Three notes on a political economy of youth

The paper seeks to makes a contribution to a recent debate in the Journal about what a political economy of youth might look like. The paper will take up aspects of Sukarieh and Tannock’s [2016. ‘On the political economy of youth: a comment.’ Journal of Youth Studies 19 (9): 1281–1289] response to the initial contributions by Côté [2014. ‘Towards a New Political Economy of Youth.’ Journal of Youth Studies 17 (4): 527–543, 2016. ‘A New Political Economy of Youth Reprised: Rejoinder to France and Threadgold.’ Journal of Youth Studies.] And France and Threadgold [2015. ‘Youth and Political Economy: Towards a Bourdieusian Approach.’ Journal of Youth Studies], and will take the form of three ‘notes’: Capitalism: From the first industrial revolution to the third industrial revolution; Youth as an artefact of governmentalised expertise; The agency/structure problem in youth studies: Foucault’s dispositif and post-human exceptionalism.

These notes will suggest that twenty-first century capitalism is globalising, is largely neo-Liberal, and is being reconfigured in profound ways by the Anthropocene, bio-genetics, Artificial Intelligence (AI), and the Internet of Things (IoT). A political economy of twenty-first century capitalism, let alone a political economy of young people, must be able to account for a capitalism that in many ways looks like the capitalism of the First and Second Industrial Revolutions, but which is at the same time profoundly different as it enters what has often been described as the Third Industrial Revolution. It is these profound emergences that pose the greatest challenges for engaging with a political economy of youth.     

Just another brick in the wall? The relationship between classroom-based political education and the political interest of young adults in Switzerland

This article asks whether political education at upper secondary school – i.e. shortly before or at the age when young people receive the right to vote – affects individual political interest as well as differences in political interest between social groups. Empirically, we use a novel data set combining individual student data with information on classroom-based political education as well as teacher characteristics. We do not find support for a more or less automatic and positive effect of classroom-based political education on young people’s political interest. Whereas we analyzed three dimensions of political education (knowledge, skills, arousing interest in politics), the skills dimension was the only one that exhibited a consistent positive (and mostly significant) relationship with young peoples’ political interest. Moreover, classroom-based political education seems not to compensate for a lack of political socialization at home but rather tends to affect students with politically interested parents most strongly.     

The methodology of a multi-model project examining how facebook infrastructures social relations

It is the purpose of this paper to make explicit the methodology (the theory of the methods) by which we conducted research for an Economic and Social Research Council-funded research project on the relationship of values to value. Specifically, we wanted to study the imperative of Facebook to monetize social relationships, what happens when one of our significant forms of communication is driven by the search for profit, by the logic of capital. We therefore wanted to ‘get inside’ and understand what capital's new lines of flight, informationally driven models of economic expansion, do to social relations. Taking up the challenge to develop methods appropriate to the challenges of ‘big data', we applied four different methods to investigate the interface that is Facebook: we designed custom software tools, generated an online survey, developed data visualizations, and conducted interviews with participants to discuss their understandings of our analysis. We used Lefebvre's [(2004). Rhythmnanalysis: Space, time and everyday life. London: Continuum] rhythmanalysis and Kember and Zylinska's [(2012). Life after new media: Mediation as a vital process. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press] ideas about ‘lifeness’ to inform our methodology. This paper reports on a research process that was not entirely straightforward. We were thwarted in a variety of ways, especially by challenge to use software to study software and had to develop our project in unanticipated directions, but we also found much more than we initially imagined possible. As so few academic researchers are able to study Facebook through its own tools (as Tufekci [(2014 Tufekci, Z. (2014). Big questions for social media big data: Representativeness, validity and other methodological pitfalls. In ICWSM ‘14: Proceedings of the 8th International AAAI Conference on Weblogs and Social Media, pp. 505–514. [Google Scholar]). Big questions for social media big data: Representativeness, validity and other methodological pitfalls. In ICWSM ‘14: Proceedings of the 8th International AAAI Conference on Weblogs and Social Media (pp. 505–514)] notes how, unsurprisingly, at the 2013 ICWSM only about 5% of papers were about Facebook and nearly all of these were co-authored with Facebook data scientists), we hope that our methodology is useful for other researchers seeking to develop less conventional research on Facebook.     

文明网络环境对青少年健康成长的理性思考

网络环境对于青少年成长发展具有双重影响和作用,是一把双刃剑。分析网络对青少年健康成长负面影响的因素,找出应对的措施,是营造青少年健康成长的文明网络环境的必要条件;网络负面作用的扩大在一定程度上反映出我们教育的滞后,加强青少年网络素质教育,营造文明的网络环境尤为重要。     

人民性:习近平家庭文明建设重要论述的真谛

人民性是“以人民为中心”发展思想的高度凝炼和集中体现,也是习近平关于家庭文明建设系列重要论述的真谛。从主体维度看,人民是习近平倡导的新时代家庭文明建设的承载者、守护者和创新者。从目标维度看,加强新时代家庭物质文明、精神文明、政治文明建设的目标分别是:提高人民的获得感、幸福感、安全感,增强人民的归属感、认同感、荣誉感,提升人们的清净感、信任感、亲情感。从价值维角度看,坚持以人为本的价值基础、民族复兴的价值理想和社会和谐的价值标准,可以实现人民性的价值取向。     

文明对话的发展及其世界意义

苏联解体 ,冷战结束 ,美国哈佛大学著名学者亨廷顿提出“文明冲突论”。他认为一场新的冷战为期不远 ,所不同的是已经过去的冷战是以意识形态为分野 ,而新的冷战是以文化为界线 ;过去的威胁是苏联 ,现在的威胁则是伊斯兰教—儒教的联盟。他的这个论点 ,国际大部分学者很难苟同。美国哈佛大学另一位著名学者杜维明教授则力主“文明对话论” ,他相信多元文化并存 ,通过对话和理解 ,通过各种文化自身的反省与变革 ,人类一定会迎来一个充满希望的新世纪。为此 ,几年来他在世界各地组织并参加一些“文明对话”的国际学术讨论会。在他的带动下 , 2 0 0 2年 8月哈佛大学—燕京学社与南京大学在南京召开了“文明对话国际学术讨论会” ,这是一次穆斯林学者与非穆斯林学者的文明对话的学术讨论会。本刊 2 0 0 2年第 4期已选载了这次会议的部分学术论文。在这次会议上杜维明先生发表了题为“文明对话的发展及其世界意义”的演讲 ,他视野开阔 ,观点新颖 ,在与会学者中引起很大的反响他认为很多杰出的学者已经看到亨廷顿“文明冲突论”非常狭隘的二分法破绽。如果要在全球化的过程中使各种不同的民族文化能够逐渐地在合而不同的背景下生存就需要通过对话,逐渐发展出生命共同 体的意愿 ;通过对话 ,大家都具有和平共     

明治维新成功与戊戌变法失败的政治学分析

由于中日两国在政治体制方面存在着巨大的差异,决定了日本明治维新的成功和中国戊戌变法的失败。从政治发展的危机论角度观察,清末的政治体系不但面临着权威危机,而且还面临着参与危机;从实现现代化的政治条件上观察,清末的政治体制已经失去了实现现代化的政治功能;从政治衰败的角度观察,清末的政治衰败已到了无法挽救的地步。     

解放战争爆发的政治学分析

1946年解放战争的爆发是由于国民党政府当时的刻板、僵硬的政治体制,是国民党政府未能建立一个能够适应不断变化的政治参政模式体制的必然结果。由于国民党政府无法为当时新的社会力量、新的上层分子提供参与政治的渠道和参与政治体系的机会,而当时被排斥于政治之外的社会力量、上层分子又具有参与政治的强烈愿望,这种政治体制和社会力量两种因素一但碰到一起,革命就会爆发。     

宋代文明的历史地位

王曾瑜从教育、宋学、科技、史学、词、散文和诗等七个方面对宋代文明的历史地位进行了探讨,认为宋代文明在当时世界上占据领先地位;朱瑞熙从自身两次编撰“宋条”的体会出发,对宋朝的历史地位进行了再认识;邓小南从中西方对宋朝历史的不同认识入手,重新探讨了宋朝历史,并阐述了产生不同认识的原因以及现在我们所应有的态度;张邦炜将宋朝放到整个历史的进程中,对其与前后朝代予以对比,进行了科学定位;胡昭曦从宋朝社会经济发展状况以及宋朝的社会变革入手,对宋朝的历史地位进行了再定位;何忠礼则从社会经济、文化以及科技成就等三方面专门对南宋的历史地位进行了探讨。这些文章一致认为,无论是北宋还是南宋,其在中国古代教育、科技和文化发展史上都占有突出的重要地位,值得我们深入探讨。     

本杰明·富兰克林对中华文明的汲取——纪念富兰克林诞辰300周年

富兰克林以他的远见卓识认识到,向其他文化学习,对于美洲的人民来说,在把美洲建设成世界其他各地方仿效的样板的过程是十分重要的。在向其他文明学习的过程中,富兰克林努力从中国文明中汲取营养,用孔子的道德哲学来提升自己的道德修养,用中国的技术来提高美洲人民生活质量。他的这一努力为美洲文明的形成做出了巨大贡献。