Exploring the Ebbs and Flows of Community Engagement: The Pyramid of Engagement and Water Activism in Two Canadian Communities

In this article, we share results from a comparative study exploring the dynamics of community engagement surrounding local water advocacy organizations in two Canadian communities. Although emergent local issues and the perception of crisis triggered some short-term community engagement, social factors such as collective identity, a sense of community, and sense of efficacy appear to be more important for sustaining and deepening engagement. Drawing on the results, we show how the pyramid of engagement, by depicting activist engagement as a multilevel, developmental process, can serve as a useful tool for community engagement scholars and practitioners alike.     

Digital media,subcultural activity and youth participation: the cases of protest rap and graffiti in Portugal

Over the last decade, we have witnessed the emergence of an academic debate surrounding the relationship between youth and the ‘new media’, with a particular emphasis on the social uses of different digital technologies within the sphere of youth activity. A specific area of research has been dedicated to studying the use of digital media in the context of the so-called youth subcultures. With this article we expect to contribute to this ongoing debate, by examining the problem through an analysis of two interconnected case studies: protest rap and illegal graffiti. Both cases may be defined as subcultures, insofar as they are characterized as alternative, subterranean, and to a certain extent, subversive movements. The empirical ground for this discussion is based on several investigations, with a qualitative basis, carried out by the authors in the course of over a decade in Portugal. This extended time frame allowed ample access to a diversified and matured analytical material and enabled a better perspective of the developments and the mutations involving the appropriation of the digital media. Our researches have shown that digital media and technologies have been gradually integrated in these urban youth subcultures, accomplishing several strategic roles.     

Keep the hope alive: young Indonesian musicians’ views of the future

Using ethnographic and interview data, this article explores hopes for the future of young Indonesian musicians. The young people are seen to consider their future trajectories in multiple, hierarchical music fields. The article also takes into account the ontological insecurity of jobs as a professional musician, arguing that there is continuous reproduction of a doxa, namely ‘survival of the fittest’ in Indonesia. Yet despite abundant risks to livelihoods, young Indonesian musicians expressed optimistic views about the future. The analysis of data below bridges the gap between the traditionally separate youth studies fields of youth transitions and youth cultures. Our interpretation critically contextualises the dialogue between these two fields based on the experiences of young Indonesian musicians as a part of the Global South.     

Promoting young people’s musical identities to facilitate recovery from mental illness

The new ‘youth mental health paradigm’ (IAYMH. 2015. “International Association for Youth Mental Health.” Accessed February 15, http://www.iaymh.org/) promotes the need for youth-friendly mental health options. Music therapy initiatives offer innovative modes of working towards young people’s recovery in ways that align with the ethos of these services (McCaffrey, Edwards, and Fannon. 2011. “Is There a Role for Music Therapy in the Recovery Approach in Mental Health?” The Arts in Psychotherapy 38 (3): 185–189). This paper details a participatory research project investigating how and why promoting young people’s musical identities can facilitate their recovery from mental illness. Young people accessing a music therapy programme in a youth mental health service in Australia participated in collaborative qualitative interviews that were analysed using constructivist grounded theory techniques. Cycles of action and reflection resulted in a grounded theory explaining the recovery of musical identity, and mapping young people’s community-based music needs for wellbeing. We propose that promoting young people’s musical identities facilitates recovery through: the construction of a health-based identity; facilitating meaning-making; and supporting social participation. Findings are discussed in relation to recovery literature and social justice issues that arise in response to findings about young people’s needs for appropriate music access.     

Youth studies,citizenship and transitions: towards a new research agenda

A key goal in youth studies is to gain holistic understandings of what it means to be young. However, a significant impediment to achieving this has been the tendency of youth studies to develop along siloed and stratified subfields. In keeping with the goal of creating more productive dialogue between subfields in youth studies, this paper examines the intersections between research in youth citizenship and youth transitions to consider the fresh insights and cross fertilisations that such an analysis may yield. This examination reveals a sense of dissatisfaction in both subfields with traditional normative and linear models of citizenship and transitions which rely on step-wise and sequential notions of time. In response, the paper advances a new research agenda which posits more temporally, spatially and relationally-sensitive understandings of youth citizenship and transition. Drawing on Ingold (2007. Lines: A brief history. London: Routledge), this agenda proposes the use of three alternative metaphors – genealogical, wayfaring and threads – which could hold the potential to unsettle the normativity and linearity of previous youth transitions and citizenship frameworks, and thus provide deeper insights into what it means to live and to be young citizens in times of transition.     

Young people negotiating and maintaining boundaries in youth work relationships: findings from an ethnographic study of youth clubs

‘Professional boundaries’ set limits on appropriate behaviours in the relationship between the service users and practitioners. The professional literature often assumes boundaries are maintained by the practitioners, occupational bodies, or organisational policy. However in youth work this is under-researched. An ethnographic study of four youth clubs in the North East of England into ethical practice revealed that young people were surprisingly adept at maintaining boundaries with the youth workers. These boundaries were negotiated and maintained through the young people's use of space, their willingness to interact with the workers, the way they shared information with the workers, and their inclusion of youth workers into their social networking. Young people also showed a sophisticated awareness of the organisational boundaries youth workers were operating within, and often cooperated in maintaining them with the worker. The article concludes by arguing youth workers should take seriously young people's ability and willingness to set and work within boundaries, and see their negotiation and maintenance as a mutual endeavour. However, this may provide a challenge to organisations with rigid policy-defined boundaries.     

What does wellbeing do? An approach to defamiliarize keywords in youth studies

Wellbeing has become a keyword in youth and social policy, a construct deployed as a measure of a good life. Often associated with physical and mental health, wellbeing encompasses numerous indicators, from subjective experiences of happiness and satisfaction to markers of economic prosperity and basic human needs of security. This article examines wellbeing as an organizing concept in discourses on young people and argues for defamiliarizing its truth claims and cultural authority by investigating what wellbeing does. We begin by examining the rise of wellbeing, drawing attention to its conceptual muddiness and ambiguity. Framed by the Foucauldian notion of problematization, the analysis proceeds along two routes: first, through an historical consideration of wellbeing as a relational concept with antecedents, focusing on ‘self-esteem’; and second, through a reading of wellbeing in contemporary educational policy. Informed by Somers' historical sociology of concept formation and Bacchi's critical policy analysis, we illuminate the mixed dimensions of wellbeing's reach, placing it within longer traditions of youth studies and psy-knowledges and showing its transformative promise as well as its individualizing effects. In doing so, we elaborate a methodological approach that can be adapted to examine other keywords in youth studies and social policy discourse.     

On Youth＇s Value Structure Roots of the Rise of Social Network Sites

青年价值结构反映了青年在价值观念变迁中现代化维度和后现代化维度中的转变程度。目前社交网站覆盖人数众多,用户以高学历、年轻化、城市分布规律化和交际现实性为主要特点。社交网站发展与青年价值结构变迁具有内在的密切关联。社交网站技术引进国内却丧失了原有的“意义图景”,说明我国青年在价值理性方面的缺失和对工具理性的追逐：接受社交网站说明“熟人社会”结构在青年社交活动中仍然延续．社交网站也能为青年实现个人成就提供可能性：社交网站馈赠型社会化模式有效改进了青年“相对被剥夺感”严重、幸福感低迷的现状,这是社交网站进一步发展壮大的功能基础。     

胡耀邦与“文化大革命”后拨乱反正时期的青年工作

胡耀邦同志在“文化大革命”后这个特殊的年代,对青年工作面临的基本问题,包括对“文化大革命”后青年的估价,青年工作拨乱反正的任务和基本方针,处理“文化大革命”遗留下来各种严重的青年问题的方针和政策,对当时的共青团组织怎样工作和团干部应有的精神状态与作风等,都有相关的系统论述。这是我党青年工作的一个典范。青年是社会变革中一支最敏感、最活跃也是很重要的力量,今天我们重温胡耀邦同志当时的指导思想,仍有着重要的现实意义。     

社交网站兴起与青年价值结构分析

青年价值结构反映了青年在价值观念变迁中现代化维度和后现代化维度中的转变程度。目前社交网站覆盖人数众多,用户以高学历、年轻化、城市分布规律化和交际现实性为主要特点。社交网站发展与青年价值结构变迁具有内在的密切关联。社交网站技术引进国内却丧失了原有的“意义图景”,说明我国青年在价值理性方面的缺失和对工具理性的追逐：接受社交网站说明“熟人社会”结构在青年社交活动中仍然延续．社交网站也能为青年实现个人成就提供可能性：社交网站馈赠型社会化模式有效改进了青年“相对被剥夺感”严重、幸福感低迷的现状,这是社交网站进一步发展壮大的功能基础。