David A. Kinney - Böcker

Volume 8 of Sociological Studies of Children and Youth includes chapters that focus on issues of race, gender and public policy as they relate to children and youth. This volume includes empirical and theoretical works from a variety of perspectives. The chapters are divided into the following sections: (1) Children, Race, and Social Institutions; (2) Youth and Gender; (3) Youth, Theory, and Methods; (4) Urban Youth and Identity; and (5) Policy, Politics and Theory. Specific chapters address the following important topics; the impact of teachers' expectations on parents and children; how children from different racial backgrounds interact with each other and adults in a public service agency; children's racial self-classification; female and male athletes in high school; romantic relationships among adolescents; new skills to learn in peer groups; white youth's racial apathy; urban youth and academic identity; violence among youth growing up in a large city; and theory and public policy as they relate to children.

This volume contains a diverse set of chapters that offer a good balance of quantitative and qualitative methodologies; focus on children, youth, or both children and youth; and come from a variety of theoretical perspectives. Two prominent themes of the volume are adolescents' transition to adulthood and children's time-use issues. Several chapters address each of these issues, including one examining children's labor in Senegal. Two ethnographic studies are included: one analyzes student-teacher interaction in an urban high-school math class, while the other examines friendship development and maintenance of early elementary-aged African American girls. The volume also includes a policy analysis of medical insurance provision for low income children, and a response to an earlier chapter on children's rights that appeared in Volume 8.

Coming from a range of methodological and theoretical orientations, this volume showcases the lives of children and the policies that shape children's lives on five continents. Across these research articles, it becomes clear that we cannot continue to assume a certain meaning of childhood, because this concept is bound by both cultural and structural factors. Cultural expectations influence how societies view children and how children view themselves. A handful of these studies show how immigrant children and youth provide particularly interesting insight as they navigate more than one cultural context. Structural factors also become salient, as children come from unequal backgrounds, different levels of economic development, and face varying political concerns. While these papers come from different doorsteps of the world, cultural and structural threads of continuity connect them as meaningful for children. This volume illustrates how international childhood researchers can use current concepts and theories into unlikely contexts exposing their limitations and helping to inform more versatile and robust lines of thinking for children and youth studies.

The volume is organized in two parts. Following the Introduction, six chapters make up Part One, 'Empirical Studies'. Two quantitative analyses lead off: first an examination of residential mobility, peer networks and life-course transitions; second, a look at adolescents' participation in a particular social movement. Two ethnographic studies follow - here the foci are 'Zero Tolerance' school discipline policies, and female athletes' construction of femininity. A comparative content analysis of teen magazine advice columns, and a qualitative study of construction of 'adoptive family' identities, round out Part One. Three chapters constitute Part Two, 'Innovations in Theory and Research Methods'.The first offers an analysis of two films that explore childrens' struggle for agency and control. The next chapter develops a typology of children's participation in social movements, employing fascinating first-person narrative accounts. The final chapter demonstrates the unique ability of group interviews to capture processes through which adolescents accomplish group talk, develop shared perspectives, and construct gender identities.

This volume is comprised of empirical research and theoretical papers within three key areas, namely children's well being, children and youth peer cultures, and the rights of children and youth. These empirical studies include children's voices and experiences from four continents (Asia, Europe, North America and South America) and a range of methodological and theoretical orientations. A clear connection to social policy at a national and international level is made in many of these studies. Topics are wide-ranging and include: Praetorian militarization; school mobility; math and reading achievement gaps; dating and the developmental discourse in a summer camp; and, school and social exclusion for urban young people. Altogether, these studies highlight how structure and culture both limit and enable the life chances of children, how children interpret and construct their social relations and environments, and how children view themselves as well as how others view the rights of children. This volume is a further example of how the "Sociological Studies of Children and Youth" series successfully showcases major strands of current thinking on children and youth in our world today.

Volume 8 of Sociological Studies of Children and Youth includes chapters that focus on issues of race, gender and public policy as they relate to children and youth. This volume includes empirical and theoretical works from a variety of perspectives. The chapters are divided into the following sections: (1) Children, Race, and Social Institutions; (2) Youth and Gender; (3) Youth, Theory, and Methods; (4) Urban Youth and Identity; and (5) Policy, Politics and Theory. Specific chapters address the following important topics; the impact of teachers' expectations on parents and children; how children from different racial backgrounds interact with each other and adults in a public service agency; children's racial self-classification; female and male athletes in high school; romantic relationships among adolescents; new skills to learn in peer groups; white youth's racial apathy; urban youth and academic identity; violence among youth growing up in a large city; and theory and public policy as they relate to children.

This volume contains a diverse set of chapters that offer a good balance of quantitative and qualitative methodologies; focus on children, youth, or both children and youth; and come from a variety of theoretical perspectives. Two prominent themes of the volume are adolescents' transition to adulthood and children's time-use issues. Several chapters address each of these issues, including one examining children's labor in Senegal. Two ethnographic studies are included: one analyzes student-teacher interaction in an urban high-school math class, while the other examines friendship development and maintenance of early elementary-aged African American girls. The volume also includes a policy analysis of medical insurance provision for low income children, and a response to an earlier chapter on children's rights that appeared in Volume 8.

Coming from a range of methodological and theoretical orientations, this volume showcases the lives of children and the policies that shape children's lives on five continents. Across these research articles, it becomes clear that we cannot continue to assume a certain meaning of childhood, because this concept is bound by both cultural and structural factors. Cultural expectations influence how societies view children and how children view themselves. A handful of these studies show how immigrant children and youth provide particularly interesting insight as they navigate more than one cultural context. Structural factors also become salient, as children come from unequal backgrounds, different levels of economic development, and face varying political concerns. While these papers come from different doorsteps of the world, cultural and structural threads of continuity connect them as meaningful for children. This volume illustrates how international childhood researchers can use current concepts and theories into unlikely contexts exposing their limitations and helping to inform more versatile and robust lines of thinking for children and youth studies.

The volume is organized in two parts. Following the Introduction, six chapters make up Part One, 'Empirical Studies'. Two quantitative analyses lead off: first an examination of residential mobility, peer networks and life-course transitions; second, a look at adolescents' participation in a particular social movement. Two ethnographic studies follow - here the foci are 'Zero Tolerance' school discipline policies, and female athletes' construction of femininity. A comparative content analysis of teen magazine advice columns, and a qualitative study of construction of 'adoptive family' identities, round out Part One. Three chapters constitute Part Two, 'Innovations in Theory and Research Methods'.The first offers an analysis of two films that explore childrens' struggle for agency and control. The next chapter develops a typology of children's participation in social movements, employing fascinating first-person narrative accounts. The final chapter demonstrates the unique ability of group interviews to capture processes through which adolescents accomplish group talk, develop shared perspectives, and construct gender identities.