Note from our organizational secretary

It seems an eternity since I sat through almost a hundred youth research papers during the World Congress in Durban. All those contacts and wonderful plans around things to do together in the future! Read more

Bread and Fish

This South Africa visit was for the International Sociological Association Conference. I heard that about 4000 of us descended on Durban for the conference. Thankfully the youth research strand (Research Committee 34) is a little smaller than that (I think we have 133 members from 43 countries - many of whom attended) and like other research committees this one had a 6 day internal program of its own with a solid membership and collegial core group. Like others I co-chaired some session and gave a paper. And then we disbanded by 8.30 every night and usually re-convened at a nice little watering hole at the docklands called 'Cafe Fish' ... Read more

Fieldwork in the Philippines

It has been about six months since I left Dalhousie for my Philippine fieldwork. The first three months were challenging. I have to re-introduce myself to our local university where the usual bureaucracy made it difficult for me to carry on with my initial research work and secondary data analysis. Also to my surprise, my body was unable to adjust well to the warm tropical climate which made me very sick for two months. Read more

Obituary

Ovidiu Badina, founder and first president of RC34, died on April 26, 1999. With his death, youth studies lost a distinguished scholar, and many members of the Research Committee 34 lost a personal friend. Badina, one of the leading figures in Romanian sociology, was born in Breaza-Buzau in 1932 and had a typical academic career in the Soviet Block states. He studied first in his home country, and then at the Lomonosov University in Moscow. He became a 'scientific worker' in the Institute of Philosophy at the Romanian Academy of Sciences in 1963 and later a university lecturer. What was special about Badina was that he had an exceptional organisational talent, which he put to very good use in establishing and developing several creditable institutions both in Romania and abroad. He was the initiator, founder and leader of the Youth Studies and Research Centre in Bucharest, Romania, from 1968 till 1974, of the ISA's committee 'Sociology of Youth' from 1975 till 1986 and, more recently, from 1991 till 1993, of the National Sociological Institute in Moldova. Read more

A week in the life of…

Writing this small summary about my week was a good exercise that made me reflect about the different environments I find myself in within the week, or I should say within the day. Monday morning starts at work, in the International Relations Office, where we are supposed to help students and teaching staff move around through different countries in order to fulfil their academic purposes. It is usually a rather complicated work, sometimes frustrating and sometimes not, and occasionally really rewarding. People call with doubts, questions or an indefinite wish to move, and they go away with either an answer, a piece of information, or simply somewhere else to call because what they want is dealt with somewhere else. We manage different types of calls. Calls for mobility, calls for projects of co-operation, calls for attending international courses, etc. Read more

Everyday routines

Sunday 6 May Since years, by now, my working week begins on Sunday. I am so used to consider Sunday as the key day for the week agenda that, as far as I'm concerned, it is "occupied" when it is invaded - often not by choice, but because social relations impose it - by this or that so-called leisure activity. An overturning of the dominant social rhythms, and the rites accompanying them. An indispensable overturning if I want to at least try to square the circle: or in other words, try to reconcile an increasing number of professional commitments with a quantity of available time that remains unvaried (or that decreases: as the years go by, I have noticed that some existential rhythms become slower, requiring more time). To seek to "gain" a little time which is missing during the week, the Sunday offers an indispensable support. A fundamental activity, as everyone who faces the same type of situation knows, in fact consists of the ability to mentally anticipate the scenario of future commitments (transforming them, as Schutz would say, in a project they are working toward in the world). This is my state of mind on a Sunday in early May in my small out-of-town refuge, on the Lago Maggiore. You will learn more about the activities I am about to embark on by continuing to read this brief account. Read more

DIARY

Work on this diary has taken me incredibly long time not just because of lack of it, but also because it was difficult to decide what was more or less important significant in my every day life. Although everyone's life is unique, our lives are similar in terms of our professional activity: teaching, doing research, preparing presentations, making telephone calls, traveling, etc. Each of which is nothing special really. The main nuances concern the social environments and ways of doing things in different places and countries. In order to avoid bring readers with tales of Russian specifics, I'd like instead to make other bold comments which will be developed further below. Lets me finish this introduction by mentioning a joke that is circulating in Russia today: "The whole history of the country has to be analyzed if someone wants to know why the handle is, by chance, on the wrong side of a door" Read more

Une Semaine Dans Ma Vie de Chercheure

Quelle semaine m’attend! Et quel contraste avec cette semaine que je viens de «me payer» à écrire la présentation d’un ouvrage collectif qui devrait être publié depuis plusieurs mois déjà… Une année un peu folle ponctuée de congrès (dont celui de l’AIS), de nouveaux projets, de la création d’un Observatoire sur les jeunes et la société. Une année qui ne m’a pas permis d’écrire autant que je l’aurais voulu. Je me rends compte que la gestion de la recherche m’accapare de plus en plus, que les équipes grossissent, que les étudiants intéressés par la thématique que je propose se font plus nombreux. À chaque jour de la semaine qui vient, j’aurai une réunion. Read more