Pathways to Participation: Class Disparities in Youth Civic Engagement

2016 ◽  
Vol 15 (4) ◽  
pp. 400-422 ◽  
Author(s):  
Melody L. Boyd ◽  
Jason Martin ◽  
Kathryn Edin
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Civic Engagement ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Qualitative Interviews ◽  
The United States ◽  
Youth Civic Engagement ◽  
Population Turnover ◽  
Family Level ◽  
Over Time

Recent research finds that there is a growing class gap in levels of civic engagement among young whites in the United States. Much of the literature on civic engagement focuses on individual– and family–level factors related to civic engagement. Our evidence suggests that it is critically important to consider variation and change in community–level factors as well, and that such factors may play a key role in facilitating or inhibiting civic engagement. To explore the puzzle of the growing class gap among young whites in civic engagement, we conducted two–generation in–depth qualitative interviews in white working class neighborhoods in Philadelphia and its inner suburbs, with companion interviews among Philadelphia–area youth living in middle class communities. We complement these interviews with quantitative measures of institutional and demographic changes in these neighborhoods over time. Our evidence suggests that a withdrawal of institutional investments in working class neighborhoods (and relative to middle class neighborhoods), along with an increase in population turnover and racial and ethnic heterogeneity, which has disproportionately impacted working class neighborhoods as well, may be important factors in understanding the growing class gap in civic engagement among white youth.

Middle-Class Victorian Street Arabs: Modern Re-creations of the Baker Street Irregulars

2012 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 36-50 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dominic Cheetham
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Children's Literature ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Street Children ◽  
Children’S Literature ◽  
The United States ◽  
Sherlock Holmes ◽  
Upward Shift

In three of Sir Arthur Conan-Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories there are brief appearances of the Baker Street Irregulars, a group of ‘street Arabs’ who help Holmes with his investigations. These children have been re-imagined in modern children's literature in at least twenty-seven texts in a variety of media and with writers from both Britain and the United States. All these modern stories show a marked upward shift in the class of the Irregulars away from the lower working class of Conan-Doyle's originals. The shift occurs through attributing middle-class origins to the leaders of the Irregulars, through raising the class of the Irregulars in general, and through giving the children life environments more comfortable, safe, and financially secure than would have been possible for late-Victorian street children. Because of the variety in texts and writers, it is argued that this shift is not a result of the conscious political or ideological positions of individual writers, but rather reflects common unconscious narrative choices. The class-shift is examined in relation to the various pressures of conventions in children's literature, concepts of audience, and common concepts of class in society.

Karl Marx's Vision of America: A Biographical and Bibliographical Sketch

1980 ◽  
Vol 42 (4) ◽  
pp. 465-503
Author(s):  
Robert Weiner
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Karl Marx ◽  
The United States ◽  
Abraham Lincoln ◽  
New Era ◽  
War Of Independence ◽  
Made In

Karl Marx and the United States is a subject which immediately elicits interest, but also surprise. Interest, because of its contemporary importance; surprise, because Marx and America have appeared so remote from one another. Marx has definitely influenced America, but that will not be the theme of this essay —instead, we will concern ourselves with the role of America in the thought of Marx. The magnitude of this role is illustrated by a statement made in Marx's letter to Abraham Lincoln, written in 1864 on behalf of the International Workingmen's Association:The workingmen of Europe feel sure that as the American war of independence initiated a new era of the ascendency of the middle-class, so the American Anti-slavery war will do for the working-class.

My Little Girl Wife

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicholas L. Syrett
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Working Class ◽  
The United States ◽  
Child Marriage ◽  
Statutory Rape ◽  
Age Of Consent ◽  
Minor Children ◽  
Meaningful Category

By the later nineteenth century, ideas about childhood and about marriage had undergone significant transformations in the United States, especially among the middle class. Children were now seen as innocents in need of protection and marriage was meant to be a complementary (if still unequal) union of two companionate souls. Both of these trends meant that child marriage increasingly came into disfavor. Focusing on depictions of child marriage in newspapers, debates about statutory rape laws, and marriage and divorce reform leagues, this chapter documents succesful efforts to raise the age of consent to marriage. It also shows the ways that working-class parents, generally those least likely to identify age as a meaningful category of identity, used these new laws to prevent their minor children from marrying.

Queering Middle Class Gender in Nineteenth-Century US Theater

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gillian Rodger
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Gender Roles ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Urban Areas ◽  
The United States ◽  
Gender Construction ◽  
Narrative Forms

This chapter considers cross-dressed roles in nineteenth-century music-theatrical forms in the United States, and particularly in non-narrative and semi-narrative forms such as minstrelsy, circus, variety, and burlesque. It discusses the origins of cross-dressed roles in English theatrical traditions, as well as connections to similar roles in European opera and operetta. It also considers other kinds of performances present in variety that challenged middle class gender construction of the period, and suggests that variety represented working class gender roles, and humor was found at the expense of hegemonic middle class ideals. This becomes particularly clear in the performances by male impersonators in variety of the 1860s–1880s. By the end of the century the middle class had expanded to include portions of the variety audience, and audiences no longer found the satirical treatment of middle class men funny. This, and growing mainstream recognition of homosexual populations, particularly in urban areas, caused the decline of cross-dressed performance.

Youth Civic Action Across the United States: Projects, Priorities, and Approaches

2019 ◽  
pp. 0044118X1988373 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elena Gustafson ◽  
Alison K. Cohen ◽  
Sarah Andes
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Civic Engagement ◽  
Urban Youth ◽  
Exploratory Study ◽  
The United States ◽  
Similar Proportion ◽  
Youth Voice ◽  
Civic Action ◽  
Youth Civic Engagement ◽  
Action Projects

Youth civic engagement is relatively low in the United States. However, when students are involved in an action civics class (like Generation Citizen), they enthusiastically take action on a wide variety of topics. To systematically assess what issues youth are interested in, we analyzed administrative data from 1,651 action projects conducted by students in Generation Citizen classes across the United States from fall 2012 through fall 2017. We found that the most common issues of interest were related to safety and violence or schooling. Over one quarter of projects tackled issues of trauma, and a similar proportion tackled issues of equity. This exploratory study helps reveal what urban youth in Generation Citizen classes around the county view as of civic interest and important to them. We encourage future researchers and practitioners to further document youth voice regarding civic action as we seek to understand and lift up young people’s unique insights.

The Role of Anti-Slavery Sentiment in English Reactions to the American Civil War

1976 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 405-420 ◽  
Author(s):  
Douglas A. Lorimer
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Civil War ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Political Attitudes ◽  
The United States ◽  
American Democracy ◽  
Testing Ground ◽  
Parliamentary Reform

From 1861 to 1865, English politicians and journalists watched with passionate interest as the United States seemed to tear itself apart over the question of slavery. During these years, English public men, politicians and writers of all qualities and degrees, gave extensive airing to their views both of slavery and of American democracy. This extensive commentary on the American conflict, and the subsequent revival of interest in parliamentary reform, have made the divisions in English opinion on the war a useful testing ground of mid-Victorian social and political attitudes. Early studies, written from the perspective of the northern victory, the abolition of slavery, and the martyrdom of Lincoln, found it difficult to comprehend the extent of pro-confederate sympathy in England. On the slavery question, the mid-Victorians seemed to have lost the abolitionist enthusiasm of their evangelical forebears in the Clapham Sect. In order to fathom this failure of English judgement, historians attempted to show that the more articulate minority, the upper echelons of mid-Victorian society, sided with an aristocratic, slave-owning south, while the less articulate majority, middle-class radicals and the working class, sided with a democratic, abolitionist north.

Having Their Say, Leaving Their Mark

2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 141-153
Author(s):  
Adolphus G. Belk ◽  
Robert C. Smith ◽  
Sherri L. Wallace
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Civic Engagement ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Black People ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Political ◽  
Historical Documents ◽  
Adverse Conditions ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Independent Organization

In general, the founders of the National Conference of Black Political Scientists were “movement people.” Powerful agents of socialization such as the uprisings of the 1960s molded them into scholars with tremendous resolve to tackle systemic inequalities in the political science discipline. In forming NCOBPS as an independent organization, many sought to develop a Black perspective in political science to push the boundaries of knowledge and to use that scholarship to ameliorate the adverse conditions confronting Black people in the United States and around the globe. This paper utilizes historical documents, speeches, interviews, and other scholarly works to detail the lasting contributions of the founders and Black political scientists to the discipline, paying particular attention to their scholarship, teaching, mentoring, and civic engagement. It finds that while political science is much improved as a result of their efforts, there is still work to do if their goals are to be achieved.

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