Young people and the gendered and aesthetic dimensions of ‘enterprise’: stories from a ‘Rust Belt’ city

ABSTRACT

In the ‘Rust Belt’ city of Geelong in Victoria, Australia, discourses of young people’s enterprise and innovation provide a counter-narrative to the prevailing material and symbolic consequences of industrial decline, job losses, and the growing insecurity of employment and income. GT Magazine is a weekly, large circulation magazine in Geelong with a significant focus on the activities and aspirations of enterprising young people. In this paper, we examine, by utilising techniques of content analysis and discourse analysis, the particular ways in which young people’s innovation and enterprise are framed and enacted in GT Magazine. Our analysis reveals that ‘youth’ and ‘enterprise’ are, in GT Magazine, given an embodied form that is powerfully marked by aestheticised, normalised enactments of gender, class and race. In doing this work, we make productive contributions to three key themes in contemporary youth studies: new work orders and the youthful self as enterprise; the gendered and aesthetic dimensions of affective labour in these new work orders; and the emerging spatial turn to examine young people's embodied, place-based experiences of employment and enterprise. We seek to make problematic the sense that solutions to multiple disruptions and crises in capitalism and the environment are to be found in young people’s enterprise. Particularly when that enterprise is given form in ways that are aestheticised, gendered, classed, individualised and responsibilised.     

Crawling Predicts Infants’ Understanding of Agents’ Navigation of Obstacles

We investigated whether crawling versus noncrawling infants interpret an agent's movements around an obstacle as goal‐directed. Infants (6–9 months) were habituated to a self‐propelled circle jumping over an obstacle to reach a goal. When the obstacle was removed, infants who crawled (n = 13) showed longer looking time to the familiar but now nonrational jumping path versus a novel but rational straight‐line path. Noncrawlers (n = 17) did not discriminate. Looking preference was independent of age and speed of habituation. These findings support the claim that infants’ processing of agency emerges early and applies to all agents, but stress the role of experience in the development of action interpretation.     

Reactive and proactive aggression in children with and without ADHD and negative emotional lability

Children with attention‐deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) exhibit marked difficulty with frequent and intense shifts in negative or positive emotions, referred to as emotional lability. This study examines the relationships between negative emotional lability (NEL), ADHD, and reactive and proactive aggression. A community sample of 96 children (53 with ADHD, 43 control) ages 8–12 and their parents completed a baseline session include a diagnostic structured interview and the Reactive–Proactive Aggression Questionnaire (RPAQ). Parents then rated their child's NEL using the Positive and Negative Affect Scale as part of an Ecological Momentary Assessment protocol 3 times a day for 28 days. Seventy‐three participants (37 with ADHD, 36 control) completed the RPAQ at follow‐up. Hierarchical regression analyses indicated that NEL significantly and independently estimates reactive aggression at baseline and follow‐up, regardless of ADHD status. NEL and ADHD status significantly estimates concurrent proactive aggression, but not at follow‐up. Results of this study suggest that NEL accounts for a significant amount of the variability in reactive aggression, a common difficulty in children with ADHD. Further, individuals that are reportedly emotionally labile become more reactively aggressive over time. Both ADHD diagnostic and NEL are predictors of proactive aggression at baseline, although no interaction occurred.     

THE USE OF CHILD-CENTERED PLAY THERAPY AND FILIAL THERAPY WITH HEAD START FAMILIES: A BRIEF REPORT

Play therapy and filial therapy show promise as effective ways to provide direct services to Head Start, addressing the needs of the children, the families, and the Head Start teachers and staff. This paper examines the utility of play and filial therapies for the Head Start population, presents a systemic explanation for the benefit of filial therapy, and provides a case example for illustration.     

Life Shocks and Crime: A Test of the “Turning Point” Hypothesis

Other researchers have posited that important events in men's lives-such as employment, marriage, and parenthood-strengthen their social ties and lead them to refrain from crime. A challenge in empirically testing this hypothesis has been the issue of self-selection into life transitions. This study contributes to this literature by estimating the effects of an exogenous life shock on crime. We use data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study, augmented with information from hospital medical records, to estimate the effects of the birth of a child with a severe health problem on the likelihood that the infant's father engages in illegal activities. We conduct a number of auxiliary analyses to examine exogeneity assumptions. We find that having an infant born with a severe health condition increases the likelihood that the father is convicted of a crime in the three-year period following the birth of the child, and at least part of the effect appears to operate through work and changes in parental relationships. These results provide evidence that life events can cause crime and, as such, support the "turning point" hypothesis.     

An agenda for future research regarding the mental health of young people with care experience

Young people who are currently or were previously in state care have consistently been found to have much higher rates of mental health and neurodevelopmental difficulties than the general youth population. While a number of high-quality reviews highlight what research has been undertaken in relation to the mental health of young people with care experience and the gaps in our knowledge and understanding, there is, until now, no consensus, so far as we aware, as to where our collective research efforts should be directed with this important group. Through a series of UK wide workshops, we undertook a consultative process to identify an agreed research agenda between those with lived experience of being in care (n = 15), practitioners, policy makers and researchers (n = 59), for future research regarding the mental health of young people with care experience, including those who are neurodiverse/have a neurodevelopmental difficulty. This consensus statement identified 21 foci within four broad categories: how we conceptualize mental health; under-studied populations; under-studied topics; and underused methodologies. We hope that those who commission, fund and undertake research will engage in this discussion about the future agenda for research regarding the mental health of young people with care experience.     

What motivates adolescent bystanders to intervene when immigrant youth are bullied?

Pathways to bystander responses were examined in both generalized and bias-based bullying incidents involving immigrant-origin victims. Participants were 168 (M_age = 14.54, 57% female) adolescents of immigrant (37.5%) and nonimmigrant backgrounds, who responded to their likelihood of intervening on behalf of either an Arab or Latine victim. Models tested whether contact with immigrants and one's desires for social contact with immigrant-origin peers mediated the effects of individual (shared immigrant background, and discriminatory tendencies) and situational (inclusive peer norms) intergroup factors on active bystander responses. Findings indicated that desires for social contact reliably mediated effects across both victims; however, contact with immigrant peers was only associated with responses to Latine victims. Implications for how to promote bystander intervention are discussed.     

Defining delayed consequences as reinforcers: some do, some don't, and nothing changes

Results of a survey sent to members of the editorial boards of five behavior-analytic journals in 1990 indicated that there was no consensus among respondents with respect to whether delayed events can function as reinforcers (Schlinger, Blakely, Fillhard, & Poling, 1991). Since that time, several studies with nonhuman animals have demonstrated that events delayed by at least several seconds can increase the probability of occurrence of the responses that produce them. To determine the relative number of contemporary behavior analysts who nonetheless believe that reinforcers must immediately follow the responses that produce them, the present study replicated the procedures used by Schlinger et al., with similar results. That is, respondents did not agree with respect to whether delayed events could be reinforcers.     

Compulsory Income Management in the Northern Territory – evaluating its impact

Australia has been experimenting with constraining the ways in which welfare recipients can spend their income support payments, limiting their ability to access cash and purchase some products. The policy objectives include to reduce spending on alcohol, gambling, pornography and tobacco in favour of meeting ‘basic’ family needs, especially for children, to limit the scope for financial harassment, encourage pro‐social behaviours, and build financial capabilities. In the logic of the programs these outcomes are expected to be manifest at the individual, family and community levels. The policy has primarily impacted on Indigenous Australians as a result of its geographic targeting, although a recent report has recommended a more stringent version of the program be introduced universally to all welfare recipients other than the aged. The largest of these experiments is ‘New Income Management’ in the Northern Territory, which has had more than 35,000 participants since its introduction in 2010. This article reports on the key findings of the major independent evaluation of New Income Management commissioned by the Australian Government.