Promise and devotion: catholicism and Girl Guides in Brazil

This paper attempts to analyze the main justifications for the expansion of Girl Guides in Brazil, a movement that featured a strong expression of female association, a tactic mobilized by certain female Catholic intellectuals to legitimize their circulation in the public space. It indicates education, culture and assistance as important fronts, in a group of actions aimed at securing the Catholic foundations of Brazilian society. Although the elementary principle of Girl Guides wasn’t connected to any one religion or belief, it’s possible to assess that the movement in Brazil was strongly intertwined with a religious and moral discourse in the form of the “good Girl Guide”, who should be pious and devoted to her promise of serving God and country, with clearly Catholic roots.

Globalizing the Americas Through Twentieth-Century Youth Organizations

The twentieth century saw an unprecedented rise in youth culture in the Americas through the proliferation of organizations that channeled their energy into politically, culturally, and socially constructive activities. Many political leaders saw such organizations as strategic vehicles for nation-building, and official sponsorship of youth organizations burgeoned alongside the emergence of populist-style politics in the region that spanned the ideological spectrum. The relationship between national political projects and organized youth cultures can be traced in a rough chronological sweep through the region in four sections. These include nationalism and race expressed in cultures of the Boy Scouts and Girl Guides; neocolonial desires behind the pan-American youth exchanges of the Good Neighbor period; the ideological poles of populism in Peronist Argentina and Castro’s Cuba; and contestatory youth cultures in South American dictatorships during the late Cold War period. Over time and across countries, the intended state-sponsored political and social goals of organizing children and youth were often nuanced—if not completely undermined—by young people’s own plans as active members with goals of their own.

RAS200: bringing astronomy and geophysics to new audiences

<p>This year sees the Royal Astronomical Society – the oldest learned society covering astronomy and geophysics in the world – celebrate its 200<sup>th</sup> anniversary. In the run up to 2020, the RAS initiated an outreach and engagement scheme aimed at bringing the society’s sciences to new audiences, those who might not normally attend public lectures, planetarium shows or even star-gazing evenings. Committing £1 million to the project, the RAS deliberately sought out new partners who would take it out of its comfort zone with a bottom-up funding scheme making up to £100k available for five-year projects. Competition for the funding was fierce with just 12 projects funded out of more than 150 applications.</p> <p> </p> <p>Starting in 2015, the Prince’s Trust has used astronomy to inspire young people who have had some of the hardest starts in life. Carers who hardly ever get a break from their duties are funded to spend weekends learning about the stars on the Scottish island of Coll. A new planetarium show using Holst’s classic “Planet Suite” and modern adaptations brings the heavens in Full-dome 360 animation to audiences via mobile planetaria. New courses for adults who missed out on their education first time round have been developed. And Welsh cultural festivals now resonate to poetry, dance and music inspired by astronomy.</p> <p> </p> <p>Starting two years later, geophysics is being used to engage football crowds with science, and prisoners are being helped maintain links with their families through astronomy. In Cornwall, Galway and South Africa, artworks, trails and exhibitions are taking astronomy out to local people. And young girls and women in the Girl Guides have new badges to work for. All of these projects, too, are being adapted to suit people on the autistic spectrum.  All projects are being evaluated and all publicised as widely as possible.</p> <p> </p>

‘Doing nature’ and being a Guide: the problem of the town guide in the British Girl Guides Association, 1930–1960

PurposeTo explore the advice given by the British Girl Guides Association, a popular girls' youth organisation, to urban members in the period from 1930 to 1960.Design/methodology/approachThis article is based on an analysis of the Girlguiding publications The Guide and The Guider in 30 years spanning 1930–1960.FindingsThe article shows that, although rural spaces maintained symbolic position in the education and training of the British Girl Guides Association throughout the mid-twentieth century, the use of urban spaces were central in ensuring that girls embodied Guiding principles on a day-to-day basis. While rural spaces, and especially the camp, have been conceptualised by scholars as ‘extraordinary’ spaces, this article argues that by encouraging girls to undertake nature study in their urban locality the organisation stressed the ordinariness of Guiding activity. In doing so, they encouraged girls to be an active presence in urban public space throughout the period, despite the fact that, as scholars have identified, the post-war period saw the increased regulation of children's presence in public spaces. Such findings suggest that the organisation allowed girls a modicum of freedom in town Guiding activities, although ultimately these were limited by expectations regarding the behaviour and conduct of members.Originality/valueThe article builds upon existing understandings of the Girl Guide organisation and mid-twentieth century youth movements. A number of scholars have recently argued for a more complex understanding of the relationship between urban and rural, outdoor and indoor spaces, within youth organisations in the 20th century. Yet the place of urban spaces in Girlguiding remains under-explored.

Girl Guides, Athletes, and Educators

Algeria is often seen as a major instance of women’s emancipation in the Middle East of the mid-twentieth century. Whereas the scholarly focus has often been on colonial policies, French views, or the female participation in the war of independence, this article looks at the impact that new bodily practices, such as scouting and sports, had on gender relations within Muslim Algerian society during the last three decades of French rule. It contrasts the reformist discourse of the Islamic islah movement on women’s “emancipation” and education with the aspirations of young women themselves who started to challenge patriarchal authority.

From “Bringing up Good Children” to “Making a Difference in the World": Examining Gender, Motherhood, and Career in a Century of Girl Guide Manuals

You’ve eaten their cookies and heard their campfire songs and seen the sashes full of badges. But have you ever thought about which badges girls are asked to earn, and why? In light of the 100th anniversary of the Girl Guides of Canada in 2010, this presentation questions previous interpretations of the organization’s history. Gender historians have long considered Guiding to be a bastion of prescriptive femininity, citing the organization’s stated aim of teaching girls womanliness. Meanwhile, historians focusing on the Boy Scout movement have placed Scouting’s genesis within the context of a crisis of masculinity, leaving no space for a discourse of femininity and writing Guiding off as Scouting’s uninteresting younger sister. A closer look reveals the situation to be far more complex. Through the analysis of a representative sample of Guide manuals, handbooks, and program books throughout the twentieth century, and drawing on research done about Girl Guides in the UK, this presentation seeks to complicate both the movement’s historic origins and its relationship with traditional femininity. Topics examined include the imperialist origins of Guiding and Scouting, the influence of the Baden-Powell family over Guiding manuals, the use of historical Canadian heroines in Guide manuals, the manuals’ mixed messages about gender roles and future careers, the evolution of Guiding over the course of the twentieth century, and the Girl Guides of Canada’s pro-feminist redefinition in the early 1990s. The presentation contends that Guiding in fact had a complex and nuanced relationship with gender, motherhood, and career options.