How do young people get by in hard times and hard places? Have they become a "lost generation" disconnected from society's mainstream? Do popular ideas about social exclusion or a welfare-dependent underclass really connect with the lived experiences of the so-called "disaffected," "disengaged" and "difficult-to-reach"? Based on close-up research with young men and women from localities suffering social exclusion in extreme form," Disconnected Youth?" will appeal to all those who are interested in understanding and tackling the problems of growing up in Britain's poor neighborhoods.

This timely volume offers an in-depth theoretical analysis of children's experiences growing up with mobile internet technologies. Drawing on up-to-date research, it explores the relationship between childhood as a social and cultural construction and the plethora of mobile internet technologies which have become ubiquitous in everyday life.

This collection explores mobile childhoods: from Latvia and Estonia to Finland; from Latvia to the United Kingdom; from Russia to Finland; and cyclical mobility by the Roma between Romania and Finland. The chapters examine how east-to-north European family mobility brings out different kinds of multilocal childhoods. The children experience unequal starting points and further twists throughout their childhood and within their family lives. Through the innovative use of ethnographic and participatory methods, the contributors demonstrate how diverse migrant children's everyday lives are, and how children themselves as well as their translocal families actively pursue better lives. The topics include naming and food practices, travel, schooling, summer holidays, economic and other inequalities, and the importance of age in understanding children's lives. Translocal Childhoods and Family Mobility in East and North Europe will be of interest to students and scholars across a range of disciplines, including sociology, anthropology and human geography.

This book discusses current challenges in Japan, focusing on the nation's rapidly aging population and low birth rate, along with persistent public bond issues with heavy interest payments, the potential collapse of social security systems, and income inequality, as well as the global picture. In turn, it examines the accessibility of global fossil fuels and feasibility of large-scale solar energy use. A new theory of money, interest, and capital is put forward, together with a proposal for an alternative system of international monetary cooperation, to promote a more sustainable and equitable world. Specific topics discussed include * the inverted population pyramid, due to the dramatic change in human life spans and declining birth rates; * the rapidly shrinking workforce, aging population, and declining GDP share sourced from industry; * disproportionate debt expansion due to public bond issues and coping with a persistent budget deficit; * the potential collapse of social security systems combined with income inequality; and * how to mitigate these bio-economic predicaments. Global Energy Sources offers an essential guide for policymakers, economists, researchers, and all those concerned with establishing a sustainable and equitable society from both energy and monetary perspectives. Further, it will be of interest to readers around the world, as the lessons learned from Japan are crucial to other developed societies that may eventually face the same types of challenge.

Incorporating qualitative and quantitative data and research methods from both demography and social anthropology, this book explores demographic trends in contemporary Japan's rapidly aging society. The contributors describe and analyze trends by addressing the ways in which demographic change is experienced in the context of family. The book considers the social effects, welfare issues, and private and public responses to demographic change and how this change has influenced the experiences of family caregivers and the elderly themselves. It offers both a specific regional contribution to the emerging field of demographic anthropology and an anthropological contribution to cross-disciplinary research on aging.

The problem of children 'in trouble' is the subject of repeated media panics and of heated political rhetoric. Drawing on wide-ranging original research, Carol Hayden reviews evidence about children in trouble across a range of circumstances, demonstrating the tensions between welfare and justice, care and control in the treatment of these vulnerable young people and evaluating the methodological as well as practical implications of the current 'what works' debate within social policy. All students and professionals working with children, whether in social work, teaching or the criminal justice system, will find this book invaluable.

Examining context-specific conditions in which girls live, learn, work, play, and organize deepens the understanding of place-making practices of girls and young women worldwide. Focusing on place across health, literary and historical studies, art history, communications, media studies, sociology, and education allows for investigations of how girlhood is positioned in relation to interdisciplinary and transnational research methodologies, media environments, geographic locations, history, and social spaces. This book offers a comprehensive reading on how girlhood scholars construct and deploy research frameworks that directly engage girls in the research process.

Examining context-specific conditions in which girls live, learn, work, play, and organize deepens the understanding of place-making practices of girls and young women worldwide. Focusing on place across health, literary and historical studies, art history, communications, media studies, sociology, and education allows for investigations of how girlhood is positioned in relation to interdisciplinary and transnational research methodologies, media environments, geographic locations, history, and social spaces. This book offers a comprehensive reading on how girlhood scholars construct and deploy research frameworks that directly engage girls in the research process.

This book examines the processes by which older people make housing decisions and the impact such decisions have on the construction of their lives. Evidence is included from a major three-year research study, where older people told stories of their lives. The authors argue that housing decisions are not necessarily the result of rational, analytical and objective thinking. The contribution of other ways of decision-making is often hidden, as when people think intuitively, act impulsively, or for essentially emotional reasons.

Children born during the post-WWII era of peace and prosperity entered history at a time dominated by I-Like-Ike politics and domestic security. As they approached adolescence, however, their world was shaken by major cultural, economic, social, and political upheaval. And although it was time of great innovation and progress, a sense of chaos and bitterness began to envelop the country. It was the a ~60s. For many Americans, a mere mention of this decade evokes an extraordinary time and place in the countrya (TM)s - and their own - history.

Adolescents who had been enjoying the technological and medical advances of the era - television, drive-in movies, rock-and-roll, vaccinations that prevented once-incurable diseases - now were also experiencing the fallout from the Civil Rights Movement, domestic terrorism, stagflation, and (perhaps most significant) the Vietnam War.

From Adolescence to Adulthood in the Vietnam Era provides a unique, detailed, long-term study of the psychological and social worlds of male adolescents who were on the cusp of adulthood as the 1960s were ending. This longitudinal analysis follows adolescent boys who graduated with the class of 1969 and transitioned into adulthood either through military service, full-time employment, or college life. The results examine the different pathways these boys chose and the affect these choices had on their transition from adolescents to young adult men.

What is a 'we' a collective and how can we use such communal self-knowledge to help people? This book is about collectivity, participation, and subjectivity and about the social theories that may help us understand these matters. It also seeks to learn from the innovative practices and ideas of a community of social/youth workers in Copenhagen between 1987 and 2003, who developed a pedagogy through creating collectives and mobilizing young people as participants. The theoretical and practical traditions are combined in a unique methodology viewing research as a contentious modeling of prototypical practices. Through this dialogue, it develops an original trans-disciplinary critical theory and practice of collective subjectivity for which the ongoing construction and overcoming of common sense, or ideology, is central. It also points to ways of relating discourse with agency, and fertilizing insights from interactionism and ideology theories in a cultural-historical framework.

An informed and often moving account of the crucial role of place in the lives of elders and what researchers and city planners are doing-and need to do-to make communities more age-friendly. Elderburbia: Aging with a Sense of Place in America argues that aging is not about time and the body, but about place and relationships. Drawing on the fascinating, multidisciplinary field of ethnography, it gives readers a deeper understanding of how the aging experience is shaped by where people call home, as well as a look at what makes a place well-suited for post-retirement living. Elderburbia combines cutting-edge scholarship with practical advice. The book provides an introduction to pivotal research on the broad subject of aging and place, including studies of migration and relocation. It also takes readers inside innovative elder-friendly community planning around the United States, particularly AdvantAge-an initiative to help counties, cities, and towns prepare for the growing number of older adults who are "aging in place," as opposed to moving to retiree-only communities. Everyone from individuals and families to social workers, activists, and city officials will find this a helpful, enlightening resource. 20 individual profiles of community development initiatives and design guidelines for elder-friendly communities, participatory research, and planning methods Excerpts from original ethnographic research on the sense of place and meaning of home, sociability design guidelines, and participation methods Graphics depicting elder-friendly community indicators and four domains of an elder-friendly community An extensive bibliography drawing on sources from anthropology, community planning, gerontology, and the broad literature on sense of place and phenomenology

This collection critically examines twenty-first century representations of ageing, focusing on various media images and discourses as well as individuals' own experiences and self-presentations of ageing, drawing on innovative new empirical data.

This book explores care-leavers' access to their personal records. People who grew up in care in previous decades may know little about their family nor understand why they were placed in care nor how decisions were made about their lives. Personal records can be a source of this information. Murray posits that it is crucial that those releasing these records understand their significance. Taking a person-centred approach, the book is based on the moving life history accounts of people who have sought their records. Finding Lost Childhoods highlights the importance of records to their identity formation, recounts what they discovered about themselves and their family, and discusses the consequences of finding this information. With a focus on policy and practice implications, the book will be of particular interest to those engaged in the work of releasing records, as well as care-leavers themselves, professional bodies, and students and scholars with an interest in social work, policy studies, welfare studies and youth work.

This book explores the role of children and young people within early modern England's Catholic minority. It examines Catholic attempts to capture the next generation, Protestant reactions to these initiatives, and the social, legal and political contexts in which young people formed, maintained and attempted to explain their religious identity.

The presence of Asian immigrants and citizens has a long history in the United States. Asian American Children: A Historical Handbook and Guide provides insights into the diverse experience of these children and their families from their first appearance here to the present. Essays review topics such as identity, family structures, labor, gender, and class. Selected primary documents review topics such as racial quotas, biculturalism, and refugees. This is the first work to cover the historical and the contemporary experience of these children from a multiplicity of views, using essays and documents. Beginning c. 1850, this work relates the experiences and context in which diverse groups of Asian American children lived their lives. The voices of children, included in the primary documents, provide a vivid narrative of immigrant life over the past 150 years. While the lives of children were generally included in historical narratives of the country, a focus specifically on children allows the reader to more fullyunderstand the central place of family in the economic and social development of a nation.

In a constantly changing world, individuals are forever growing to meet the challenges and developments that emerge around them. In contemporary society, technology is at the heart of change. Literature, too, reflects the evolution of culture and increasingly represents and considers technology. And as children become young adults, their reading helps shape their understanding of the world. This book examines representative works of science fiction, children's literature, and popular culture to show how these works reflect the process of growing up in a technological world. The volume looks at the simple picture books and comic books that appeal to small children; the formulaic adventures that fascinate older children; the films and television programs that are watched by children and young adolescents; the music videos and programming that appeal to young adults; and the popular novels that interest older readers. Included are discussions of Superman, the Hardy Boys, Star Trek, science fiction films, and music videos. The book points to similarities among popular culture, science fiction, and children's literature and demonstrates the relevance of these works to contemporary society.

Educating young people about sex and sexuality remains one of the most controversial and political areas of the school curriculum. Drawing on young people's own understandings of their sexual selves, knowledge and practices "Sexual Subjects" considers the implications for how we conceptualize the effectiveness of sexuality education. Reshaping thinking around youthful (hetero)sexualities "Sexual Subjects" challenges current approaches to teaching about sex and sexuality.

This text provides a critical analysis of the social construction of childhood and children's agency. Through an interdisciplinary synthesis combining social theory, social policy and the empirical findings of social science research, it bridges the current gap between theory and practice, offering an incisive theoretical account of childhood that is grounded in substantive areas of children's lives such as health, education, crime and the family. This furthers understanding of the impact of policy on children's everyday lives and social experiences.

This book critically explores the world of older prisoners to provide a more nuanced understanding of imprisonment at old age. Through an ethnographical study of male and female older prisoners in two Belgian prison settings, one in which older prisoners are integrated and one in which they are segregated, it informs debates and seeks to recognise ageist discourse, attitudes, practices in prison. The Older Prisoner seeks to situate the older prisoner from both a penological and gerontological perspective, organised around the following broad themes: the construction of the older prisoner, the physical prison world, the social prison world, surviving prison and giving meaning. The book allows readers to navigate between contrasting perspectives and voices rather than reinforcing traditional narratives and prevailing discourses on the older prisoner. In doing so, it hopes to open up a broader dialogue on ageing and punishment. It also offers insights into the concept of meaning in life as an analytical tool to study prisoners.

This International Volume of Sociological Studies of Children and Youth shows the breadth of current empirical research that focuses on children and youth around the world. Coming from a range of methodological and theoretical orientations, this volume showcases the lives of children and the policies that shape children's lives on five continents. Across these research articles, it becomes clear that we cannot continue to assume a certain meaning of childhood, because this concept is bound by both cultural and structural factors. Cultural expectations influence how societies view children and how children view themselves. A handful of these studies show how immigrant children and youth provide particularly interesting insight as they navigate more than one cultural context. Structural factors also become salient, as children come from unequal backgrounds, different levels of economic development, and face varying political concerns. While these papers come from different doorsteps of the world, cultural and structural threads of continuity connect them as meaningful for children. This volume illustrates how international childhood researchers can use current concepts and theories into unlikely contexts exposing their limitations and helping to inform more versatile and robust lines of thinking for children and youth studies.

This book examines the lives of the sentenced to argue that 'sentencing' should be re-conceived to consider the human perspective. It combines a range of modern criminological and legal theories together with interviews with prisoners in New South Wales, to examine their lives during and beyond completing the terms of imprisonment, for a more continuous and coherent perspective on the process of 'sentencing'. This book makes a strong argument for the practical advantages of listening to the voices of the sentenced and it is therefore a useful tool for the correctional community engaged in providing services and programmes to reduce recidivism. A methodological and well-researched text, this book will be of particular interest to scholars of criminal justice and the penal system, as well as policy makers and practitioners.

This invaluable addition to Springer s Explorations of Educational Purpose series is a revelatory ethnographic account of the visual material culture of contemporary youths in North America. The author s detailed study follows apparently dissimilar groups (black and Latino/a in a New York City after-school club, and white and Indigenous in a small Canadian community) as they inflect their nascent identities with a sophisticated sense of visual material culture in today s globalized world. It provides detailed proof of how much ethnography can add to what we know about young people s development, in addition to its potential as a model to explore new and significant avenues in pedagogy.

Supported by a wealth of ethnographic evidence, the analysis tracks its subjects responses to strikingly diverse material ranging from autobiographical accounts by rap artists to the built environment. It shows how young people from the world s cultural epicenter, just like their counterparts in the sub-Arctic, construct racial, geographic and gender identities in ways that are subtly responsive to what they see around them, blending localized characteristics with more widely shared visual references that are now universally accessible through the Web. The work makes a persuasive case that youthful engagement with visual material culture is a relational and productive activity that is simultaneously local and global, at once constrained and enhanced by geography, and possesses a potent and life-affirming authenticity. Densely interwoven with young people s perspectives, the author s account sets out an innovative and interdisciplinary conceptual framework affording fresh insights into how today s youth assimilate what they perceive to be significant.

Supported by a wealth of ethnographic evidence, the analysis tracks its subjects responses to strikingly diverse material ranging from autobiographical accounts by rap artists to the built environment. It shows how young people from the world s cultural epicenter, just like their counterparts in the sub-Arctic, construct racial, geographic and gender identities in ways that are subtly responsive to what they see around them, blending localized characteristics with more widely shared visual references that are now universally accessible through the Web. The work makes a persuasive case that youthful engagement with visual material culture is a relational and productive activity that is simultaneously local and global, at once constrained and enhanced by geography, and possesses a potent and life-affirming authenticity. Densely interwoven with young people s perspectives, the author s account sets out an innovative and interdisciplinary conceptual framework affording fresh insights into how today s youth assimilate what they perceive to be significant.

Supported by a wealth of ethnographic evidence, the analysis tracks its subjects responses to strikingly diverse material ranging from autobiographical accounts by rap artists to the built environment. It shows how young people from the world s cultural epicenter, just like their counterparts in the sub-Arctic, construct racial, geographic and gender identities in ways that are subtly responsive to what they see around them, blending localized characteristics with more widely shared visual references that are now universally accessible through the Web. The work makes a persuasive case that youthful engagement with visual material culture is a relational and productive activity that is simultaneously local and global, at once constrained and enhanced by geography, and possesses a potent and life-affirming authenticity. Densely interwoven with young people s perspectives, the author s account sets out an innovative and interdisciplinary conceptual framework affording fresh insights into how today s youth assimilate what they perceive to be significant."