scholarly journals Producing Authenticity: Urban Youth Arts, Rogue Archives and Negotiating a Home for Social Justice

2021 ◽  
Vol 15 (3) ◽  
pp. 375-396
Author(s):  
Stuart R. Poyntz

Social justice needs a home, a place where it can be found, especially for young people growing up in fragmented and increasingly inequitable societies. Community youth arts organizations have secured a certain prominence in this context over the past three decades and are now part of the urban infrastructures that shape connected learning networks in highly industrialized nations. In this capacity, youth arts organizations regularly engage a language and aesthetics of authenticity and trust as part of how they call out, represent and make a home for children and youth. This paper examines how authenticity in youth culture and youth cultural expression is negotiated by arts organizations and how organizations locate their own trustworthiness as allies of young people through the curation of online media archives. The analysis draws on the internet media archives of two youth arts organizations in Canada’s largest English-speaking cities. The Oasis Skateboard Factory (OSF) in Toronto, ON is an extension program of the Toronto District School Board that enables participants to create their own brands and learn to run a skateboard or professional design business. ReelYouth (Vancouver, BC) started in Vancouver in 2005 as a community media empowerment project, and now delivers programs across Canada and internationally.The claims to youth authenticity articulated in each media archive reveal how authenticity and trust are negotiated ideologically by each organization and how organizations mark their ontological status, as a home from which young people can think and respond to an unjust world. I examine how youth authenticity is produced by analyzing how discourses of youth identity, connection and trust are deployed across each archive. Whilst showcasing how authenticity is negotiated by each group, I show how the production of authenticity discourses by OSF and ReelYouth simultaneously convey a deeper reality: the way youth arts groups operate as care structures (Scannell, 2014) that offer ontological security (Giddens, 1991), and places of increasing “awareness of previously unnoticed interconnections” (Frosh, 2019, p. 16) for youth. In this way, they operate as sites of border work, places of routing from which the work of social justice can be borne.

2021 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 159-171
Author(s):  
Irina Vladimirovna Samarkina ◽  
Igor Stanislavovich Bashmakov

This article is devoted to the study of urban youth local identity in a large and medium city. This identity is manifested in everyday interaction with the urban community, its socio-political institutions and visitors and affect the level of public and political participation, the presence of constructive civic practices. The aim is to identify and describe the main components and place of local youth identity in the system of social identities in large and medium-sized cities of Krasnodar krai (Krasnodar, Novorossiysk, Sochi and Armavir). The empirical basis of the study was made up of focus group transcripts conducted with various groups of young people (schoolchildren, students, and working youth). To verify the conceptual model a modified version of the Kuhn-McPartland method was used. On the basis of the conducted empirical research, the place of local identity in the system of urban youth social and territorial identities was revealed. The dependence between the size of a city and a cohort of young people and a local identity was shown. Such components of young people local identity as awareness of the city and its socio-political life, attitude towards representatives of other communities, a sense of their involvement in city life, the desire to stay and live in the city, the will to work for the benefit of the city, to participate in its socio-political life. The study made it possible to identify the valence of youth identity (negative, neutral, positive). The trajectories of young people spatial mobility that affect the degree of actualization and valence of local identity were also described. The dependence between the strength of youth local identity and participation in public and political activity for the benefit of the city and the region, participation in the activities of public and political organizations has been revealed.


2019 ◽  
Vol 227 (2) ◽  
pp. 139-143 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alex Sandro Gomes Pessoa ◽  
Linda Liebenberg ◽  
Dorothy Bottrell ◽  
Silvia Helena Koller

Abstract. Economic changes in the context of globalization have left adolescents from Latin American contexts with few opportunities to make satisfactory transitions into adulthood. Recent studies indicate that there is a protracted period between the end of schooling and entering into formal working activities. While in this “limbo,” illicit activities, such as drug trafficking may emerge as an alternative for young people to ensure their social participation. This article aims to deepen the understanding of Brazilian youth’s involvement in drug trafficking and its intersection with their schooling, work, and aspirations, connecting with Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) 4 and 16 as proposed in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development adopted by the United Nations in 2015 .


Author(s):  
Natasha Thomas-Jackson

RAISE IT UP! Youth Arts and Awareness (RIU) is an organization that promotes youth engagement, expression, and empowerment through the use of performance and literary arts and social justice activism. We envision a world where youth are fully recognized, valued, and supported as artist-activists and emerging thought leaders, working to create a world that is just, intersectional, and inclusive. Two fundamental tenets shape RIU’s policies, practices, and pedagogy. The first is that creative self-expression and culture making are powerful tools for personal and social transformation. The second is that social justice is truly possible only if and when we are willing to have transparent and authentic conversations about the oppression children experience at the hands of the adults in their lives. We are committed to amplifying youth voices and leadership and building cross-generational solidarity among people of all ages, particularly those impacted by marginalization. Though RIU is focused on and driven by the youth, a large part of our work includes helping adult family members, educators, and community leaders understand the ways in which systemic oppression shapes our perceptions of and interactions with the young people in our homes, neighborhoods, institutions, and decision-making bodies.


Author(s):  
Hind Mohammed Abdul Jabbar Ali

Connecting to the  electronic information network (internet) became the most characteristic that distinguish this era However , the long hours which young men daily spend on the internet On the other hand ,there are many people who are waiting for the chance to talk and convince them with their views This will lead the young people to be part in the project of the “cyber armies “that involved with states and terrorist organizations  This project has been able  to recruitment hundreds of people every day to work in its rank . It is very difficult to control these websites because we can see the terrorist presence in all its forms in the internet   In addition there are many incubation environments that feed in particular the young people minds                                                                                         Because they are suffering from the lack of social justice Also the unemployment, deprivation , social and political repression So , that terrorist organizations can attract young people through the internet by convincing them to their views and ideas . So these organizations will enable to be more  stronger.


2021 ◽  
pp. 193229682110292
Author(s):  
David Tsai ◽  
Jaquelin Flores Garcia ◽  
Jennifer L. Fogel ◽  
Choo Phei Wee ◽  
Mark W. Reid ◽  
...  

Background: Diabetes technologies, such as insulin pumps and continuous glucose monitors (CGM), have been associated with improved glycemic control and increased quality of life for young people with type 1 diabetes (T1D); however, few young people use these devices, especially those from minority ethnic groups. Current literature predominantly focuses on white patients with private insurance and does not report experiences of diverse pediatric patients with limited resources. Methods: To explore potential differences between Latinx and non-Latinx patients, English- and Spanish-speaking young people with T1D ( n = 173, ages 11-25 years) were surveyed to assess attitudes about and barriers to diabetes technologies using the Technology Use Attitudes and Barriers to Device Use questionnaires. Results: Both English- and Spanish-speaking participants who identified as Latinx were more likely to have public insurance ( P = .0001). English-speaking Latinx participants reported higher Hemoglobin A1c values ( P = .003), less CGM use ( P = .002), and more negative attitudes about technology (generally, P = .003; and diabetes-specific, P < .001) than either non-Latinx or Spanish-speaking Latinx participants. Barriers were encountered with equivalent frequency across groups. Conclusions: Latinx English-speaking participants had less positive attitudes toward general and diabetes technology than Latinx Spanish-speaking and non-Latinx English-speaking peers, and differences in CGM use were associated with socioeconomic status. Additional work is needed to design and deliver diabetes interventions that are of interest to and supportive of patients from diverse ethnic and language backgrounds.


Author(s):  
Sanna Vehviläinen ◽  
Anne-Mari Souto

AbstractThe aim of this article is to show how interaction research can contribute to the understanding and praxis of socially just guidance. The article is theoretical, but it makes use of our previous empirical studies. We combine the ethnographic study of school and racism, and interactional research on guidance. We define guidance for social justice, explaining how this translates to the level of interactional practices. We show two empirical examples of interactional phenomena hindering socially just praxis. We lastly discuss our practical conclusions on how to help school career counsellors change their interactional practices.


2012 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 79-115 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martin Scanlan

This study creates life history portraits of two White middle-class native-English-speaking principals demonstrating commitments to social justice in their work in public elementary schools serving disproportionately high populations of students who are marginalized by poverty, race, and linguistic heritage. Through self-reported life histories of these principals, I create portraits that illustrate how these practitioners draw motivation, commitment, and sustenance in varied, complicated, and at times contradictory ways.


Ethnography ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 19 (4) ◽  
pp. 531-547 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ove Sernhede

The globally reported riots in the poor high-rise suburbs of Sweden’s metropolitan districts in 2013 were stark manifestations of the increased social and economic inequality of the past 30 years. Large groups of young adults acted out their unarticulated claims for social justice. In the light of the riots, it is relevant to ask whether any trace of resistance or protest can be found in the compulsory school where the young people from these neighbourhoods spend their days. The ethnography sampled for the article comes from two public schools in two poor, multi-ethnic, high-rise neighbourhoods on the outskirts of Gothenburg. The article argues that the theoretical and methodological concepts and perspectives developed by Willis still is of crucial importance to any investigation aimed at understanding the presence or absence of resistance in contemporary Swedish schools.


Author(s):  
Nicholas Woodrow ◽  
Karenza Moore

AbstractThe global COVID-19 pandemic has created, exposed and exacerbated inequalities and differences around access to—and experiences and representations of—the physical and virtual spaces of young people’s leisure cultures and practices. Drawing on longstanding themes of continuity and change in youth leisure scholarship, this paper contributes to our understandings of ‘liminal leisure’ as experienced by some young people in the UK before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. To do this, we place primary pre-pandemic research on disadvantaged young people’s leisure spaces and practices in dialogue with secondary data on lockdown and post-lockdown leisure. Subsequently, we argue that existing and emergent forms of youth ‘leisure liminality’ are best understood through the lens of intersectional disadvantages. Specifically, pre-existing intersectional disadvantages are being compounded by disruptions to youth leisure, as the upheaval of the pandemic continues to be differentially experienced. To understand this process, we deploy the concept of liminal leisure spaces used by Swaine et al Leisure Studies 37:4,440-451, (2018) in their ethnography of Khat-chewing among young British Somali urban youth ‘on the margins’. Similarly, our focus is on young people’s management and negotiation of substance use ‘risks’, harms and pleasures when in ‘private-in-public’ leisure spaces. We note that the UK government responses to the pandemic, such as national and regional lockdowns, meant that the leisure liminality of disadvantaged young people pre-pandemic became the experience of young people more generally, with for example the closure of night-time economies (NTEs). Yet despite some temporary convergence, intersectionally disadvantaged young people ‘at leisure’ have been subject to a particularly problematic confluence of criminalisation, exclusion and stigmatisation in COVID-19 times, which will most likely continue into the post-pandemic future.


2015 ◽  
Vol 21 (3) ◽  
pp. 266-286 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patricia McNeilly ◽  
Geraldine Macdonald ◽  
Berni Kelly

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