Second ISA Forum of Sociology, Buenos Aires, Argentina, August 1-4, 2012
Forum theme: Social Justice and Democratization 
Main Theme: Children's Voices, Well Being and Social Justice 
Abstract Submission: 25 August 2011 - 15 December 2011, Completed papers due May 31, 2012
Registration and Conference Info: http://www.isa-sociology.org/buenos-aires-2012/rc/rc.php?n=RC53

RC53, Sociology of Childhood Call for Papers
We are interested in research papers for the following sessions that address the current state of children and meanings of childhood.  We invite abstracts for proposed papers for sessions that provide a platform for international discussions that engage exciting work in the sociology of childhood on relevant and timely issues as well as the Forum theme, Social Justice and Democratization.  Abstracts may be submitted directly to the Session Organizer listed with each session title, and completed papers will be due to the Session Organizer by May 31, 2012 in order to facilitate Forum discussions.

Send abstracts directly to the Session Organizer listed below each proposed session title as follows:
• Session A. Children's Rights and Social Justice, Session Organizer – Loretta E. Bass, Email: Lbass@ou.edu

• Session B.  Childhood in Democracy’s Infancy, Session Organizer – Doris Buhler-Niederberger, University of Wuppertal, Email: buehler@uni-wuppertal.de • Session C. Children, Society and Exclusions, Session Organizer – Ethel Kosminski, Queens College - CUNY & UNESP, State University of Sao Paulo - Marilia, Email:ethelkos@hotmail.com
• Session D. Globalization and New Contours of Childhood, Session Organizer – Vinod Chandra, University of Lucknow, Email: ccyrci@rediffmail.com
• Session E. Children's Bodies, Session Organizer – Lars Alberth, University of Wuppertal, Email: alberth@uni-wuppertal.de
• Session F. La infancia en las sociedades de disciplinamiento y  exclusión social (in Spanish)
Session Organizer – Elinor Bisig, CONICET-CIJS-UNC, Email:elinorbisig@arnet.com.ar
• Session G.  Poster Session, Children's Lives, Voices and Well Being, Session Organizer – Ethel Kosminkski, Queens College - CUNY & UNESP, State University of Sao Paulo - Marilia, Email:  ethelkos@hotmail.com
• Session I. Leisure, Democracy and Diversity of Lifestyles of Children and Youth
Joint Session of ISA RC 13 (Sociology of Leisure - Host Committee), RC 53 (Sociology of Childhood) Session Co-Organizers: Ishwar Modi, India International Institute of Social Sciences, Email: iiiss2005modi@yahoo.co.in, and Loretta E. Bass University of Oklahoma, Email: Lbass@ou.edu

Sociological Studies of Children and Youth (an annual volume published by Emerald Publishing) announces a special issue, “Youth Engagement: The Civic-Political Lives of Children and Youth.” Guest editors Sandi Kawecka Nenga and Jessica K. Taft invite the submission of completed papers focused on children and youth’s civic and political engagement, broadly conceived. 

Possible questions and theoretical concerns might include: How are youth actively participating in civic and political socialization projects? How do young people and the adults who work with them define terms like citizenship, democracy and community? How do youth react to adults’ understanding of what it means to be a “citizen” or “community member”? What institutions and structures facilitate or hinder youth participation and engagement? How do youth respond and relate to the various institutions and organizations designed to encourage their engagement? How do the dynamics of race, class, gender and ability shape young people’s opportunities for and approaches to engagement?

Submission deadline is January 20, 2012. Submit papers electronically (less than 30 manuscript pages in length) to Sandi Nenga at nengas@southwestern.edu, or in hardcopy to Sandi Nenga, SU Box 7421, Southwestern University, 1001 E. University Avenue, Georgetown, TX 78626. Contributions will be peer-reviewed. Anticipated publication date is spring 2013.

Gonzales, Roberto G. 2011. "Learning to be Illegal: Undocumented Youth and Shifting Legal Contexts in the Transition to Adulthood.” American Sociological Review, Volume 76, number 4, 602-619.

This article examines the transition to adulthood among 1.5-generation undocumented Latino young adults. For them, the transition to adulthood involves exiting the legally protected status of K to 12 students and entering into adult roles that require legal status as the basis for participation.

Gonzales, Roberto G. 2010. “On the Wrong Side of the Tracks: The Consequences of School Stratification Systems for Unauthorized Mexican Students."  Peabody Journal of Education, Volume 85 Issue 4, 469-485.

This article draws from 78 in-depth life histories of undocumented Latino young adults in the Los Angeles metropolitan area. Gonzales incorporates a sample, stratified by educational experiences. The lived experiences of these young adults shed important light on the broader world in which they live and the ways in which immigration policies interact with school practices to shape success and failure.

Patricia A. Adler (University of Colorado) and Peter Adler (University of Denver) are the authors of a blog for Psychology Today called "The Deviance Society," which can be found at: http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-deviance-society.

Victor Rios recently published Punished: Policing the Lives of Black and Latino Boys, NYU Press 2011. A former gang member who went on to earn a Ph.D. at Berkeley, Rios returned to his old Oakland neighborhood to shadow 40 young men as they dealt with poverty, violence, and institutionalized racism. As he recounts their life stories, Rios deftly balances analysis with vivid anecdotes about uninterested educators, struggling parents, police brutality, and gang victimization. He examines how the culture of punishment pushes young men into the very criminality that the punishment is meant to deter.

Patricia A. Adler and Peter Adler recently published The Tender Cut: Inside the Hidden World of Self-Injury (NYU Press 2011). The authors draw on 150 interviews with self-injurers from all over the world, along with 30,000-40,000 internet posts in chat rooms and communiqués. Their 10-year longitudinal research follows the practice of self-injury from its early days when people engaged in it alone and did not know others, to the present, where a subculture has formed via cyberspace that shares similar norms, values, lore, vocabulary, and interests.
2011 KIDS COUNT Data Book Available on August 17! The Annie E. Casey Foundation’s annual KIDS COUNT Data Book is a comprehensive resource on the status of U.S. children, featuring state-specific data on ten key indicators of child well-being. This year’s Data Book examines how children and families are faring in the wake of the economic downturn. The report can be downloaded to create maps and graphs at the national, state, and local level. The 2011 mobile site offers access to hundreds of indicators of child well-being. It can be downloaded from:http://datacenter.kidscount.org/databook/.  To access the Data Center, please visit: http://datacenter.kidscount.org

“State of the Young Hoosier Child” was completed through Indiana’s Early Childhood Comprehensive Systems grant recipient “Sunny Start.” Multiple factors contribute to the well-being of Indiana’s children and their families. A child’s ability to learn and stay healthy can be determined in part by his early childhood experiences-or even before he is born. Researchers found that many adult health problems, for example, can be attributed to early childhood experiences. Children who received a high-quality education are likely to earn more, pay more taxes, and commit fewer crimes as adults. Download the study at: http://sunnystart.in.gov/syhc

In their new book, The Risks of Prescription Drugs, health policy experts Donald Light, Howard Brody, Peter Conrad, Allan Horwitz, and Cheryl Stults describe how current regulations reward drug companies to expand clinical risks and create new diseases so millions of patients are exposed to unnecessary risks, especially women and the elderly. They reward developing marginally better drugs rather than discovering breakthrough, life-saving drugs. Harmful side effects have become epidemic, about 23-46 million a year, resulting in 1.5 million hospitalizations and about 115,000 deaths. The book covers issues important to C&Y section members. Allan Horwitz describes the rapid increase in youth being prescribed psychotropic drugs. Key to the proliferation syndrome is prescribing off-label, without telling the patients or their families. Furthermore, Peter Conrad and Cheryl Stults describe the medicalization of women and mothers.

Markella B. Rutherford recently published Adult Supervision Required: Private Freedom and Public Constraints for Parents and Children (Rutgers University Press, September 2011). In many ways, today’s parents and children have more freedom than ever before. There is widespread respect for children’s autonomy as distinct individuals, and a broad range of parenting styles are flourishing. Yet it may also be fair to say that there is an unprecedented fear of children’s and parents’ freedom. Dread about Amber Alerts and “stranger danger” have put an end to the unsupervised outdoor play enjoyed by earlier generations of suburban kids. Using popular parenting advice literature as a springboard for a broader sociological analysis of the American family, Rutherford explores how our increasingly psychological conception of the family might be jeopardizing our appreciation for parents’ and children’s public lives and civil liberties. Markella B. Rutherford is an assistant professor of sociology at Wellesley College.

Ralph LaRossa published Of War and Men: World War II in the Lives of Fathers and Their Families with University of Chicago Press.  To uncover the real story of fatherhood during the transformative era of the 1950s, LaRossa takes the long view—from the attack on Pearl Harbor up to the election of John F. Kennedy— revealing the myriad ways that World War II and its aftermath shaped men. The book explores the brutal side of family life in the postwar years.  In the book, he dismantles stereotypes while offering up a chronicle of fatherhood in all its complexity.

Yvonne Vissing recently published Introduction to Sociology with Bridgeport Education Publishers.  The textbook addresses children’s issues more than most Introduction to Sociology textbooks.  Professor Vissing teachers at Salem State University.

The Brooklyn CUNY Children’s Studies Program and Center has published New Horizons III: The Future of Children, Youth, and the Public Good. The publication details the news, events, and activities of the Children's Studies Program and Center over the past year. The Children's Studies website has extensive information on legislation for an Independent Office of the Child Advocate for New York. For a complete list of their news visit: http://www.brooklyn.cuny.edu/pub/departments/childrensstudies/

The Integrated Health Interview Series (IHIS) provides free online access to a half-century of consistently-coded data on child and adult health conditions, health care, and health behaviors.  Based on the public use files of the U.S. National Health Interview Survey (NHIS), the IHIS project is carried out by researchers at the University of Minnesota with funding from NIH.  IHIS includes thousands of variables on such topics as child mental health problems and treatment, use of complementary and alternative medicine by children, child disability, children with special needs, health conditions (e.g., autism, asthma, ADD, and hundreds more), general health, and use of medical services.  The IHIS data extract system allows researchers to create a customized data file with the years and variables needed for their analysis, or data can be analyzed using an online tabulator.  For more information, visit the IHIS website atwww.ihis.us or e-mail ihis@umn.edu.

The IUSSP International Seminar on Violence in Adolescence and Youth in Developing Countries is issuing a call for papers for an event in Asunción, Paraguay, May 2012. Experiences of violence are frequently present in adolescents’ and young people’s lives, sometimes with lasting consequences. An indication of the importance of the topic is the fact that in the young ages morbidity and mortality resulting from violence are on the rise in many societies.  For this seminar the panel welcomes papers dealing with:

• The extent and types of violence among identifiable categories of adolescent and young populations defined by age (for example, younger and older adolescents), marital status, school attendance, area of residence, family composition, socioeconomic status, ethnicity, etc.
• Determinants and consequences of violence during adolescence and youth stages.
• Demographic aspects of violence in adolescence and youth.
• Health related outcomes resulting from violence.
• Characteristics of the young population “at risk” of involvement in violence (as victims or perpetrators).
• Methodological issues in studying violence among young people.

The IUSSP Scientific Panel on Young People’s Life Course in Developing Countries invites researchers in the field to submit online by November 15, 2011 a short 200-word abstract AND upload an extended abstract (2 to 4 pages, including tables) or a full paper, which must be unpublished. To submit and fill out the online submission form, please click here – online submission form – go to:  http://www.iussp.org/login/submissionslogin.php.

Some Reflections on Studying Children

At the end of a long career that began with a short paper (Handel and Hess 1956) I would like to share with colleagues some thoughts that I have had recently and over the years. Some are about things that I have tried to do, and some are about things that I think need doing and that I hope some of you and some of your students will want to undertake.

(1) In the last few years some sociologists have judged it necessary to initiate what they call a new field of children’s studies. A key contention in this initiative is that the concept of socialization, long central to sociological understanding, is obsolete or wrong-headed. I believe this contention is erroneous and misguided, and I have evaluated the claims of several of these scholars in my most recent publication (Handel 2011.)  One claim is that children’s agency is a more relevant, appropriate, or effective concept than socialization. I believe this is a misguided opposition. Those who argue it neither set forth the concept of socialization they are opposing nor do they provide theoretical grounding for agency. In my judgment, socialization is one of the general factors that gives rise to agency because, following Mead (1934), socialization interactions generate the self, and the self is what makes agency possible. Agenda: I believe the program committee of ASA Section on Children and Youth should organize one or more convention sessions, perhaps together with colleagues from the theory section, to explore this conceptual issue, which is contentious.

(2) When Gertrud Lenzer took the initiative to organize this section, it began as the Section on Children. Some years later the name was changed to Section on Children and Youth. I did not participate in the discussions that led to the change, so I do not know what arguments were advanced in favor or opposition. But the change merits thought. On a practical level, I presume that there were not enough sociologists studying children to preserve the section without expanding its scope to include youth, long a category of  sociological interest because of gangs , delinquency, and youth culture. The scarcity of sociologists studying children is lamentable. The arguments for studying children need to be advanced and strengthened among sociologists. The list of topics presented at the recent Rutgers-Camden Conference on Multiple Childhoods offers some valuable examples. I would have liked to have heard those papers.

What justification is there for combining youth and children in the same section? One basis I can think of is the concept of child development – children develop into youth. But, to the best of my knowledge, child development is not a sociological concept, except in the mostly abandoned Parsons-Bales theory (1955). (If I am wrong on this point, I would appreciate hearing from colleagues on this website or at geraldhandel@earthlink.net) Agenda: Therefore, if sociologists of children and childhood, who mostly disdain the psychological concept of child development, are to have a sound conceptual basis for considering children and youth as connected topics, the nature of that connection needs to be conceptualized. I think the concept of the experienced life course (Handel 2003, p. xxi) may be useful here, but not sufficient.Some version of child development may have to be incorporated into sociology, but I  would like to hear from  any colleagues  who propose other ways of conceptualizing that connection.

(3) Barrie Thorne (1993, p.3) wrote, “Children’s interactions are not preparation for life; they are life itself.” A 47-year-old construction worker said, when telling his life-course narrative, “I always hung out with fellows like three or four years older than me. I was always the youngest in the crowd. I believe it gave me the smarts – the experience, how to handle different situations, you know.” (Handel 2003, p. 35). What Barrie presented as an “either-or” way to understand childhood is really a “both-and” situation. The meanings of childhood experience are not terminated at the end of the childhood years. I have suggested four ways that they may be processed in later life (Handel 2003, pp.104-107) Readers may think of additional or alternative ways.

(4) I want to pay tribute to the late Spencer Cahill. His premature death, a few months after we completed our joint work, was a painful personal loss and a tremendous loss to our field. Spencer was a very appealing person -- gifted, knowledgeable, astute, congenial, and compassionate. If you have not read his chapter, “Children,” (Cahill 2003) you will be rewarded when you do. I want also to acknowledge Frederick Elkin, who was a pioneer with The Child and Society (1960) and who invited me to become co-author  and to take  primary responsibility for the next four editions, 1972 through 1988. Spencer prompted us to change “The Child and Society” to “Children and Society” for what started out as a 6th edition but became a new book with a more appropriate title.

(5) Spencer’s research  interests included children’s actions in public (Cahill 1987). My longtime research interest was in understanding children’s participation in their family life. The study that I did with Robert D. Hess (Hess and Handel 1959) consisted of interviews with both parents in two-parent families AND with their two or three children between the ages of six and eighteen. I later sought to further develop this view with an anthology (Handel 1967) introducing the concept “the psychosocial interior of the family;” and later, “whole-family methodology” (Handel 1996). Most commonly, the members of a family inhabit a shared household over an extended period of time. Through their interactions they become what Cooley (1909) called a “primary group” and Burgess (1926) called “a unity of interacting personalities.” These two concepts, together with several of Mead’s, were the foundation of my efforts (Handel 2002.)

(6) I am struck by the fact that sociologists pay little attention to sibling relationships. Based on interviews with children and parents I published a study, mostly based on interviews with children, that offers a sociological view of issues that child siblings deal with between/among themselves  (Handel 1986). Generally, I have seen little evidence that sociologists are attentive to the fact that (except in China) children have brothers and sisters who are important in their lives. I was pleased to see titles of a few papers on siblings in the Rutgers Camden Conference. If there are gaps in my knowledge here, perhaps readers can fill me in. I do want to call your attention to the excellent paper by Susan O. Murphy (1992), “Using Multiple Forms of Family Data: Identifying Pattern and Meaning in Sibling-Infant Relationships.”

(7) There is almost no sociological attention to the issue of how newborn children become participants in society, an issue implicit in Cooley’s concept but still sitting unexplored. When I taught a graduate course in Sociology of Childhood I offered to sponsor a dissertation based on two cases, or even a single case. Student was to find a newly pregnant woman, interview her and her partner on a weekly basis. Both partners were each to keep a diary. With whom did they communicate? What was communicated? How do they process incoming communications from doctors, friends, family members, clergy, and others? Following birth of the baby, student was to do six months of participant observation in the home. I had no takers. I hope some of you will pick it up and carry it forward. We need that sociological understanding.

REFERENCES

Burgess, Ernest W. 1926. “The Family as a Unity of Interacting Personalities.” Family 7: 3-9.

Cahill, Spencer. 1987.”Children and Civility: Ceremonial Deviance and the Acquisition of Ritual Competence.” Social Psychology Quarterly 50: 312-321.

Cahill, Spencer, 2003. “Children.” Pp.  857- 874 in Handbook of Symbolic Interactionism, edited by Larry T. Reynolds and Nancy J. Herman-Kinney. Walnut Creek, CA: Alta Mira Press

Cooley, Charles Horton. 1909. Social Organization. New York: Scribner.

Elkin, Frederick. 1960. The Child and Society. New York: Random House.

Handel, Gerald.  (Ed.) 1967. The Psychosocial Interior of the Family. Chicago. Aldine.

Handel, Gerald. 1986. “Beyond Sibling Rivalry: An Empirically Grounded Theory of

Sibling Relationships.”  Pp. 105-122 in Sociological Studies of Child Development,  Vol. 1, edited by Patricia A. Adler and Peter Adler. Greenwich, CT: JAI Press.

Handel, Gerald. 1996. “Family Worlds and Qualitative Family Research: Emergence
And Prospects of Whole-Family Methodology.” Marriage and Family Review 24: 335-348.

Handel, Gerald. 2002. “Toward Understanding Families as Groups.” Pp. 489-510 in Pioneering Paths in the Study of Families, edited by Suzanne K. Steinmetz  and Gary W. Peterson. New York: Haworth Press

Handel, Gerald. 2003. Making a Life in Yorkville. Experience and Meaning in the Life-Course Narrative of an Urban Working-Class Man. New York: Aldine de Gruyter.

Handel, Gerald. 2011. “Sociological Perspectives on Social Development.” Pp. 119-138 in The Wiley-Blackwell Handbook of Childhood Social Development, 2nd ed. Edited by Peter K. Smith and Craig H. Hart. Malden, MA: John Wiley & Sons.

Handel, Gerald and Robert D. Hess. 1956. “The Family as an Emotional Organization,” Marriage and Family Living 18 ( 2): 99-101. (Precursor to Journal of Marriage and Family.)

Hess, Robert D. and Gerald Handel. 1959.  Family Worlds. Chicago: University of Chicago Press

Handel, Gerald,  Spencer Cahill, & Frederick Elkin. 2007. Children and Society. New York: Oxford University Press.

Mead, George Herbert. 1934. Mind, Self, and Society. Chicago: University of Chicago  Press.

Parsons, Talcott and Robert F. Bales. 1955. Family, Socialization, and Interaction Process. Glencoe, IL. Free Press.

Thorne, Barrie. 1993. Gender Play. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.

David A. Kinney and Loretta E. Bass announce the publication of Volume 14 of Sociological Studies of Children and Youth entitled, “The Well Being, Peer Cultures and Rights of Children.”  Volume 14 of SSCY is comprised of empirical research and theoretical papers highlighting current thinking on children and youth in our world today.  ASA Children and Youth Section members can order this volume through Emerald at a 30% discount.  See the third attachment to this email or the following URL for more information:http://www.emeraldinsight.com/books.htm?issn=1537-4661&volume=14.

Section member, Kristin Turney, and her co-editor colleagues, Hedwig Lee, Neil Mehta, are soliciting papers for a Special Issue of Social Science & Medicine on the Social Determinants of Child Health.  The deadline for submissions is 16th January 2012, and authors should submit online athttp://ees.elsevier.com/ssm/.  Please see the second attachment (C&Y_announce_sept2_k turney) to this email for the details.

Two NICHD-funded Postdoctoral Fellowship opportunities are available at the Population Research Center (PRC) at the University of Texas next academic year.  Most research at the PRC is concentrated in four thematic areas: Health disparities, Educational Inequality & Opportunity, Partnership, Parenting, & Human Development, and Work and Stratification. Please see the first attachment to this email for more information or visit the NICHD Postdoctoral Fellowship URL as follows:  http://www.utexas.edu/cola/centers/prc/training-and-fellowships/postdoctoral.php.