This Festschrift is published in honor of Alex C. Michalos, a great scholar and inspiration to many upcoming and famous academics and practitioners. The Festschrift celebrates his lifelong, outstanding scientific and cultural contribution to Quality of Life Research. It contains contributions written by the most prestigious and renowned scholars in the field of social indicators research and quality of life studies. Taken together, the contributions from scholars around the world reflect Michalos' stance that even though there may be differences in individual scientific positions, the language in the field of quality of life has no limits and boundaries.

This text collates and examines the jurisprudence that currently exists in respect of blood-tied genetic connection, arguing that the right to identity often rests upon the ability to "identify" biological ancestors, which in turn requires an absence of adult-centric veto norms. It looks firstly to the nature and purpose of the blood-tie as a unique item of birthright heritage, whose socio-cultural value perhaps lies mainly in preventing, or perhaps engendering, a feared or revered sense of otherness. It then traces the evolution of the various policies on telling and accessing truth, tying these to the diverse body of psychological theories on the need for unbroken attachments and the harms of being origin deprived. The law of the blood-tie comprises of several overlapping and sometimes conflicting strands: the international law provisions and UNCRC Country Reports on the child s right to identity, recent Strasbourg case law, and domestic case law from a number of jurisdictions on issues such as legal parentage, vetoes on post-adoption contact, court-delegated decision-making, overturned placements and the best interests of the relinquished child. The text also suggests a means of preventing the discriminatory effects of denied ancestry, calling upon domestic jurists, legislators, policy-makers and parents to be mindful of the long-term effects of genetic kinlessness upon origin deprived persons, especially where they have been tasked with protecting this vulnerable section of the population."

This open access book details tools and procedures for data collections of hard-to-reach, hard-to-survey populations. Inside, readers will discover first-hand insights from experts who share their successes as well as their failures in their attempts to identify and measure human vulnerabilities across the life course. Coverage first provides an introduction on studying vulnerabilities based on the Total Error Survey framework. Next, the authors present concrete examples on how to survey such populations as the elderly, migrants, widows and widowers, couples facing breast cancer, employees and job seekers, displaced workers, and teenagers during their transition to adulthood. In addition, one essay discusses the rationale for the use of life history calendars in studying social and psychological vulnerability while another records the difficulty the authors faced when trying to set-up an online social network to collect relevant data. Overall, this book demonstrates the importance to have, from the very beginning, a dialogue between specialists of survey methods and the researchers working on social dynamics across the life span. It will serve as an indispensable resource for social scientists interested in gathering and analyzing data on vulnerable individuals and populations in order to construct longitudinal data bases and properly target social policies.

Making Space for Queer-Identifying Religious Youth charts young people's understanding of religion, investigating the experiences, choices and identities of queer - lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender - youth involved in inclusive churches. Rather than assume that sexuality and religion, and in this case Christianity, are separate and divergent paths, this book explores how they might mutually and complexly construct one another in times of religious-sexual citizenship. Taylor presents a methodological discussion on the 'public sociology' of religion and sexuality studies, and provides an illustrative focus on substantive fields often separated in disciplinary dis-orientations. These examples illustrate how participation shapes identifications; how marginalization and discrimination are managed; and how religion and sexuality serve as vehicles for various forms of belonging, identification and expression. 'Religion' and 'sexuality' are mutually constructed through gendered spaces, online spaces, and sensory spaces.

This critical account of the American Girl brand explores what its books and dolls communicate to girls about femininity, racial identity, ethnicity, and what it means to be an American. Emilie Zaslow begins by tracing the development of American Girl and situates the company's growth and popularity in a social history of girl power media culture. She then weaves analyses of the collection's narrative and material representations with qualitative research on mothers and girls. Examining the dolls with both a critical eye and a fan's curiosity, Zaslow raises questions about the values espoused by this iconic American brand.

Based on an extensive national survey of workers and four separate industry-specific surveys, Generations and Work will examine and provide answers to the most common issues and problems of multi generational work by assessing differences and commonalities between and among generations.

This book identifies chances and barriers women face in their transition to adulthood in Egypt, Iran, Jordan, and Syria. Adopting a life course perspective, it provides a new integrative micro-macro-theoretical framework and innovative analyses of individual life courses based on longitudinal data.

This book offers a bird's-eye view of the current trends, opportunities, and challenges related to Asian youth travellers, and it also presents a holistic framework for future research to build upon. Managerial and policy implications are provided for the tourism and hospitality industry and government agencies to better accommodate the needs of Asian youth travellers - a unique and diverse market that is yet to be fully unveiled to the world. The book investigates the key characteristics that define contemporary Asian youth travellers, adopting a broad definition of Asia. While it includes relatively mature markets, it also features emerging markets in Southeast Asia, South Asia, and West Asia. The book looks at different forms of tourism undertaken by Asian travellers, encompassing educational tourism, adventure tourism, working holiday, self-driving tourism, dark tourism, volunteer tourism, and cultural tourism. A wide range of topics are discussed, from history to current trends, from motivations to constraints, from the influence of culture and religion on travel behaviour to the search of social freedom through travel, and from destination choice to destination avoidance. The findings and interpretations are drawn from diverse and novel research methods, such as netnography, visual anthropology, historiography, interview, focus group, survey, and document analysis.

This book provides an understanding of the processes in which unions engage with young people, and views and opinions young people hold relating to collective representation. It features a selection of specific national cases of high relevance to contemporary debates of precariousness, trade union revitalization strategies and austerity policies.

This books examines the increased prominence of children's rights in education to ask whether we are witnessing a paradigm shift within the education system. The author uses a wide range of case studies from Scotland and England to examine the extent to which children and young people with Special Educational Needs/ Additional Support Needs are in practice able to realise their new rights of participation and redress. In addition, the book examines the ways in which the child's capacity to make independent decisions is understood and acted upon in different contexts, and the factors which ultimately promote or inhibit the rights of young people and children with SEN/ ASN. The author asks whether, in a context of tight budgets and often limited support, this new emphasis on children's rights can be seen as 'window-dressing' and a distraction from reductions in support for social welfare.

This collection of essays represents some of the most important recent research into changing patterns of family, household and community life. It brings together some of the leading sociologists in the field to explore how these informal social relationships change over time and the life course. It will be essential reading on courses concerned with the family and youth sociology.

This book uses various concepts of 'age' to examine young people's voting behaviour in six European countries between 1981 and 2000. It addresses questions such as: what are the determinants of voting choices among young people, and to what extent are these factors different from those of adults? Through an innovative approach aimed at studying party choice with a strong empirical orientation, the author argues that age is less important in influencing voting choices than having been young and socialized to politics in a given historical period. Ultimately, values and political factors explain young people's voting choices more than social identities, which marks a change from previous generations. This book will appeal to students and scholars in comparative politics, electoral behaviour, party politics, and political sociology.

This book illustrates the multifaceted applications of clinical psychology in multi-cultural contexts. It considers people's emotional, cognitive, interpersonal and psychological development across their lifespans. The book explores nine multicultural clinical cases that illustrate clinical assessment, biopsychosocial formulation, and evidence-based therapy. Further, it provides therapy outcomes for diverse clients throughout their lifespans, e.g. for cognitive behavioral therapy, integrative therapy, and narrative therapy; and examines clinical findings on e.g. social and emotional development, family trauma, child sexual abuse and its impact, as well as culturally sensitive assessment and interventions for a range of mental health issues. Further cases focus on co-morbid conditions, and physical ailments, across the lifespan.Bringing together contributions from both academics and practitioners, the book illustrates practical applications of theories and concepts relevant to the practice of clinical psychology. It also reviews the relevant literature with clinical recommendations, and provides multicultural perspectives and insights into contemporary clinical approaches from experienced clinical supervisors and practitioners, who are also academics and educators in the field. Accordingly, the book offers a valuable asset for students, academics, researchers and practitioners, as well as for postgraduate clinical training.

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.

What are hard and soft individualisms? In this detailed ethnography of three communities in Manhattan and Queens, Kusserow interviews parents and teachers (from wealthy to those on welfare) on the types of hard and soft individualisms they encourage in their children and students. "American Individualisms" explores the important issue of class differences in the socialization of individualism in America. It presents American individualism not as one single homogeneous, stereotypic life-pattern as often claimed to be, but as variable, class-differentiated models of individualism instilled in young children by their parents and preschool teachers in Manhattan and Queens. By providing rich descriptions of the situational, class-based individualisms that take root in communities with vastly different visions of the future, Kusserow brings social inequality back into previously bland and generic discussions of American individualism.

Drawing from a study of courtship media and ethnographic work at purity retreats and home-school conventions across the Midwest, this is the first inquiry into modern Christian courtship, an alternative to dating that asks young people to avoid both romance and sex until they are ready to be married. Bridging sociological and historical studies of American Christianity with youth and girlhood studies literatures, Elizabeth Shively finds that the courtship system is designed to shore up the patriarchal nuclear family structure at the center of conservative Christianity and ensure predictability in the face of emerging adulthood: single young women work to embody ideals of "luminous femininity" and model themselves after archetypes such as the "Proverbs 31 woman," the "stay-at-home-daughter," and the "mission-minded girl," and courting couples strive to "guard their hearts" against premature emotional intimacy. Nonetheless, participants report that courtship, like other relationships, inevitably carries an element of risk, and it ultimately fails to offer a substantial challenge to the to the sexist realities of youth dating culture.

This book examines the lived reality of 'everyday multiculturalism', and the ways that young people make sense of the diverse world around them. Currently we know very little about how multiculturalism shapes our lives, our interactions and our identity. This is especially pertinent for young people. How do young people from largely white, disadvantaged backgrounds interpret multiculturalism? How do they engage with people from 'different' minority ethnic and faith communities? How do they negotiate the challenges that arise within ever-diversifying environments? Drawing on empirical research, Stevie-Jade Hardy uncovers the fears and tensions that both undermine, and are caused by, doing multiculturalism. In doing so, she shines a light on the 'hidden' phenomenon of youth hate crime perpetration. This book will be of particular interest to scholars of criminology, sociology and cultural studies, as well as to professionals and policy-makers working in the fields of diversity and hate crime.

This ground-breaking work provides the first history of ideas about the sexual child in modernity. Beginning with twenty-first century panics about sexualization, the authors address why the sexual child excites such powerful emotions in the Anglophone west. Historical analysis of the past two centuries offers some challenging and insightful answers. Drawing on a wide range of different materials from enlightenment philosophy, medicine, social purity sexual hygiene, psychoanalysis and child development, this book illustrates that current panics have a consistent and fascinating history. Egan and Hawkes strive to progress beyond the current impasse of fear and anxiety.

This book focuses on the issues encountered by children and young people who are living with HIV/AIDS. It examines their lived experiences associated with HIV/AIDS, and studies groups of children and youngsters from around the globe. Connecting empirical information with real-life situations, the book brings together results from empirical research that relates to these children and young people. Its chapters can be used as evidence for health care providers to implement socially and culturally appropriate services to assist individuals and groups of children and young people who are living with HIV/AIDS in many societies. Many of these young people are from the most marginalized and vulnerable groups; and many have been orphaned by the death of their HIV-positive parents. Marginalized young people such as refugees, migrants and street children are most at risk due to the use of illicit drugs, their exposure to unprotected sex (in exchange for food, money and protection), and stigma associated with their marginalized lives. The impact that HIV/AIDS has on the opportunities for these young people to be able to lead healthy adult lives is considerable. This book gives a voice to these children and young people and advances our understanding of their lived experiences and needs.

The Indigo Child concept is a contemporary New Age redefinition of self. Indigo Children are described in their primary literature as a spiritually, psychically, and genetically advanced generation. Born from the early 1980s, the Indigo Children are thought to be here to usher in a new golden age by changing the world's current social paradigm. However, as they are "paradigm busters", they also claim to find it difficult to fit into contemporary society. Indigo Children recount difficult childhoods and school years, and the concept has also been used by members of the community to reinterpret conditions such as Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder (ADHD) and autism. Cynics, however, can claim that the Indigo Child concept is an example of "special snowflake" syndrome, and parodies abound. This book is the fullest introduction to the Indigo Child concept to date. Employing both on- and offline ethnographic methods, Beth Singler objectively considers the place of the Indigo Children in contemporary debates around religious identity, self-creation, online participation, conspiracy theories, race and culture, and definitions of the New Age movement.

This book traces the growing influence of 'neuroparenting' in British policy and politics. Neuroparenting advocates claim that all parents require training, especially in how their baby's brain develops. Taking issue with the claims that 'the first years last forever' and that infancy is a 'critical period' during which parents must strive ever harder to 'stimulate' their baby's brain just to achieve normal development, the author offers a trenchant and incisive case against the experts who claim to know best and in favour of the privacy, intimacy and autonomy which makes family life worth living. The book will be of interest to students and scholars of Sociology, Family and Intimate Life, Cultural Studies, Neuroscience, Social Policy and Child Development, as well as individuals with an interest in family policy-making.

This book explores how young children and new families are located in the consumer world of affluent societies. The author assesses the way in which the value of infants and monetary value in markets are realized together, and examines how the meanings of childhood are enacted in the practices, narratives and materialities of contemporary markets. These meanings formulate what is important in the care of young children, creating moralities that impact not only on new parents, but also circumscribe the possibilities for monetary value creation. Three main understandings of early childhood - those of love, protection and purification - and their interrelationships are covered, and illustrated with examples including food, feeding tools, nappies, travel systems and toys. The book concludes by re-examining the relationship between adulthood and the cultural value of young children, and by discussing the implications of the ways markets address young children, also examines the realities of older children in consumer culture. Childhood and Markets will be of interest to students and scholars of sociology, childhood studies, anthropology, cultural studies, media studies, business studies and marketing.

This volume explores how Irish children were 'constructed' by various actors including the state, youth organisations, authors and publishers in the period before and after Ireland gained independence in 1922. It examines the broad variety of ways in which the Irish child was constructed through social and cultural activities like education, sport, youth organizations, and cultural production such as literature, toys, and clothes, covering themes ranging from gender, religion and social class, to the broader politics of identity, citizenship, and nation-building. A variety of ideals and ideologies, some of them conflicting, competed to inform how children were constructed by the adults who looked on them as embodying the future of the nation. Contributors ask fundamental questions about how children were constructed as part of the idealisation of the state before its formation, and the consolidation of the state after its foundation.