader of the gang...

Why does J.T. make his henchmen, the 'shorties', stay in school? What is the difference between a 'regular' hustler and a 'hype' - and is Peanut telling him the truth about which she is? And, when the FBI finally starts cracking down on the Black Kings, is it time to get out - or is it too late?

Randol Contreras came of age in the South Bronx during the 1980s, a time when the community was devastated by cuts in social services, a rise in arson and abandonment, and the rise of crack-cocaine. For this riveting book, he returns to the South Bronx with a sociological eye and provides an unprecedented insider's look at the workings of a group of Dominican drug robbers. Known on the streets as "Stickup Kids", these men raided and brutally tortured drug dealers storing large amounts of heroin, cocaine, marijuana, and cash. As a participant observer, Randol Contreras offers both a personal and theoretical account for the rise of the Stickup Kids and their violence. He mainly focuses on the lives of neighborhood friends, who went from being crack dealers to drug robbers once their lucrative crack market opportunities disappeared. The result is a stunning, vivid, on-the-ground ethnographic description of a drug robbery's violence, the drug market high life, the criminal life course, and the eventual pain and suffering experienced by the casualties of the Crack Era. Provocative and eye-opening, "The Stickup Kids" urges us to explore the ravages of the drug trade through weaving history, biography, social structure, and drug market forces. It offers a revelatory explanation for drug market violence by masterfully uncovering the hidden social forces that produce violent and self-destructive individuals. Part memoir, part penetrating analysis, this book is engaging, personal, deeply informed, and entirely absorbing.

Human sexuality involves sexual attraction to another person, which for the most part is to the opposite sex (heterosexuality), some to the same sex (homosexuality) or some having both (bisexuality) or not being attracted to anyone in a sexual manner (asexuality). Human sexuality is determined by many factors, like cultural, political, legal and philosophical aspects of life, but also morality, ethics, theology, spirituality and religion. Sexuality is as old as mankind and interest in sexual activity is very much related to the onset of puberty and the period of schooling. In this book, we have gathered papers from around the world in order to discuss issues of sexuality from an international perspective.

Over the last decade, "youth" has become increasingly central to policy, development, media and public debates and conflicts across the world - whether as an ideological symbol, social category or political actor. Set against a backdrop of contemporary political economy, Youth Rising? seeks to understand exactly how and why youth has become such a popular and productive social category and concept. The book provocatively argues that the rise and spread of global neoliberalism has not only led youth to become more politically and symbolically salient, but also to expand to encompass a growing range of ages and individuals of different class, race, ethnic, national and religious backgrounds. Employing both theoretical and historical analysis, authors Mayssoun Sukarieh and Stuart Tannock trace the development of youth within the context of capitalism, where it has long functioned as a category for social control. The book's chapters critically analyze the growing fears of mass youth unemployment and a "lost generation" that spread around the world in the wake of the global financial crisis. They question as well the relentless focus on youth in the reporting and discussion of recent global protests and uprisings. By helping develop a better understanding of such phenomena and critically and reflexively investigating the very category and identity of youth, Youth Rising? offers a fresh and sobering challenge to the field of youth studies and to widespread claims about the relationship between youth and social change.

Literature and psychoanalysis are different media for exploring the world of the mind, and in this finely crafted book Beta Copley gives equal weight to literary, psychotherapeutic and social perspectives on adolescence. Inspired by the writings of Klein, Bion and Meltzer on groups and on mental states, she is also mindful of the problems associated with treating literary works as case histories. She addresses three celebrated literary works with adolescence in mind: Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet and Much Ado about Nothing and Pushkin's Eugene Onegin. For the reader these will evoke their own memories of love, conflict and growing up, and set the stage for the clinical material in the second half of the book. She also returns to the oft-studied theme of adolescent development and the social framework; and gives rich examples of problems of young people in areas such as leaving home, developing sexuality, and social conflict. These will illuminate not only the therapeutic work itself, but something of the basic struggles of adolescence itself. Beta Copley illustrates the core approach of intensive one-to-one work with adolescents. This is neither widely available nor always appropriate. She looks at other forms of intervention derived from it, which may also be of inestimable benefit for young people in need.

This pioneering collection provides, for the first time, an international and transdisciplinary reflection on youth, history and queer sexualities and genders. Since the 1970s there has been an explosion in research focusing on LGBTQ history and on the lives of LGBTQ young people, but these two research areas have seldom been brought together explicitly. Bridging LGBTQ historical scholarship and contemporary queer youth cultural studies, this book marks out pathways for thinking more about youth in LGBTQ history and more about history in contemporary understandings of LGBTQ youth. Examining histories from the nineteenth century through to the recent past, contributors examine queer youth histories in continental Europe, Britain, the United States of America, New Zealand, Australia, Canada, Ireland, India, Malaysia and Hong Kong.

This book paints a portrait of adolescent psychology in 4 major regions: Africa/the Middle East, Asia, the Americas, and Europe. Featuring 24 revised and updated chapters from the International Encyclopedia of Adolescence (2007), readers are introduced to the way the majority of the world's adolescents actually live. Most contributors are indigenous to the country they review. As a whole the book paints an engaging panorama of adolescent life around the world, broadening students' cultural perspective. All chapters follow the same template to make it easier to compare topics across countries: Background (including demographics, ethnic diversity, and political system), Period of Adolescence, Beliefs, Gender, the Self, Family Relationships, Friends and Peers/Youth Culture, Love and Sexuality, Health Risk Behavior, Education, Work, Media, Politics and Military, and Unique Issues. Each chapter contains a map and photos and a list of references and suggested readings. The introductory chapter explains why the countries were selected and introduces the book's common themes. The section on Africa and the Middle East introduces students to teen life in Cameroon, one of the few places left where adolescents go through formal puberty rituals. In addition, readers learn about adolescent life in Ethiopia, Israel, Morocco, Nigeria, and Sudan. Next we travel to Asia -- China, India, Indonesia, and the Philippines. Here readers see how economic growth in India and China is creating opportunities for young people. In The Americas, readers are introduced to life in Argentina, Canada, Chile, Mexico, Peru, and the United States. The book concludes with adolescent life in Europe including the Czech Republic, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Russia, Sweden, and the UK. Intended for courses in adolescent psychology, lifespan development, and/or cultural (cross-cultural) psychology taught in departments of psychology, human development and family studies, sociology, and education, this book will also appeal to researchers and clinicians who study or work with adolescents.

This book is based upon a special issue published in the International Journal on Disability and Human Development and permission has been obtained from the publisher De Gruyter in Berlin to publish this modified version of the papers in this book. There are several areas of research that should be conducted with reference to Chinese adolescents experiencing economic disadvantage. First, there is a need to understand how factors in different ecological systems influence the psychological well-being of poor adolescents. Second, as family social capital is an important resource within families experiencing economic disadvantage, studies on how different family processes affect adolescent development should be carried out. Third, as far as adolescent developmental outcomes are concerned, it is argued that besides measures of morbidity and symptoms, adolescent developmental assets and strengths should be studied. Fourth, as studies on parental differences on family processes are almost non-existent in the context of poverty, it is important to study this issue in adolescents experiencing economic disadvantage. In response to these research gaps, they were examined in the papers in this special issue. In this book, several papers reporting evaluation findings for the second piloting exercise are included. Because there are few validated positive youth development programs in the Chinese context, it is our modest wish that the accumulated evidence can give us some insights about the usefulness of having positive youth development subjects designed for university students.

Youth development represents a complex set of individual transitions embedded in a particular socio-political environment, cultural context, and historical timing. Though turning points are experienced across the life span, changes may possibly be even more salient in youth given the fundamental biological, cognitive, psychological, and social transformations occurring at this developmental stage. This book is a joint effort by American, European, and Asian scholars who provide a multi and interdisciplinary view of the current state of youth development and discuss a world-wide range of timely issues. Topics discussed include health concerns for youth in the areas of evaluation of nutritional outcomes, heightened risks of cardiovascular disease, psychiatric treatment, and mental health; and socialisation and contextual effects are also covered in the areas of youth violence, bullying and cyber-bullying; treatment needs in substance use disorders, contexts outside school and family, and challenges in the school environment.

In the prevention science approach, focus is put on identifying risk and protective factors in adolescent risk behaviour. Based on this approach, many research and prevention programs have been generated in the past few decades. Nevertheless, over-emphasis of adolescent developmental problems has been criticised as focusing too much on adolescent developmental problems and pathologies. In response to this criticism, an alternative approach highlighting the importance of positive youth development has been proposed.

Congress has indicated a strong interest in ensuring that today's young people, those age 16 through 24, attain the education and employment experience necessary to make the transition to adulthood as skilled workers and taxpayers. In the wake of the December 2007-June 2009 recession, questions remain about the employment prospects of youth today and the possible effects on their future earnings and participation in the labour market. This book provides context for policy-makers on the youth employment situation. It includes data on labour force participation, employment, and unemployment in the post-World War II period, with a focus on trends since 2000. This discussion compares rates based on age, gender, race/ethnicity, and income, where applicable and also explores the factors that influence youth participation in the labour force and their prospects for employment.

Adolescents in Public Housing incorporates data from multiple public-housing sites in large U.S. cities to shine much-needed light on African American youth living in non-HOPE VI public-housing neighborhoods. With findings grounded in research, the book gives practitioners and policy makers a solid grasp of the attitudes toward deviance, alcohol and drug abuse, and depressive symptoms characterizing these communities, and links them explicitly to gaps in policy and practice. A long-overdue study of a system affecting not just a minority of children but the American public at large, Adolescents in Public Housing initiates new, productive paths for research on this vulnerable population and contributes to preventive interventions that may improve the lives of affected youth.

The transition to adulthood in the United States has changed in recent decades as many of the traditional milestones that mark adulthood, such as household establishment and marriage, have changed or been delayed. Among these changes are increased participation and attainment in education; extenuation of educational completion and subsequent delayed participation in the labour force; and delays in child rearing. This book examines numerous aspects of the lives of youth and young adults, ages 14 to 24 in the United States over the last several decades. Discussed are the status and trend data from multiple surveys on the distribution of youth and their family structure; on school, employment, health-related factors and future plans.

There are growing numbers of youth who identify as transgender, and as a result, clinicians and counselors are in need of an informed resource that covers the basics of gender identity and expression. This book responds to that need by setting out clear advice and support on working with transgender and non-binary youth with regard to their identity, mental health, personal and family life and their medical and social transition as well as offering additional resources and reading lists. Along with the basic information needed to understand transgender clients, Irwin Krieger applies this general knowledge to work with transgender teens at what can be the most critical and problematic stage in a trans person's life. Specifically, issues of gender identity awareness and expression for youth along with the mental and physical challenges that puberty presents are discussed. This guide will inform counselors and therapists to support transgender teens in their practice, while providing the necessary tools for opening up the conversation on transgender issues in families and schools.

With the growing adolescent developmental problems such as substance abuse, mental health problems and school violence, many primary prevention programs targeting specific adolescent developmental problems and positive youth development programs have been designed in the West. In contrast, there are very few systematic and multi-year positive youth development programs in Hong Kong. To promote holistic development among adolescents the Hong Kong Jockey Club Charities Trust approved a grant to launch a project entitled "P.A.T.H.S. to Adulthood: A Jockey Club Youth Enhancement Scheme" and invited academics of five universities to form a Research Team with the Chinese University of Hong Kong as the lead institution to develop a multi-year universal positive youth development program to promote holistic adolescent development in Hong Kong. Besides from developing the program, the Research Team also provides training for teachers and social workers who implement the program and carry out longitudinal evaluation of the project. This book highlights some of the latest research in the area of positive youth development.

As the world's youth population continues to grow and interact globally in an instant through blogging, texting, and social networking, youth ministry is adapting in equal fashion. Authors Terry Linhart and David Livermore offer advice that's substantiated by more than twenty prominent worldwide youth leaders: be prepared. Global Youth Ministry is the first textbook to recognize the phenomenon of global youth ministry and to coordinate leading youth ministry voices in a discussion of the theological, theoretical, sociocultural, and historical issues that shape ministries around the world. Traditionally, students of international youth ministries have had to wade through a range of sources, perspectives, and agendas. This versatile text distills all that, and focuses on real-world experiences, challenges, and issues that are part of international ministries. This book is essential reading for undergraduate and graduate-level students and youth ministry leaders who have a heart for missions, social awareness and spiritual empathy, and a desire to serve young people around the world.

Choice's Outstanding Academic Title list for 2013 2013 Honorable Mention for the Distinguished Book Award presented by the Midwest Sociological Society Honorable Mention for the Charles H. Cooley Award for Outstanding Book from the Society for the Study of Symbolic Interaction Illuminates the misunderstood meaning of self-injury in the 21st century Cutting, burning, branding, and bone-breaking are all types of self-injury, or the deliberate, non-suicidal destruction of one's own body tissue, a practice that emerged from obscurity in the 1990s and spread dramatically as a typical behavior among adolescents. Long considered a suicidal gesture, The Tender Cut argues instead that self-injury is often a coping mechanism, a form of teenage angst, an expression of group membership, and a type of rebellion, converting unbearable emotional pain into manageable physical pain. Based on the largest, qualitative, non-clinical population of self-injurers ever gathered, noted ethnographers Patricia and Peter Adler draw on 150 interviews with self-injurers from all over the world, along with 30,000-40,000 internet posts in chat rooms and communiques. Their 10-year longitudinal research follows the practice of self-injury from its early days when people engaged in it alone and did not know others, to the present, where a subculture has formed via cyberspace that shares similar norms, values, lore, vocabulary, and interests. An important portrait of a troubling behavior, The Tender Cut illuminates the meaning of self-injury in the 21st century, its effects on current and former users, and its future as a practice for self-discovery or a cry for help.

Overwhelmingly, Black teenage girls are negatively represented in national and global popular discourses, either as being "at risk" for teenage pregnancy, obesity, or sexually transmitted diseases, or as helpless victims of inner city poverty and violence. Such popular representations are pervasive and often portray Black adolescents' consumer and leisure culture as corruptive, uncivilized, and pathological.

In "She's Mad Real," Oneka LaBennett draws on over a decade of researching teenage West Indian girls in the Flatbush and Crown Heights sections of Brooklyn to argue that Black youth are in fact strategic consumers of popular culture and through this consumption they assert far more agency in defining race, ethnicity, and gender than academic and popular discourses tend to acknowledge. Importantly, LaBennett also studies West Indian girls' consumer and leisure culture within public spaces in order to analyze how teens like China are marginalized and policed as they attempt to carve out places for themselves within New York's contested terrains.

Since the late nineteenth century, Jews and Arabs have been locked in an intractable battle for national recognition in a land of tremendous historical and geopolitical significance. While historians and political scientists have long analyzed the dynamics of this bitter conflict, rarely has an archeology of the mind of those who reside within the matrix of conflict been attempted. This book not only offers a psychological analysis of the consequences of conflict for the psyche, it develops an innovative, compelling, and cross-disciplinary argument about the mutual constitution of culture and mind through the process of life-story construction. But the book pushes boundaries further through an analysis of two peace education programs designed to fundamentally alter the nature of young Israeli and Palestinian life stories. Hammack argues that these popular interventions, rooted in the idea of prejudice reduction through contact and the cultivation of 'cosmopolitan' identities, are fundamentally flawed due to their refusal to deal with the actual political reality of young Israeli and Palestinian lives and their attempt to construct an alternative narrative of great hope but little resonance for Israelis and Palestinians. Grounded in over a century of literature that spans the social sciences, Hammack's analysis of young Israeli and Palestinian lives captures the complex, dynamic relationship among politics, history, and identity and offers a provocative and audacious proposal for psychology and peace education.

Dr. Haim Omer builds on his previous work to present a new model of authority for parents, teachers, and community workers that is suitable for today's free and pluralistic societies. This new authority contrasts with traditional authority in that it emphasizes self-control and persistence over control of the child, a network of support over a strict hierarchy, taking mutual responsibility for escalations over holding the child solely responsible, patience over threats, non-violent resistance over physical force, and transparency over secrecy. In addition to a thorough discussion of the underlying theory, The New Authority presents a practical program for families, schools, and communities. Dr. Omer provides specific instructions to combat violence and risky behavior at home and in school, increase parent and teacher interest and support, and implement interventions that increase safety, improve atmosphere, and generate community cohesiveness.

More than two decades after their parents rose up against the excesses of the Shah, increasing numbers of young Iranians are risking jail for things their counterparts in the West take for granted: wearing makeup, slow dancing at parties, holding hands with members of the opposite sex. Arrests of youngsters often take place at parties raided by hardline religious paramilitaries of roughly their own age, brandishing AK-47s. And every day anxious parents queue at the courthouse to bail out their children, who - in furious defiance of Ayatollah Khomeini's brand of sombre religiosity - have been detained for 'moral crimes'. Kaveh Basmenji, who spent his own youth amidst the turbulence of the Islamic Revolution, argues that Iran's youth are in near-open revolt for want of greater personal freedom, in furious defiance of the mullahs and their brand of sombre religiousity. Through candid interviews with young people, and in a careful assessment of Iran today (including a special chapter on the implications of the recent election to the presidency of hardliner Mahmoud Ahmadinejad), Basmenji gets to the heart of the matter: what do Iran's youth want, and how far are their elders prepared to accommodate them?

In low-income U.S. cities, street fights between teenage girls are common. These fights take place at school, on street corners, or in parks, when one girl provokes another to the point that she must either "step up" or be labeled a "punk." Typically, when girls engage in violence that is not strictly self-defense, they are labeled "delinquent," their actions taken as a sign of emotional pathology. However, in Why Girls Fight, Cindy D. Ness demonstrates that in poor urban areas this kind of street fighting is seen as a normal part of girlhood and a necessary way to earn respect among peers, as well as a way for girls to attain a sense of mastery and self-esteem in a social setting where legal opportunities for achievement are not otherwise easily available. Ness spent almost two years in west and northeast Philadelphia to get a sense of how teenage girls experience inflicting physical harm and the meanings they assign to it. While most existing work on girls' violence deals exclusively with gangs, Ness sheds new light on the everyday street fighting of urban girls, arguing that different cultural standards associated with race and class influence the relationship that girls have to physical aggression.