|
Sign In to gain access to subscriptions and/or personal tools.
|
Allies Within and WithoutHow Adolescent Activists Conceptualize Ageism and Navigate Adult Power in Youth Social Movements
Hava Rachel Gordon
University of Denver
Most research on youth subordination and age inequality focuses on macrolevel institutions, ideologies, and discourses. While important, this macrolevel focus mystifies the ways in which young people themselves conceptualize and negotiate ageism. This article examines how adolescents collectively experience, politicize, and respond to ageism as they become active in educational justice and antiwar movements. Based on comparative ethnographic research with youth movement organizations in Portland, Oregon and Oakland, California, the author argues that adolescents' politicized understandings of ageism profoundly shape their social movement strategies. Furthermore, these understandings of ageism are rooted in young people's race and class social locations, and stand in relationship to social movement legacies. The divergent ways in which white, middle-class youth activists and young working-class activists of color collectively experience, interpret, and respond to ageism reveal the extent to which age inequality operates in conjunction with other systems of power and privilege.
Key Words: ageism • adolescence • inequality • intergenerational relationships • youth activism • social movements
References
- Aries, Philippe. 1962. Centuries of childhood. London: Cape.
- Baca Zinn, Maxine and Bonnie Thornton Dill. 1996. Theorizing difference from multiracial feminism. Feminist Studies 22:321-333.[CrossRef][Web of Science]
- Bourdieu, Pierre. 1977. Cultural reproduction and social reproduction. In Power and ideology in education, edited by Jerome Karabel and A. H. Halsey, 487-510. New York: Oxford University Press.
- Braungart, Richard G. and Margaret M. Braungart. 1985. Conceptual and methodological approaches to studying life course and generational politics. In Research in political sociology, vol. 1: 1985, edited by Richard G. Braungart and Margaret M. Braungart, 269-304. Greenwich: JAI.
- Bucholtz, Mary. 2002. Youth and cultural practice. Annual Review of Anthropology 31:525-552.[CrossRef][Web of Science]
- Collins, Patricia Hill. 2000. Black feminist thought: Knowledge, consciousness, and the politics of empowerment, 2nd ed. New York: Routledge.
- Cullinan, Cris. 1997. Vision, privilege, and the problem of tolerance. Eugene: University of Oregon.
- Diamond, Sara. 1995. Roads to dominion: Right wing movements and political power in the United States. New York: Guilford Press.
- Esler, Anthony. 1982. Generations in history: An introduction to the concept. Williamsburg: Esler.
- Gaines, Donna. 1991. Teenage wasteland: Suburbia's dead end kids. New York: Harper Perennial.
- Giroux, Henry. 2003. Public spaces, private lives: Democracy beyond 9/11. Oxford: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
- Glenn, Evelyn Nakano. 1986. Issei, Nisei, war bride: Three generations of Japanese American women in domestic service. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
- Hollander, Jocelyn A. and Hava R. Gordon. 2006. The processes of social construction in talk. Symbolic Interaction 29:183-212.[CrossRef][Web of Science]
- hooks, bell. 1989. Talking back: Thinking feminist, thinking black. Boston: South End Press.
- Holt, James. 1975. Escape from childhood. Harmondsworth: Penguin.
- James, Allison. 1998. From the child's point of view: Issues in the social construction of childhood. In Biosocial perspectives on children, edited by Catherine Panter-Brick, 45-65. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
- James, Allison, Chris Jenks, and Alan Prout. 1998. Theorizing childhood. New York: Teacher's College Press.
- James, Allison and Alan Prout eds. 1990. Constructing and reconstructing childhood. Basingstoke: Falmer Press.
- Jenks, Chris. 1996. The postmodern child. In Children in families: Research and policy, edited by Julia Brannen and Margaret O'Brien. London: Falmer Press.
- Lesko, Nancy. 2001. Act your age! A cultural construction of adolescence. New York: RoutledgeFalmer.
- ______. 1996. Denaturalizing adolescence. Youth and Society 28:139-162.[Abstract]
- Lorber, Judith. 1991. The social construction of gender. Newberry Park: Sage Publications.
- Males, Mike. 1996. Scapegoat generation: America's war on adolescents. Monroe: Common Courage Press.
- ______. 1999. Framing youth: Ten myths about the next generation. Monroe: Common Courage Press.
- Mead, Margaret and Martha Wolfenstein. 1955. Childhood in contemporary cultures. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
- Mohanty, Chandra. 1988. Under western eyes: Feminist scholarship and colonial discourse. Feminist Review 30:65-88.[Medline]
[Order article via Infotrieve]
- Omi, Michael and Howard Winant. 1986. Racial formation in the United States: From the 1960s to the 1980s. New York: Routledge.
- Platt, Anthony. 1977. The child savers: The invention of delinquency. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
- Qvortrup, Jens. 1994. Childhood matters: An introduction. In Childhood matters: Social theory, practice, and politics, edited by Jens Qvortrup, Marjatta Bardy, Giovanni Sgritta, and Helmut Wintersberger. Aldershot: Avebury.
- Schwalbe, Michael, Sandra Godwin, Daphne Holden, Douglas Schrock, Shealy Thompson, and Michele Wolkomir. 2000. Generic processes in the reproduction of inequality: An interactionist analysis. Social Forces 79:419-452.[CrossRef][Web of Science]
- Snow, David A., E. Burke Rochford, Jr., Steven K. Worden, and Robert D. Benford. 1986. Frame alignment processes, micromobilization, and movement participation. American Sociological Review 51:464-481.[CrossRef][Web of Science]
- Spelman, Elizabeth. 1988. Inessential woman: Problems of exclusion in feminist thought. Boston: Beacon Press.
Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, Vol. 36, No. 6,
631-668 (2007)
DOI: 10.1177/0891241606293608
 CiteULike  Complore  Connotea  Del.icio.us  Digg  Reddit  Technorati  Twitter What's this?
This article has been cited by other articles:
|
|
|
|
 
H. R. Gordon
Gendered Paths to Teenage Political Participation: Parental Power, Civic Mobility, and Youth Activism
Gender Society,
February 1, 2008;
22(1):
31 - 55.
[Abstract]
[PDF]
|
|
|
|
|
