Producing youth ‘Out of sync:’ the intersectional social relations of educational inequality

This article investigates intersecting institutional and policy relations that influence divergent developmental trajectories among young people. Beginning with young people’s experiential knowledge of key institutional contexts shaping their lives, the article illuminates socially organized disjunctures whereby young people come to see themselves as developmentally out of sync with institutional expectations for youth development, which organize everyday life in public schools. This institutional ethnography explicates the intersecting social relations that shape how young people grow up, the choices that are available to them, their participation in public sector institutions and ultimately, the race and class-based patterns of inequality perpetuated by public schools and other public sector institutions.     

FROM WOMEN AND TECHNOLOGY TO GENDERED TECHNOSCIENCE

This paper situates current discussions of women's position in ICTs in the wider context of feminist debates on gender and technology. While a common trend among early feminist theorists was a profound pessimism about the inherent masculinity of technology, this was replaced during the 1990s by an unwarranted optimism about the liberating potential of technoscience for women. This article gives an account of both technophobia and technophilia, arguing that recent approaches drawing on the social studies of technology provide a more subtle analysis. Avoiding both technological determinism and gender essentialism, technofeminist approaches emphasize that the gender-technology relationship is fluid and flexible, and that feminist politics and not technology per se is the key to gender equality.     

Technological capital and digital divide among young people: an intersectional approach

This article explores the digital divide among young people in Spain by examining four traditional socio-demographic variables (gender, age, education and employment situation). It proposes the concept of ‘technological capital’ as a means to put people’s socioeconomic conditions of existence into relation with the different forms of accessing and using Information and Communication Technologies (ICT). Methodologically, a quantitative approach is taken, based on the National Statistics Institute’s survey of ICT Equipment in households, which makes use of both bivariate and multivariate analysis. Finally, a typology of young users of the Internet is proposed (1 – Digitally Excluded; 2 – Basic Users; 3 – Users in Mobility; 4 – Cyber Consumers; 5 – Cyber Experts) which takes into account the importance of technological capital, the socio-economic position and cultural resources of subjects in their incorporation of ICTs into their daily life.     

Inside Out: Postcolonial Subjectivities and Everyday Life Online

What gets overlooked amid the hype surrounding the Internet/world-wide web is that these are a newer communicative means and medium for people to gather from all over the place, not only to meet each other but also to discuss a wide range of issues. Discussion Forums and News Groups are important and long-standing examples of these sorts of non-commercial online interactions. This article argues that this sort of onlineness constitutes emergent (cyber)spatial practices of everyday life. These entail complex gender-power relations that encompass struggles for ownership and control of ICTs, on the one hand, and the intimate, public and political nature of online discussions visà-vis lived lives offline on the other hand. One way of seeing these dynamics at work in everyday life online is when women from non-western diasporas talk about their personal-public lives and changing sociocultural obligations on Internet discussion forums. Such discussions provide newer, electronically mediated (re)articulations of the 'public-private' problematic and a (re)articulation of how the 'personal is political'. In so doing they recall feminist and postcolonial critiques of the androcentric and eurocentric nature of the public-private dichotomy itself. The article explores the intersection between these critiques, the practice of everyday life for postcolonial diasporas and the advent of the Internet/world-wide web. Through the reconstruction of someof these open andintimate online discussions between older andyounger women from the Samoan and Tongan diasporas, the article argues that postcolonial everyday uses of the Internet/www are challenging assumptions about what constitutes access, ownership and control of ICTs. These have implications for equitable research and development of ICTs in terms of the practice of everyday life online and offline and the future of public cyberspace(s) in a neo-liberal world order.     

Information and Communication Technologies and the Opportunities of Disabled Persons in the Swedish Labour Market

This article attempts to outline the prospects of disabled persons to gain and retain employment within the Information Society by presenting and discussing the results of a labour market policy programme in Sweden based on information technology. The effects of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) for unemployed and employed persons with disabilities can be assessed on the micro, as well as on the macro levels. Technological optimism has given rise to expectations about the great potential of ICTs in creating employment opportunities for disabled persons. Technological optimism, however, derives from a deterministic point of view, i.e. ICTs are regarded as an independent variable. This article suggests that ICTs must be regarded as a variable dependent by the economic, social and cultural order. Its effects on disabled persons employment opportunities are not independent by the power relations at a given time.     

THE INFORMATION SOCIETY AS MEGA-MACHINE

Too often the history of information and communication technologies (ICTs) is wrenched out of the history of technology and presented as something altogether separate and therefore different, rendering previous analyses irrelevant. However, there are sufficient analytical tools to hand without the continual invention of new paradigms to understand the current stage of technological advance. To support this contention, in this article, the continuing relevance of Lewis Mumford is explored. Mumford's discussion of the megalopolis and the emergence of the invisible city as its most developed state make a direct link with the networked information society, establishing a link between the information society and Mumford'sanalysis of the previous history of technology.At the centre of Mumford'sdiscussion of this history is the dialectic interaction of authoritarian and democratic technics. Mumford's notion of technics stresses that technologies can not be divided from the social relations in which they appear. In the information society,this dialectical pair map onto the twin dynamics of enclosure and disclosure. The former dynamic represents the control of information through commodification and marketization, the latter the recognition of the empowering and emancipatory qualities of ICTs. Up until now,discussions of the information society have regarded only one or other dynamic as normal, whereas utilizing Mumford'sinsight, the contradictory character of the information society can be theorized without rendering the second dynamic abnormal. Thus, the article concludes that recourse to Mumford's ideas, to re-embed ICTs in the history of technology, allows a more nuanced and fruitful treatment of current developments in information society.     

The cook, the cooker and the gendering of the kitchen

This article combines the approaches of actor‐network theory and poststructuralism to consider how a household technology has interacted with patterns of gender hierarchies over time. Two major innovations in cooking technologies are analysed in relation to cooking activities and the related conceptions of women's roles in families, which are central to these concerns. The first technological development is the thermostat oven control, introduced in the 1920s and 1930s; the second is the microwave oven, introduced in the late 1980s and 1990s. Important conceptions of the cook's performance are examined and various implicit roles that have been tacitly assumed by innovating agents in the use of cookers are made explicit. The study contributes to discussions of gender and technology in the context of domestic life.     

Theorizing the body: conceptions of disability,gender and normality

The present article addresses different perspectives on the body in relation to conceptions of normality. It shows how a body perspective can be taken into account from an individual perspective without losing a structural perspective. This is accomplished using the phenomenological conceptions the lived body and the body as situated. This article is part of a sociological qualitative interview study, focusing on disability, identity, and gender, and specifically on conceptions of the body and gender, as experienced by Swedish young women labeled as having an intellectual impairment.     

性别焦虑:对当代少女题材电影的女性主义解读

当代影响较大的四部少女题材电影——《十三岁的少女》、《成人仪式》、《成长教育》、《裂缝》揭示了一个共同的主题:建构女性性别身份的焦虑。作为由童年期向成人期过渡的特殊阶段,少女身心的急剧变化,使她们的自我性别意识开始觉醒,并通过对身体的展示及面具的伪装来模仿和凸显女性气质,试图操演和建构女性自我的性别身份,由此产生的一系列矛盾、困惑和自我觉悟,冲击着成长这个永恒的话题。性别冲突是人类的基本冲突之一,女性要为证明自身存在的意义而作抗争。对于初涉人世的少女来说,以主动的姿态确认自我,接纳自我是走上社会舞台的第一步。     

Pockets of Participation: Revisiting Child‐Centred Participation Research

This article revisits the theme of the clash of interests and power relations at work in participatory research which is prescribed from above. It offers a possible route toward solving conflict between adult‐led research carried out by young researchers, funding requirements and organisational constraints. The article explores issues of participation in child‐centred research in a cross‐cultural context and gives examples from research carried out with young refugees. The author discusses what might be the best way forward for researchers against a backdrop of critical dialogues concerning child participation on the one hand and funders’ frequent calls for participatory methodologies on the other. In doing participatory research with children and young people on the margins of society, issues of power, knowledge, ethical relations, funding processes and research methodologies and practices may seem at odds and difficult to resolve. In this article a methodology of creating pockets of participation that can be owned by the young researchers is suggested as a possible route.     

In Memoriam E. K. M. Masinambow

Wolfe's book proposes affinities between transformations in anthropological knowledge and the changing strategic imperatives of Australian settler colonialism. He sees settler colonialism not as an event but a structure determined by a logic of elimination directed at Indigenous Australians. This article considers the persuasiveness of his claims in relation to the core concepts of settler colonialism and race relations and his approach to gender relations. It situates the book under review in wider debates about the history and anthropology of Indigenous Australians, and in the context of an earlier controversy generated by Wolfe's analysis of the concept of the Dreamtime.     

Navigating the technology-media-movements complex

Abstract

In this article we develop the notion of the technology-media-movements complex (TMMC) as a field-definition statement for ongoing inquiry into the use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) in social and political movements. We consider the definitions and boundaries of the TMMC, arguing particularly for a historically rooted conception of technological development that allows better integration of the different intellectual traditions that are currently focused on the same set of empirical phenomena. We then delineate two recurrent debates in the literature highlighting their contributions to emerging knowledge. The first debate concerns the divide between scholars who privilege media technologies, and see them as driving forces of movement dynamics, and those who privilege media practices over affordances. The second debate broadly opposes theorists who believe in the emancipatory potential of ICTs and those who highlight the ways they are used to repress social movements and grassroots mobilization. By mapping positions in these debates to the TMMC we identify and provide direction to three broad research areas which demand further consideration: (i) questions of power and agency in social movements; (ii) the relationships between, on the one hand, social movements and technology and media as politics (i.e. cyberpolitics and technopolitics), and on the other, the quotidian and ubiquitous use of digital tools in a digital age; and (iii) the significance of digital divides that cut across and beyond social movements, particularly in the way such divisions may overlay existing power relations in movements. In conclusion, we delineate six challenges for profitable further research on the TMMC.     

E-social work and at-risk populations: technology and robotics in social intervention with elders. The case of Spain

Information and communication technologies are increasingly relevant. Finding a sphere of activity that is isolated from technological advancement proves increasingly difficult, and social work is no exception. Therefore, given the socio-demographic and technological context for this sector in Spain, we must face and tackle new challenges. Focusing exclusively on the elderly, e-social work highlights new skills and abilities that can be developed by means of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs), which are viewed as powerful tools that can guarantee egalitarian access to an improved life standard. Nevertheless, despite the digital divide growing smaller, its impact on people over 75 is still significant; hence, we need to use every tool at our disposal to reduce it to the bare minimum. With that purpose in mind, this article discusses usability, the causes of unequal access to ICTs, technological gerontological pedagogy and robotics as forward-looking technology. The aim is to technologically enable the senior population by adapting the necessary interfaces for an easier interaction; likewise, online intervention also aims for the utilization of alternative technologies. Technology has completely changed the world we live in pushing us to a new approach towards old age, fragility and chronicity. ICTs in social intervention must be a true source of opportunities to further social cohesion.     

The Politics and Poetics of Spaces and Places: Mapping the Multiple Geographies of Identity in a Cultural Posthuman Era

As transcendent technologies, information communication technologies (ICTs) exist beyond the divergent equivalence of human categories of difference such as race, gender, and class, as well as operating outside traditional binary oppositions such as good/bad, love/hate, and rational/irrational. While a material grounding in earlier forms of embodied social experience remains a necessary prerequisite of interaction with virtual systems, a vast collection of technological applications now exhibit some degree of agency as they interact with humans and their environment. This development has enormous consequences for human life, human flourishing, and social organisation, raising significant ethical concerns relevant to public and policy debates. It is, therefore, pertinent to explore key epistemological questions relating to the radical and accelerated remapping of the limits of what it now means to be human. While this article does not purport to offer a pragmatic solution, it constitutes an interdisciplinary conceptual platform from which to consider the nature of the evolving human-nonhuman-machine relationship and the possible implications for humanity, civilisation, and other forms of social organisation in the modern hypermediated world. It is suggested that, by reflecting on the various representations of contemporary technoculture and biotechnology from the perspective of the arts and humanities, it may be possible to isolate those important questions which relate to subjectivity, ethics, community, and social transformation in order to prepare the groundwork for a comprehensive and critical theory of technology.     

Family Genealogy: A Sociological Imagination Reveals Intersectional Relations

This article depicts everyday family genealogy as a vehicle for the sociological imagination that links personal biography to social–historical contexts across generations. As genealogists construct current from past identities, they engage a sociological imagination that potentially enables them to grasp how intersectionality – gender, race, ethnic, sexuality, nation, class, and age relations – is articulated through history. The key aims here are: (1) to provide background conditions behind the growth of genealogy; (2) to reveal how doing and studying family genealogy engages a sociological imagination that can be a vehicle for perceiving the intersectional underpinnings of social memories. Genealogy can be seen as a political practice where race-class-gender within social memories can contribute to diverse stories from new standpoints in American history.     

Kids Talking About Race: Tween‐agers in a Post‐Civil Rights Era

Our research examines how American children understand and talk about how race matters in their everyday lives. We draw on interviews with 44 middle school children who attend schools in an integrated county‐wide system and find that while some use color‐blind rhetoric, most children in our study know that race matters, while they offer alternative accounts for why and how. Some explain race as social inequality, while others offer cultural accounts of racial differences. Our analysis suggests that for white children, gender matters; more girls describe racial inequality than boys. For children of color, class seems to be key, with middle‐class children giving cultural explanations, including negative evaluations of others in their own racial group. We use an intersectionality framework to analyze the alternative and complex narratives children give for their own experiences of race and race relations between peers.     

Young Children's Everyday Civics

Civic education for our youngest citizens faces two challenges if we want to imagine new possibilities. First, the field of social studies uses frames of analyzing citizenship education based on studies of older students. Second, predetermined adult ideas (and ideals) of what it means to act civically dominate our conceptions of civic education for young children. Drawing on data from a yearlong multivocal video-cued ethnography, this article argues that social studies needs to focus on the everyday, embodied ways that young children act civically. Using a vignette from a typical day, this article illustrates how young children's everyday relationships and interactions highlight a different vision of being civic—a more caring and relational idea of the common good. When we recognize young children's construction of a common good in their smaller, yet no less important, civic spaces of school, we can expand our notions of civic education.     

Promise or Problem? A Review of the Literature on Men Working in Early Childhood Services

Few men care for, or teach, young children. The 1991 UK census found that less than 1% of nursery nurses were male, while 14% of nursery/primary teachers were male. A similarly gendered picture can be found across European, North American and Australian studies of early childhood services, such as childcare centres and early education. The practice and prospect of men early childhood workers are both encouraged and resisted. The aim of this article is to review the international literature relevant to men working in early childhood services with pre‐school‐aged children. The case for male early childhood workers is reviewed: two pertinent themes from the related field of men working in non‐traditional occupations are highlighted. The review considers how these are applied to the specific context of men and early childhood services. Four aspects of the debate about men and early childhood work are examined: gender stereotypes; senior positions; gendered motives; and risks, allegations and protection. The literature suggests that men's careers have much to gain from working in early childhood services, but that, certainly in the Anglo‐American literature, a recurring theme is the representation of men early childhood workers as a source of suspicion.     

She Was Born in a Small Town: The Advantages and Disadvantages in Political Knowledge and Efficacy for Rural Girls

Recent work suggests that girls learn more about politics and are more efficacious in places with less conflict and greater homogeneity. Given that rural communities are often more homogeneous than metropolitan areas across several dimensions, this article asks whether young girls growing up in rural communities have higher levels of political knowledge and efficacy than those in more urban, diverse communities. It argues that the average girl benefits from the stronger social bonds between residents in smaller places, but young women who hold minority views about the importance of equality are likely to suffer in their levels of knowledge and efficacy. Being in the minority seems to be particularly difficult for girls in smaller places. This article raises questions about the ways in which gender gaps vary across different places and the varying effects of minority status.     

'I don't know what I'd do without our Mam' motherhood, identity and support networks

This paper explores the role and importance of kinship within the lives of 14 working class women as they seek to make sense of motherhood and their own self‐identity as a young mother. Within late modernity, numerous discourses suggest that kin networks and the role and importance of kinship are in decline as ‘the family’ changes and adapts. Indeed, the idea of extended family support and networking is frequently viewed as a historically cozy image rather than an everyday reality as we enter the twenty‐first century. However, this paper demonstrates that the situation is far from straightforward. The young mothers’ discourses and everyday experiences remain firmly grounded in relations of class, gender and the locality within which they live. Hence, although many of the young women are increasingly individualised, self‐reflexive actors seeking to make sense of intimate relations and kinship in an ontologically insecure world, kin networks, especially female kinship continue to play a pivotal role in their lives—practically, socially and emotionally. Indeed, female kinship is closely interwoven with their self‐identity as a caring and capable mother.