CALL FOR PAPERS
Global Youth
Paper session at the Association of American Geographers Annual Conference, Seattle April 12th-16th, 2011
Convenors: Craig Jeffrey and Jane Dyson
Global social and economic changes are transforming the lives of children and youth. In many parts of the world the decline of state welfare systems since the 1980s has undermined young people’s efforts to obtain social goods associated with “adulthood”, such as a stable job, valuable skills, and secure housing. At the same time, economic collapse and the restructuring of labor markets have often forced children and youth to assume responsibility for social reproduction. Ironically, converging socio-economic crises are occurring at a time when young people are increasingly exposed via the international media to images of successful adulthood based upon education and professional employment.
We invite papers from geographers, anthropologists and those in related disciplines that examine the experiences and practices of young people entangled in these complex changes, with a view to developing a more globally comparative perspective on youth experience and action – a list of possible topics is appended at the foot of this message. We are especially keen to solicit papers that do one or all of the following:
1. Examine the trans-local, including global, processes that influence children and youth in different settings and, in turn, how the actions of young people in one place might affect the constraints and opportunities that influence young people in other parts of the world.
2. Reflect on how scholars and young people themselves can build a durable network of collaborative praxis linking actors across a wide variety of settings.
3. Examine young people outside the regional (Euro-American) or spatial (school, playground etc.) contexts usually studied. Please send Craig Jeffrey an abstract by October 15th 2010: [log in to unmask]
Feel free to contact Craig informally to ask questions.
Possible topics:
• youth inequalities, access and social mobility: differences and exclusions based upon class, race, gender, caste, age, sexuality, ability, and geography as well as intersections between inequalities
• global youth cultures: femininities and masculinities, female empowerment, family and community traditions, youth performances, youth and new media, sexuality, the body
• politics of youth transformation: political movements, inter- and trans-generational politics, cultural politics, the effects of conflict and war on young people and education
• poverty, education and the transformation of childhood: children’s work, street children, child trafficking, children’s rights, child soldiers, schooling, non-school education (e.g. apprenticeships)
• health, HIV/AIDS and well-being: youth issues in relation to mental and physical disability and illness
• youth, rights and the law: human rights, youth legal rights and responsibilities, discourses of youth, international law and young people
• impact of global and national reforms on young people: new models of education, neoliberal reforms and their effects, impact of 2008-2009 global economic downturn on young people.
• youth, space and the environment: migration, youth and place, young people’s engagement with new technologies, youth environmental movements and practices, urban and rural youth, young people’s attempts to address climate change
Information about Convenors
Dr. Craig Jeffrey, currently a University Lecturer at Oxford University and Fellow of St. John’s College works on youth, politics and education in India. He is author of Degrees Without Freedom? Education, Masculinities and Unemployment in North India (Stanford, 2008, with Patricia Jeffery and Roger Jeffery), Telling Young Lives: Portraits in Global Youth (Temple, 2008, with Jane Dyson), and Timepass: Youth, Class and the Politics of Waiting (Stanford, 2010).
Dr. Jane Dyson, currently an Affiliate Scholar at the University of Oxford has written several articles and book chapters and co-edited Telling Young Lives with Craig Jeffrey. She is currently writing a monograph on her research.
Dr. Craig Jeffrey
Fellow of St. John's College, Oxford
University Lecturer in Human Geography
School of Geography and the Environment, South Parks Road, Oxford OX1 3QY, UK Tel. 01865 287183
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