Christoph Wulf

Michalis Kontopodis

Christos Varvantakis

Global Youth in Digital Trajectories explores the most recent developments regarding youth and media in a global perspective. Representing an innovative contribution to virtual research methods, this book presents research carried out in areas as diverse as Greece, the Netherlands, Germany, Brazil, Russia, and India. The volume examines which new anthropological, and cultural-historical conditions and changes arise in connection with the widespread presence of digital media in the lives of the networked teens. Indeed, it is highlighted that the differentiation between an offline world and an online world is inapplicable to the lives of most young people. Exploring youth’s imaginary productions, personal sense-making processes and cross-media dialogues in today’s multimedia worlds, Global Youth in Digital Trajectories will be of particular interest to undergraduates and postgraduates in the fields of sociology, anthropology, education studies, media research and cultural studies. It may also appeal to practitioners in social work and schools. URL for circulation: www.routledge.com/9781138236035

Global Youth in Digital Trajectories

In most Western developed countries, adult life is increasingly organized on the basis of short-term work contracts and reduced social security funds. In this context it seems that producing efficient job-seekers and employees becomes the main aim of educational programs for the next generation. Through case studies of young people from urban and countryside marginalized populations in Germany, USA and Brazil, this book investigates emerging educational practices and takes a critical stance towards what can be seen as neoliberal educational politics. It investigates how mediating devices such as CVs, school reports, school files, photos and narratives shape the ways in which those marginalized students reflect about their past as well as imagine their future. By building on process philosophy and time theory, post-structuralism, as well as on Vygotsky's psychological theory, the analysis differentiates between two discrete modes of human development: development of concrete skills (potential development) and development of new societal relations (virtual development, which is at the same time individual and collective). The book outlines an innovative relational account of learning and human development which can prove of particular importance for the education of marginalized students in today's globalized world.

Exploring Time, Mediation, and Collectivity in Contemporary Schools

Neoliberalism, Pedagogy, and Human Development

Bernd Fichtner

Historical anthropology is a revision of the German philosophical anthropology under the influences of the French historical school of Annales and the Anglo-Saxon cultural anthropology. Cultural-historical psychology is a school of thought which emerged in the context of the Soviet revolution and deeply affected the disciplines of psychology and education in the 20th century. This book draws on these two schools to advance current scholarship in child and youth development and education. It also enters in dialogue with other relational approaches and suggests alternatives to mainstream western developmental theories and educational practices. This book emphasizes communication and semiotic processes as well as the use of artifacts, pictures and technologies in education and childhood development, placing a special focus on active subjectivity, historicity and performativity. Within this theoretical framework, contributors from Europe and the U.S. highlight the dynamic and creative aspects of school, family and community practices and the dramatic aspects of child development in our changing educational institutions. They also use a series of original empirical studies to introduce different research methodologies and complement theoretical analyses in an attempt to find innovative ways to translate cultural-historical and historical anthropological theory and research into a thorough understanding of emerging phenomena in school and after-school education of ethnic minorities, gender-sensitive education, and educational and family policy. Divided into two main parts, “Culture, History and Child Development”, and “Gender, Performativity and Educational Practice”, this book is useful for anyone in the fields of cultural-historical research, educational science, educational and developmental psychology, psychological anthropology, and childhood and youth studies.

Michalis Kontopodis

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