NCJ Number
157292
Editor(s)
S B Health,
M W McLaughlin
Date Published
1993
Length
250 pages
Annotation
These nine papers examine the local clubs and youth groups that serve inner-city youths through rituals, processes, and structures that enable them to build their identities, know that they have choices, and understand that they can help decide what it takes to make the choices necessary to create the terms of their own existence.
Abstract
The papers combine the perspectives of humanism and social science to consider why the ethnic and gender identities of past decades can no longer provide the support these youths need in their daily lives. They address several issues, including collaboration across organizations, the role of gangs in social control, and the historical roles of ethnicity and gender in youth organizations. They also describe frames for identity that extend beyond ethnicity and gender and point out the dichotomies that persist between the way that policymakers perceive urban youth and the reality of these youths' everyday lives. Individual papers focus on the roles of the community, neighborhood, family, peer groups, religious institutions, and youth groups; the ways in which dance groups shape their environments as supportive families; the life of gangs of several ethnic groups; the youth groups of white middle- class families; similarities among youth organizations at the level of their linkages; and policies and other changes needed for youth organizations to be effective with urban youth. Figure, chapter notes and reference lists, and index (Publisher summary modified)