Over a course of 16 weeks, approximately 30 reading assignments, many lectures, and countless hours spent outside of the class room working on Wikipedia, I now have a sense of what Global Youth Studies is. Although, as a class we have just uncovered the intellectual tip of the iceberg that is Global Youth Studies, there is much more to learn, discuss, collect data on and research. Granted that I am just an undergraduate student, I feel as if I have added a new perspective to Global Youth Studies. My background as an environmental science and anthropology/sociology double major and history minor, influences the way I view the world, wherein I try to see topics and issues as holistic within this deeply interconnected an intertwined world. My point of view resonated most with Woodman and Wyn’s, Jeffery Arnett’s, and Lorena Garcia’s theoretical frameworks; however, I feel as if the topics presented in their work felt disjointed from one other. Therefore, my intellectual stake in Global Youth Studies is a holistic one; time and place are the drivers of linear or nonlinear transitions which then further influence an individual’s capacity to integrate agency within the contexts of intersectionality. In order to demonstrate my intellectual stake in the growing and evolving field of Global Youth Studies, I will review the readings that have guided my thought process throughout the course.
Woodman and Wyn focuses on the relationship between youth and their experiences through time and place in his book, Youth and Generation: Rethinking Change and Inequality in the Lives of Young People. Woodman and Wyn find that the conditions and frameworks for time related to youth has become more fragmented into multiple and unpredictable tasks, partic...
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...nique social location. The agency a young person is able to demonstrate in face of structural forces influences whether their transitions into adulthood will be linear or nonlinear. The structure of this course (each week a new topic was discussed, rather than a holistic presentation of youth) implies that the experiences of youth are separate rather than interconnected. The future of Global Youth Studies must begin to understand the experiences of youth in a holistic fashion. I hope that in ten years’ global youth studies begins to view and understand youth experiences as interconnected. Furthermore, using a holistic perspective of youth will hopefully be used to better to guide policy. The benefits of viewing youth from a holistic point of view includes a historically accurate and global perspective of youth experiences which is an act of dismantling systemic bias.
Workers who work with adolescents and, especially, parents would enjoy this book since it would bring understanding and the reader could personally relate to the author. As the author evidently strives to effectively raise adults, parents likewise strive. In this endeavor, since this book provided a history of the adolescent’s culture, the current state of the adolescent’s culture, relational qualities to implement while approaching teenagers, and how to practical respond to teenagers’ issues. Overall, this is a beneficial
As Pollock states, “Equity efforts treat all young people as equally and infinitely valuable” (202). This book has made me realize that first and foremost: We must get to know each of our students on a personal level. Every student has been shaped by their own personal life experiences. We must take this into consideration for all situations. In life, I have learned that there is a reason why people act the way that they do. When people seem to have a “chip on their shoulder”, they have usually faced many hardships in life. “The goal of all such questions is deeper learning about real, respected lives: to encourage educators to learn more about (and build on) young people’s experiences in various communities, to consider their own such experiences, to avoid any premature assumptions about a young person’s “cultural practices,” and to consider their own reactions to young people as extremely consequential.” (3995) was also another excerpt from the book that was extremely powerful for me. Everyone wants to be heard and understood. I feel that I owe it to each of my students to know their stories and help them navigate through the hard times. On the other hand, even though a student seems like he/she has it all together, I shouldn’t just assume that they do. I must be sure that these students are receiving the attention and tools needed to succeed,
In the ethnography With No Direction Home: Homeless Youth on the Road and in the Streets, she combines her understanding of her previous researches with her current study in order to enculturate street youth behaviour. Finkelstein attempts to answer two distinctive questions about street youth. First, she tries to understand what occurrences result in youth being on the streets? Secondly, once youths are on the streets what do they experience? In answering these questions, Finkelstein attempts to address the lack of “information on the lives of street kids” (Finkelstein, 2005, preface) that is available to the general public. She conducts ethnographic interviews, in order to analyze the similarities and differences between the youth’s backgrounds. The author utilizes various ethnographic methods in an attempt to accomplish her goal. Although ...
Most people want to feel like they fit in, but for refugees and immigrants, that feeling was even more important. “Young refugees and immigrants... were caught between the world of their parents and the new world of their friends and schoolmates” (105) and had to choose whether they would vie for the approval of their peers or their family. One young boy on the Fugees soccer team refused to cut his hair because his peers thought it was cool, and ended up being kicked off the team (111). Other young refugees in Clarkston gave in to the allure of gangs, and ended up in a cycle of violence and crime, just for a sense of belonging and safety. “Gangs… promised both belonging and status”(105) and provided a way to become American, despite all the trouble and anguish they put their members in. As adolescents between worlds, young immigrants experience a heightened sense of liminality, when a person “becomes neither here nor there” (221), and struggle with finding out who they are and where they
Even with the daily struggle faced by youth in obtaining shelter and homelessness becoming a reality for a growing number of Canadians, Canada, with its high quality of life is one country that has always had a global long-standing reputation. This paper will be working towards giving the reader a better understanding with regards to homeless youth. It will be focusing on the reasons why they leave home, their lives on the street and steps they are trying to take to be able to leave the streets. An important finding from this research suggests, “the street youth population is diverse, complex, and heterogeneous”. According to Karabanow, made up of a number of subcultures including hardcore street-entrenched young people, squatters, group home kids, child welfare kids, soft-core twinkles, runaways, throwaways, refugees and immigrants is the generic term ‘street youth’.
The purpose of this essay is to critically analyse the above statement. Firstly, the essay will clarify the distinction between anti-discriminatory practice and anti-oppressive practice and argue whether anti-oppressive is a key principle of youth work. Secondly, the essay will explore how oppression can exist through the use of language and media discourse. Using Thompson’s (1997), Personal, Cultural and Structural (PCS) model the essay critically analyses oppression and then discuss how this analysis is important to practice. Thirdly, the essay will then discuss power differences and inequality in conjunction with other forms of oppressions such as class, gender and race.
Young people of every language and culture a high and exhilarating task awaits for them; that of becoming men and women capable of solidarity, peace and love of life, with respect for everyone. Teens need to become craftsmen of a new humanity, where brothers and sisters, members all of the same family, are able to live in peace. This is a possible goal if teens are willing and wanting to make a change.
In other industrialized nations, teenage turmoil was a fraction of that seen in the U.S. The author proposed that turmoil was the result of infantilizing- a phenomenon largely attributed to American culture. When treated like adults, teens are capable of rising to the...
Identity often refers to a sort of desperate quest or a deliberately confused search through both a mental and moral experience. However, Erikson approaches this idea as an experience that will almost be a surprise that sneaks up on one, rather than something that can be found. The process of identity formation is located in the core of an individual, and also in the core of ones communal culture. This process is ever changing and developing, but reaches a crisis during the stage of adolescence. At the earliest stage of the identity crisis there is an important need for trust in oneself and others. Adolescents, at this stage, look passionately for ideas to place faith in, and additionally, ideas, which seem worthwhile to prove trustworthy. Erikson explains, “at the same time the adolescent fears a foolish, all too trusting commitment, and will, paradoxically, express his need for faith in loud and cynical mistrust” (Erikson, p. 252). This stage of identity formation is very confusing to youth because of the pull between childhood and adulthood. The adolescent undergoes and inner struggle of whether they wish to follow certain morals and beliefs, and the fear of committing to a specific identity. The second stage establishes the necessity of being defined by what one can will freely. The adolescent is now looking for an opportunity to decide freely on one of the available or unavoidable duty and service, and is at the same time terrified of being forced to engage in activities, which may expose one to ridicule. This further adds to the confusion of adolescents and identity formation. An adolescent is torn between acting shamelessly in the eyes of his or her elders, out of free choice, than to be forced into activities t...
The cliché saying, “Youth is wasted on the young” may apply to many people but not to all. Oskar Schell, a nine-year-old fictional character, can attest to that. In Jonathan Safran Foer’s novel Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (2005), he implies that youth is defined by a person’s intellectuality, relationships, and experiences.
Certainly, changes in gender role are not the only aspect of which contribute to existential vacuum. Nonetheless, today’s young people have more opportunities in terms of social role they would take. It is also mean that they do not have a firm social expectation to how they need to live their lives. A lack of clear expectation is potentially a double edge sword that can throw them into a deep sense of uncertainty (see Frankl,
There are many teen activists in the world and I am going to write about how they fight there cause. Some of these include social media, TV, newspapers, fundraisers, and other online sources, such as websites. Today I will share with you how they do there work.
Community and its effects are important for one to know what occurs and its functions on a daily basis. This unfortunately does not contribute to the well-being of the geographical community overall. The cycle once again continues to revolve and makes it seem as if the only clear path to purity and greatness is by launching one’s self tangentially out of the loop of inadequate adolescent development. In addition, it is important for one’s family to interact appropriately in front of adolescents ranging from 3-17 years of age.
In the study " Young People's Views of their Present and Future Selves in two deprived communities" (Kloep, Hendry, Gardener, & Seage, 2010) they looked at the con...
Lesko, N. (2012). Introduction: Troubling teenagers. In N. Lesko, Act your age: A cultural construction of adolescence (2nd Ed., pp. 1-15). New York, NY: Routledge.