Attending the SSSP annual meeting last week was really useful. I got some help ideas on how to present and structure my own research presentations (i.e. focus on theory and design, connect the two). I still need to go through the various notes from the conference and pull them into a more cohesive memo. Perhaps that is what I will do later this week. There were several literatures referenced that I think would be useful moving forward with my dissertation. Specifically:
- community empowerment (reference Krista et a paper in community org and prob session)
- political education
- worker education
- community efficacy
- life stories of social change folks
- women’s movement and consciousness raising
- identity movements (black power, chicano, LBGT)
In many ways youth organizing is very similar to other identity movements where groups or individuals have found themselves without power or voice. While age is the defining characteristic, this group does not have political power. So this is more similar to the fight against slavery and the abolitionists. In some ways this is a different sort of paper here.
What seems to be a key thing to thing about is how personal transformation can lead to political change. I really need to read the Beyond Resistance book and make more time for reading about some of these things more clearly.
It also occurred to me that there may be additional insights to youth political engagement by looking at the worker education movement and efforts for popular education especially around political education. I should work now to bring these literatures into my work.