Complacent young citizens or cross-generational solidarity? An analysis of Australian attitudes to democratic politics

Negativity towards mainstream politics is at an all-time high, with young people often targeted as the issue. However, are young people really to blame for political malaise? This article seeks to make sense of contemporary debate about political disenchantment in Australia using a cluster analysis to compare levels of complacency across generational cohorts. In this, we find no evidence to support the idea that Australians of any age cohort are complacent about their democracy. Although, there is some evidence of attitudinal differences between cohorts, criticisms of the practice of politics are also widely shared. Moreover, a majority of citizens appear to favour a mix of reforms combining mechanisms to open-up representative politics with opportunities for more direct intervention. To this end, we rebuke the narrative of a specific apathetic or disconnected Australian age cohort.     

Sexual crime in the Irish Free State 1922–33: its nature,extent and reporting

This paper explores sexual crime in the Irish Free State through the utilisation of hitherto unexamined files held in the National Archives in Dublin. An exploration of these files has provided a deepening understanding of the realities of sexual crime, societal attitudes towards it and the views of those charged with protecting the public. The files also provide valuable insights into attitudes towards female sexuality, the nation's youth and the rights of children. Additionally, the files have facilitated the widest study, to date, of the reporting of sexual offences trials by local and national newspapers – a study that shows that the overwhelming majority of sexual crime prosecutions were never reported in the nation's press and that those that were, were reported in ways that obscured the actual nature of the offence or portrayed them as alien, non-Irish crimes committed by outsiders. The article demonstrates that sexual crime in the Free State was an ideological as well as a law enforcement issue in a newly emerging state sensitive to the views of its enemies and the outside world and insecure about its place in it, a nation that legitimised itself, in no small part, as a beacon of Celtic Catholic purity in a world otherwise sullied by sin.     

Critical voices from adolescent ‘shape shifters’ – accessing portraits in ‘Becoming Educated’

What young people have to say about schooling can be most revealing, particularly when they expose and challenge the injustices and logic of school policies and practices. This paper captures voices from secondary school students from a school in Victoria, Australia, as part of a research project called Becoming Educated. The paper explores a particular geography of youth around the notion of ‘shape shifter’ as it relates to young people's education in two ways: first, in understanding the changing roles and identities of students as observers of, and participants in, education policies and practices; and second, as a way of interpreting the intent of those who ‘shape’ new ideas and policies to create a kind of ‘temporary alteration of outside appearances for the purpose of deception’ [Merchant, B. 1995. “Current Educational Reform: ‘Shape-shifting’ or Genuine Improvements in the Quality of Teaching and Learning?” Educational Theory 45 (2, Spring): 251–268]. The latter has a particularly significant impact on the former, and this paradox is not one that goes unnoticed by young people.     

Youth–community–university partnerships and sense of place: two case studies of youth participatory action research

This paper describes two youth participatory action research initiatives undertaken in East Palo Alto, CA, USA, as part of university–community partnerships. We discuss the process of engaging youth researchers to build youth skills, facilitate relationships with community-based organizations, and enhance study integrity. We report interview and artifact data that address: (1) how the youths' involvement in the research process affected their sense of place and self-efficacy for creating community change; (2) how the youths' interactions with adult community leaders shifted adult perceptions of youths' abilities and roles in the community; and (3) how the initiatives affected youth and adult participants' perspectives of the university.