Category Archives: New Books

Book Launch

The Politics of Childhoods Real and Imagined: Practical application of critical realism and childhood studies by Priscilla Alderson

(Routledge, 246pp, Pb: 978-1-138-94889-1 | £26.99  eBook: 978-1-315-66938-0)

This new book relates critical realism to childhood studies in order to research transformative change over time. It summarises key themes across academic disciplines and policy areas, ranging from climate change and social justice between generations, to neoliberalism and reform of public services, to imagining social reform that benefits all age groups. Each chapter considers how children and young people are largely excluded from political and economic global debates, although they are one third of people in the world and are often especially affected by policies and events.

The book is written for everyone who is researching, studying or teaching about childhood, those who care for and work with children and young people, as well as those interested in critical realism.

All are welcome to the book launch: Tuesday 8 December 5.30-7.30

Institute of Education, University College London
(RSVP: ssruadmin@ioe.ac.uk)

Four recent book publiations by Rutgers-Camden faculty and graduates

The Department of Childhood Studies, Rutgers-Camden, USA  (http://childhood.camden.rutgers.edu/) is excited to announce the recent publication of two books by recent PhD graduates, based on their dissertation research, and two by department faculty.

Congratulations to all!

Diane Marano (PhD, 2014) Juvenile Offenders and Guns: Voices Behind Gun Violence (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015) explores how and why twenty-five incarcerated young men of color acquired and used guns, how guns made them feel, and how they felt about the violence in which they participated as well as the violence to which they were exposed as victims and witnesses. Through their narratives, patterns emerge of boys attempting to become men in homes headed by mothers who struggled financially, the multiple attractions of the street that exceeded those of school, and the risks of the street lifestyle that prompted these youth to arm themselves. http://www.palgrave.com/page/detail/Juvenile-Offenders-and-Guns/?K=9781137520135

Marianne Modica (PhD, 2014Race among Friends: Exploring Race at a Suburban School (Rutgers University Press, 2015) argues that attempts to be colorblind do not end racism—in fact, ignoring race increases the likelihood that racism will occur in our schools and in society. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in a “racially friendly” suburban US high school, Modica finds that race affects the daily experiences of students and teachers in profound but unexamined ways—particularly through student friendships and administrative practices. http://rutgerspress.rutgers.edu/product/Race-among-Friends,5632.aspx

Associate Professor Lauren Silver has published System Kids: Adolescent Mothers and the Politics of Regulation (University of North Carolina Press, 2015). This intriguing study considers the daily lives of adolescent mothers as they negotiate the child welfare system to meet the needs of their children and themselves. Combining critical policy study and ethnography, and drawing on current scholarship as well as her own experience as a welfare program manager, Lauren Silver demonstrates how social welfare “silos” construct the lives of youth as disconnected, reinforcing unforgiving policies and imposing demands on women the system was intended to help.http://uncpress.unc.edu/books/12537.html

Associate Professor Sarada Balagopalan Inhabiting ‘Childhood’: Children, Labour and Schooling in Postcolonial India (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014) redresses the limits of the notion of ‘multiple childhoods’ commonly deployed as a way to recognizes the heterogeneity of children’s lives and experiences. This ambitious ethnography redresses these limits by drawing on the everyday experiences of street children and child labourers in Calcutta to introduce the postcolony as a critical, and thus far absent, lens in theorizing the ‘child’. Through capturing a moment in which global, national and local efforts combined to improve and transform these children’s lives through school enrolment and new discourses of ‘children’s rights’, this ethnography makes a vital point about the complexity and contemporaneity of their extensive practices of dwelling generated by the exigencies of survival within postcolonial ‘development’. http://www.palgrave.com/page/detail/inhabiting-childhood-children-labour-and-schooling-in-postcolonial-india-sarada-balagopalan/?isb=9780230296428.

 

New Book: Remembered Reading Memory, Comics and Post-War Constructions of British Girlhood

by Mel Gibsonfrontcover_remembered_readi

A reader’s history exploring the forgotten genre of girls’ comics
Girls’ comics were a major genre from the 1950s onwards in Britain. The most popular titles sold between 800,000 and a million copies a week. However, this genre was slowly replaced by magazines which now dominate publishing for girls. Remembered Reading is a readers’ history which explores the genre, and memories of those comics, looking at how and why this rich history has been forgotten. The research is based around both analysis of what the titles contained and interviews with women about their childhood comic reading. In addition, it also looks at the other comic books that British girls engaged with, including humour comics and superhero titles. In doing so it looks at intersections of class, girlhood, and genre, and puts comic reading into historical, cultural, and educational context.

http://upers.kuleuven.be/en/book/9789462700307

New Books on North African, Saharan and Amazigh (Berber) children’s toy and play cultures

Rossie, J-P. (2015). Saharan – North African – Amazigh Children’s Toy Catalogs: Donation to Centro per la Cultura Ludica in Turin. Braga: Centre for Philosophical and Humanistic Studies, Faculty of Philosophy, Catholic University of Portugal, 93, 179 ill.

Rossie, J-P. (2015). Saharan – North-African – Amazigh Children’s Toy Catalogs: Donation to Musée du Jouet de Moirans-en-Montagne, first part: dolls and toy animals, Braga: Centre for Philosophical and Humanistic Studies, Faculty of Philosophy, Catholic University of Portugal, 72, 127 ill.

These books are available here:

Academia.edu https://independent.academia.edu/JeanPierreRossie

Scribd : https://www.scribd.com/jean_pierre_rossie

Sanatoyplay (website of the author): http://www.sanatoyplay.org (publications)

NEW BOOK – Undocumented Latino Youth: Navigating Their Worlds

Layout 1by Marisol Clark-Ibáñez

July 2015
Lynne Rienner Publishers

Though often overlooked in heated debates, nearly 1.8 million undocumented immigrants are under the age of 18. How do immigration policies shape the lives of these young people? How do local and state laws that are seemingly unrelated to undocumented communities negatively affect them? Marisol Clark-Ibáñez delivers an intimate look at growing up as an undocumented Latino immigrant, analyzing the social and legal dynamics that shape everyday life in and out of school.

Continue reading NEW BOOK – Undocumented Latino Youth: Navigating Their Worlds

​​New titles from Policy Press on ​Children, ​Young ​People and​ Families

9781447307044Child development and the brain: An introduction
By Rob Abbott and Esther Burkitt
Paperback ISBN: 978-1-4473-0704-4  £19.99 $34.95
Packed full of images, case studies, reflection points, this accessibly written textbook is designed to introduce undergraduate students on social science courses to the science behind the brain. Continue reading ​​New titles from Policy Press on ​Children, ​Young ​People and​ Families