Deconstructing Scandinavia's "Achievement Generation"


Book Description

In this book, Professor Ole Jacob Madsen analyses the implications of Scandinavia's current concern for the mental health problems of adolescents, said to be struggling in the face of increasing demands for achievement and success. It critically examines our understanding of this so-called “achievement generation”, questioning whether today’s youth are really worse off than previous generations and how we have come to believe that this is so. The author’s wide-ranging investigation draws on a large body of research, as well as considering socio-political, historical and regional factors that might be affecting the resilience and mental health among young people. It also provides original psycholinguistic studies of popular media concepts associated with these issues including: “the achievement generation”, “pathological perfection” and “the good girl syndrome”. Deconstructing Scandinavia’s “Achievement Generation” presents an engaging contribution to key debates around therapeutic culture and society in the 21st century. It will appeal to students and scholars of critical and social psychology, sociology, anthropology, philosophy; as well as to those working in education, social work and mental health.




Life Skills and Adolescent Mental Health


Book Description

Can school teach us to master life? This book confronts what the author sees as an ongoing trend in many Western democracies where citizens are increasingly being held accountable for their health and happiness. The author believes that the introduction of life skills in school shows a tendency to place more responsibility on the individual rather than address fundamental societal flaws that really should be solved politically. It examines how such responsibility to psychologically deal with these problems affects our mental health and quality of life. This book questions the fundamentals of the life mastery curriculum where we might be risking the creation of just another arena where children have to perform, challenging readers to evaluate more closely the premises, consequences and limitations of life mastery. The book, one of the first to question ‘life mastery’ as an achievable goal with critical reviews of the 21st century skills movement, will be of interest to psychologists, school counsellors, teachers, students, politicians, and any reader evaluating school curriculums in relation to the decline in youth and adolescent mental health.




Mental Health in English Language Education


Book Description

Mental health has become a growing concern in today's society, with schools emerging as focal points for addressing this topic. The present volume takes this as a starting point to explore the relevance of curricula and competencies, texts and materials, (digital) culture and communication, and teacher education in the context of mental health and English language education. This, for instance, includes insights into interrelated topics such as gender, climate change, stress, and conspiracy theories. A variety of texts including multimodal novels, video games, and songs provides practical impulses for integrating mental health related topics into English lessons. As such, this volume brings together scholars from various fields who discuss the relationship between mental health issues and English as a foreign language learning from a variety of theoretical, empirical, and practice-oriented perspectives.




The Rise of Mental Vulnerability at Work


Book Description

Since the 1960s, a major mental health crisis has emerged among Western working populations. By analysing the development of various occupational cultures, this book captures the history of mental vulnerability in working life. Through a study spanning several decades, the book develops a new understanding of how mental vulnerability has evolved through changes to our working lives and socio-cultural being.




Young People as Agents of Sustainable Society


Book Description

This book analyses young people’s societal participation as a central dimension of their well-being and as vitally important to secure the sustainable future of humankind and the whole eco-social system. It develops a theoretical framework for analysing youth participation holistically, embedded in its everyday context, and as a relational phenomenon, underpinned by universal human needs. It introduces innovative methodological approaches to study youth engagements in society. This book will appeal to scholars and students of youth studies, sociology, sustainable development, youth participation and education. It also offers new knowledge and theoretical readings for policy experts on youth and sustainable development, as well as for NGOs working with youth. The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.




Deconstructing Developmental Psychology


Book Description

In this completely revised and updated edition, Deconstructing Developmental Psychology interrogates the assumptions and practices surrounding the psychology of child development, providing a critical evaluation of the role and contribution of developmental psychology within social practice. Since the second edition was published, there have been many major changes. This book addresses how shifts in advanced capitalism have produced new understandings of children, and a new (and more punitive) range of institutional responses to children. It engages with the paradoxes of childhood in an era when young adults are increasingly economically dependent on their families, and in a political context of heightened insecurity. The new edition includes an updated review of developments in psychological theory (in attachment, evolutionary psychology, theory of mind, cultural-historical approaches), as well as updating and reflecting upon the changed focus on fathers and fathering. It offers new perspectives on the connections between Piaget and Vygotsky and now connects much more closely with discussions from the sociology of childhood and critical educational research. Coverage has been expanded to include more material on child rights debates, and a new chapter addresses practice dilemmas around child protection, which engages even more with the "raced" and gendered effects of current policies involving children. This engaging and accessible text provides key resources to inform better professional practice in social work, education and health contexts. It offers critical insights into the politics and procedures that have shaped developmental psychological knowledge. It will be essential reading for anyone working with children, or concerned with policies around children and families. It was also be of interest to students at undergraduate and postgraduate levels across a range of professional and practitioner groups, as well as parents and policy makers.




The Deconstruction of Colonial Stereotypes in Contemporary English Fiction


Book Description

Thesis (M.A.) from the year 2009 in the subject Didactics for the subject English - Literature, Works, grade: 1,15, University of Göttingen, language: English, abstract: We are told about the world before we see it. We imagine most things before we experience them. And those preconceptions, unless education has made us acutely aware, govern deeply the whole process of perception (Lippmann: 90). In defining the nature of stereotypes Walter Lippmann in 1922 explained one of the governing principles of human perception and human relationships. Although his theory on Public Opinion did not exclusively allude to the relationship between coloniser and colonised, his work laid the foundation of the historical, cultural and literary investigation and understanding of the mechanisms of colonial control through the power of stereotyping. By shaping the world they perceived according to their beliefs, moral codes and attitudes, including those concerning the people and lands they occupied, colonisers have ever since dominated their colonies not only through military strength and physical violence but also through their views. [...] The aim of my work will partly be to demonstrate the major tropes of colonial stereotypes and their functioning in some selected literary pieces of High Imperialism, which approximately stretches from the reign of Queen Victoria (1837-1901) to the end of the First World War (1918). As the "jewel in the crown" (Laisram: vii), India has long caught the most attention of all the British colonies, and even fascinated politicians, writers, and philosophers of other European nations. Due to this fact, I have chosen to focus on literary pieces that refer to this richest colony of the British Empire only. [...] However, the main part of my work will concentrate on the aftermath of colonialism, i.e. the dealings of colonial stereotypes in contemporary English fiction. [...] The basic question will thereby be whether the selected writers William Sutcliffe,




Deconstructing Development Discourse


Book Description

Andrea Cornwall is Professor of Anthropology and Development in the School of Global Studies at the University of Sussex. --




Is There A Nordic Feminism?


Book Description

This text focuses on changes in culture and society that concern women and feminists in the Nordic countries. It examines women's political strategies, questions of identity, rationality and subjectivity, and social and cultural values.




Kurdish Diaspora Online


Book Description

The argument offered in this book is that new technology, as opposed to traditional media such as television, radio, and newspaper, is working against the national grain to weaken its imagined community. Online activities and communications between people and across borders suggest that digital media has strong implications for different articulations of identity and belongingness, which open new ways of thinking about the imagined community. The findings are based on transnational activities by Kurdish diaspora members across borders that have pushed them to rethink notions of belonging and identity. Through a multidisciplinary and comparative approach, and multifaceted (online-offline) methodologies, the book unveils tensions between new and old media, and how the former is not only changing social relations but also exposing existing ones. Living in two or more cultures, speaking multiple languages, and engaging in transnational practices, diaspora individuals may have created a momentum that discloses how the imagined nation is diminishing in this digital era.