Young people and citizenship-delayed, diminished and empty?

This paper is presented in workshop format in order to meet the style and themes of the conference, and seeks to explore as fully as possible with participants issues, concerns and proposals around the discourse of young people and citizenship. This paper takes the position that the relationship between young people and citizenship is complex and in places contradictory, and while Ruth Lister (1998), argues for an 'inclusionary potential', a central concern is that the citizenship that young people get is as Hartley Dean (1997), suggests, at best 'ambiguous', and at its worst, 'diminished'. Under not so new Labour, the term has according to Gail Lewis (1998) re-emerged as a 'category of political articulation', imbued with the pronouncements of Charles Murray (1995) on the underclass, and Amitai Etzioni (1996), on the virtues of Communitarianism and the central assertion that in relation to young people and certain communities, 'rights have exceeded responsibilities'. This body of opinion has proved to be seductive to a government dedicated to joined up solutions in the battle against social exclusion and to the reconfiguration of the welfare state to place the onus for welfare and social provision on to individuals and communities. Those who work with young people and young people themselves may wish to be proactive in asserting the kind of citizenship they require, rights-based, expansive and supportive, rather than accept an imposed version devoid of rights but full to the brim of authoritarian measures, vindictive proposals and narrow horizons. This paper will engender debate and reflection and offer a context of the erosion of young people's rights over the last 20 years, Hartley Dean (1996), and will consider the work of T.H. Marshall (1950) in dividing citizenship into three elements: the civil element, the political element, and the social element. The paper will explore in workshop tradition, strategies and proposals for action relevant to practitioners and academics, such as the reduction in the voting age to 16.

Music for the Pria Dewasa : changes and continuities in class and pop music genres

This paper presents Rolling Stone Indonesia (RSI) and places it in an historical context to tease out some changes and continuities in Indonesian middle-class politics since the beginning of the New Order. Some political scientists have claimed that class interests were at the core of the transition from Guided Democracy to the New Order, and popular music scholars generally assert that class underlies pop genre distinctions. But few have paid attention to how class and genre were written into Indonesian pop in the New Order period; Indonesian pop has a fascinating political history that has so far been overlooked. Placing RSI in historical perspective can reveal much about the print media’s classing of pop under New Order era political constraints, and about the ways these modes of classing may or may not have endured in the post-authoritarian, globalised and liberalised media environment.

Making scenes : Reggae, punk, and death metal in 1990s Bali

In 1996, Emma Baulch went to live in Bali to do research on youth culture. Her chats with young people led her to an enormously popular regular outdoor show dominated by local reggae, punk, and death metal bands. In this rich ethnography, she takes readers inside each scene: hanging out in the death metal scene among unemployed university graduates clad in black T-shirts and ragged jeans; in the punk scene among young men sporting mohawks, leather jackets, and hefty jackboots; and among the remnants of the local reggae scene in Kuta Beach, the island’s most renowned tourist area. Baulch tracks how each music scene arrived and grew in Bali, looking at such influences as the global extreme metal underground, MTV Asia, and the internationalization of Indonesia’s music industry. Making Scenes is an exploration of the subtle politics of identity that took place within and among these scenes throughout the course of the 1990s. Participants in the different scenes often explained their interest in death metal, punk, or reggae in relation to broader ideas about what it meant to be Balinese, which reflected views about Bali’s tourism industry and the cultural dominance of Jakarta, Indonesia’s capital and largest city. Through dance, dress, claims to public spaces, and onstage performances, participants and enthusiasts reworked “Balinese-ness” by synthesizing global media, ideas of national belonging, and local identity politics. Making Scenes chronicles the creation of subcultures at a historical moment when media globalization and the gradual demise of the authoritarian Suharto regime coincided with revitalized, essentialist formulations of the Balinese self.

Digital Spring? New media and new politics on the campus

Whilst the dynamics informing processes have taken time to become clear, civic resistance initiated by young people using new media began in Egypt in 2010 against the Mubarak regime, soon widened to Tunisia, Yemen and Libya. Known as the 'Arab Spring', this phenomenon re-ignited discussion about the political role of digital space and its democratic potential. While parallels between authoritarian regimes and universities and educational institutions might seem overdrawn to some readers, I suggest there is value in considering the 'Digital Spring' (apropos the 'Arab Spring') as a metaphor to suggest the possibility that similar processes are taking place in schools and universities. This invites discussion about the political significance of digital space and its democratic potential in those institutions. To assess how some young people engage in digitally mediated politics within schools and universities, I identify five propositions which amalgamate descriptive and normative elements derived from Habermas and Dahlgren. These propositions offer an ideal taxonomy of normative and descriptive elements to establish whether digital technology promotes participation and debate in ways that sustain democratic practice.

Family-based programmes for preventing smoking by children and adolescents (Review)

Background There is evidence that family and friends influence children's decisions to smoke. Objectives To assess the effectiveness of interventions to help families stop children starting smoking. Search methods We searched 14 electronic bibliographic databases, including the Cochrane Tobacco Addiction Group specialized register, MEDLINE, EMBASE, PsycINFO, CINAHL unpublished material, and key articles' reference lists. We performed free-text internet searches and targeted searches of appropriate websites, and hand-searched key journals not available electronically. We consulted authors and experts in the field. The most recent search was 3 April 2014. There were no date or language limitations. Selection criteria Randomised controlled trials (RCTs) of interventions with children (aged 5-12) or adolescents (aged 13-18) and families to deter tobacco use. The primary outcome was the effect of the intervention on the smoking status of children who reported no use of tobacco at baseline. Included trials had to report outcomes measured at least six months from the start of the intervention. Data collection and analysis We reviewed all potentially relevant citations and retrieved the full text to determine whether the study was an RCT and matched our inclusion criteria. Two authors independently extracted study data for each RCT and assessed them for risk of bias. We pooled risk ratios using a Mantel-Haenszel fixed effect model. Main results Twenty-seven RCTs were included. The interventions were very heterogeneous in the components of the family intervention, the other risk behaviours targeted alongside tobacco, the age of children at baseline and the length of follow-up. Two interventions were tested by two RCTs, one was tested by three RCTs and the remaining 20 distinct interventions were tested only by one RCT. Twenty-three interventions were tested in the USA, two in Europe, one in Australia and one in India. The control conditions fell into two main groups: no intervention or usual care; or school-based interventions provided to all participants. These two groups of studies were considered separately. Most studies had a judgement of 'unclear' for at least one risk of bias criteria, so the quality of evidence was downgraded to moderate. Although there was heterogeneity between studies there was little evidence of statistical heterogeneity in the results. We were unable to extract data from all studies in a format that allowed inclusion in a meta-analysis. There was moderate quality evidence family-based interventions had a positive impact on preventing smoking when compared to a no intervention control. Nine studies (4810 participants) reporting smoking uptake amongst baseline non-smokers could be pooled, but eight studies with about 5000 participants could not be pooled because of insufficient data. The pooled estimate detected a significant reduction in smoking behaviour in the intervention arms (risk ratio [RR] 0.76, 95% confidence interval [CI] 0.68 to 0.84). Most of these studies used intensive interventions. Estimates for the medium and low intensity subgroups were similar but confidence intervals were wide. Two studies in which some of the 4487 participants already had smoking experience at baseline did not detect evidence of effect (RR 1.04, 95% CI 0.93 to 1.17). Eight RCTs compared a combined family plus school intervention to a school intervention only. Of the three studies with data, two RCTS with outcomes for 2301 baseline never smokers detected evidence of an effect (RR 0.85, 95% CI 0.75 to 0.96) and one study with data for 1096 participants not restricted to never users at baseline also detected a benefit (RR 0.60, 95% CI 0.38 to 0.94). The other five studies with about 18,500 participants did not report data in a format allowing meta-analysis. One RCT also compared a family intervention to a school 'good behaviour' intervention and did not detect a difference between the two types of programme (RR 1.05, 95% CI 0.80 to 1.38, n = 388). No studies identified any adverse effects of intervention. Authors' conclusions There is moderate quality evidence to suggest that family-based interventions can have a positive effect on preventing children and adolescents from starting to smoke. There were more studies of high intensity programmes compared to a control group receiving no intervention, than there were for other compairsons. The evidence is therefore strongest for high intensity programmes used independently of school interventions. Programmes typically addressed family functioning, and were introduced when children were between 11 and 14 years old. Based on this moderate quality evidence a family intervention might reduce uptake or experimentation with smoking by between 16 and 32%. However, these findings should be interpreted cautiously because effect estimates could not include data from all studies. Our interpretation is that the common feature of the effective high intensity interventions was encouraging authoritative parenting (which is usually defined as showing strong interest in and care for the adolescent, often with rule setting). This is different from authoritarian parenting (do as I say) or neglectful or unsupervised parenting.

The Media as Political Actors

This chapter provides a history of the media as political actors and identifies key principles that have shaped their role in both democratic and authoritarian polities (i.e., information, interpretation, participation, critical scrutiny). In addition, the chapter explores recent trends impacting on the performance of that role, such as the emergence of the Internet and, as a consequence of that process, a globalized public sphere of transnational news media outlets. It is argued that to make the Internet truly valuable as a political resource, democratic societies continue to require the work of skilled, professional journalists and their sense making, interpretative functions. Because of that journalists and their organizations remain crucial to the translation of content into meaningful messages.

No Right to Live? Malaysia’s Islam and Implications for Its Sexual Minority Storytellers

This chapter discusses the fast emerging challenges for Malay and Muslim sexual minority storytellers in the face of an aggressive state-sponsored Islamisation of a constitutionally secular Malaysia. I examine the case of Azwan Ismail, a gay Malay and Muslim Malaysian who took part in the local ‘It Gets Better’ project, and who suffered an onslaught of hostile comments from fellow Malay Muslims. Azwan’s experience makes one question how a message of discouraging suicidal tendencies among sexual minority youths can be so vehemently misperceived. Azwan’s existential challenges – stemming from the tension between his own constructions of self and those of others – (re)present a unique challenge in the long struggle for human rights. In my examination of the arising contradictions, I highlight the challenges for Azwan’s existential self – one who is deemed morally bankrupt by hostile audiences. The purist Sunni Islam agenda in a constitutionally secular Malaysia not only rejects the human rights of the sexual minorities in Malaysia but has also influenced, and is often a leading hostile voice in both regional and international blocs. This self-righteous, supremacist and authoritarian Islam discourages discourse and attacks all differing opinions. This resulting disabling environment for vulnerable, minority communities and their human rights manifests in State-endorsed discrimination, compulsory counselling, forced rehabilitation and criminalisation. It places the rights of the sexual minorities to live within such a society in doubt. In discussing the arising issues, I draw upon literature that investigates the way in which personal stories have traditionally been used to advance human rights. Included too, is the significance and implications of the work by social psychologists in explaining the loss of credibility of personal stories. I then advance an analytical framework that will allow storytelling as a very individual form of witnessing to reclaim and regain its ‘truth to power’.

Australia's disabling income support system: Tracing the history of the disability pension from 1908 to today

This article is based on a historical-comparative policy and discourse analysis of the principles underpinning the Australian disability income support system. It determines that these principles rely on a conception of disability that sustains a system of coercion and paternalism that perpetuates disability and referred to as disablism. The article examines the construction of disability in Australian income support across four major historical epochs spanning the period 1908-2007. Contextualisation of the policy trajectory and discourses of the contemporary disability pension regime for the time period 2008-now is also provided. Two major themes were found to have interacted with the ideology of disablism. This article argues that a non-disabling provision based on social citizenship, rather than responsible or productive citizenship, counters the tendency for authoritarian and paternal approaches. [Abridged]

Child-centered teaching, redemption, and educational identities: A history of the present

Child-centeredness runs a familiar route in educational narratives. From Rousseau to Pestalozzi to Froebel to present day systems of childcare and schooling, childcenteredness is thought to have shifted the treatment of children into closer harmony with their true nature and hence into more sensitive and civilized forms of rearing. The celebratory air surrounding its deployment in education has been pervasive and difficult to contest partly because of the emotive alliances that have been drawn between child-centeredness and progressivism. That is, child-centeredness has been positioned as superseding a harsh, medieval ignorance of children while preventing present-day authoritarian strategies of domination. Child-centeredness is thus presently constituted as a soft space, as a deeply sensitive middle ground, between ignoring children and dominating them completely.

Acceptance of prostitution and its social determinants in Canada

The nature of collective perception of prostitution is understudied in Canada. Except some rudimentary reports on the percentages of the key legal options, multivariate analysis has never been used to analyze the details of public opinion on prostitution. The current study explores the trend of public attitude toward prostitution acceptability in Canada over a 25-year span and examines the social determinants of the acceptability of prostitution, using structural equation modeling (SEM), which allows researchers to elaborate both direct and indirect effects (through mediating variables) on the outcome variable. Results show that the public has become more acceptant of prostitution over time. In addition, the less religious, less authoritarian, and more educated are more acceptant of prostitution than the more religious, more authoritarian, and less well educated. The effects of religiosity and authoritarianism mediate out the direct effects of age, gender, gender equality, marriage, marriage as an outdated institution, Quebec, race, and tolerance. The findings may serve as a reference point for the law reform regarding the regulation of prostitution in Canada.