1st Edition
Youths in Challenging Situations International and Interdisciplinary Perspectives
This book investigates and explores the complex dynamics of youth in contemporary society, especially in troubled and crisis-ridden contexts. On the one hand, teenagers and young adults experience social suffering, marginalisation, gender and ethnic bias, and an increased risk to be radicalised and involved in extremism and related violence. On the other hand, it is shown that young people are resilient, and they have a remarkable ability to adapt and cope with extremely difficult situations.
This interesting ambivalence is vividly illustrated by a number of studies in countries as varied as Ethiopia, Zambia, South Africa, Botswana, Brazil, Hong Kong, Kuwait, India, Israel, Britain, Italy, Malta, Spain, Portugal and Cyprus. Each of the 16 chapters throws a different light on the impact of destabilising circumstances and how youths cope with them in order to gain positive self-esteem and sense of a meaningful life. Overall, the experiences of young people are a distillation of the particular traumas and challenges that their society faces. Understanding those experiences and how they are coped with helps to make sense of all societies. This book was originally published as a special issue of Contemporary Social Science.
Foreword Introduction – Youngsters and adolescents in troubled contexts: worldwide perspectives 1. The contribution of guardian care and peer support for psychological resilience among orphaned adolescents in Ethiopia 2. Ethnicity, politics and Zambian youth 3. Youth identity in desegregated schools of Johannesburg 4. Violence and youth voter turnout in sub-saharan Africa 5. Marginalised youth, violence and policing: a qualitative study in Recife, Brazil 6. Struggling for tomorrow: the future orientations of youth activism in a democratic crisis 7. Resistant identities: culture and politics among Kuwaiti youth 8. Between rap and jihad: spectacular subcutlures, terrorism and visuality 9. ‘Squashing the Beef’: Combatting Gang Violence and Reforming Masculinity in East London 10. Disadvantaged students and art school: the outcasts on the inside between acquiescence and contestation 11. Aspiring workers or striving consumers? Rethinking social exclusion in the era of consumer capitalism 12. Youth in the age of anxiety: the case of a southern European location 13. Imagining the future in a difficult present: storylines from Spanish youth 14. Young individuals as microcosms of the Portuguese crisis 15. Investigating the roots of political disengagement of young Greek Cypriots
Biography
Charalambos Tsekeris is a sociologist working as a Researcher at the National Centre for Social Research, Athens, Greece; and Professor Extraordinary in the School of Public Leadership at Stellenbosch University, South Africa. He is also a Research Associate at the Research Centre for Greek Society, Academy of Athens, and at the Anti-Corruption Centre for Education and Research, Stellenbosch University.
Lily Stylianoudi is a social and legal anthropologist working as a Research Professor and Director of the Research Centre for Greek Society, Academy of Athens, Greece. She has done extensive fieldwork in Ethiopia and Greece. Her research interests include juvenile deviant behaviour, clinical anthropology, social problems and research methods in social science.
