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Globalizing the Streets: Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Youth, Social Control, and Empowerment resources

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Introduction This book is the stepchild of an academic conference, and as is often the case with stepchildren it has suff cult development. It is a highly questionable tactic ered a diffi when seeking a readership beyond a few hundred professors and graduate students to advertise a book’s indebtedness to an academic conference, but this conference was no regular conference, and this book is no run- of- the- mill youth studies book. The con- ference, which bore the same name as this text, was “sharply rebuked” by then- Mayor Rudolph Giuliani (to our knowledge the only conference to earn such an honor during Giuliani’s eight- year reign), the chair of the New York City Council’s Youth Service Committee, the president of the New York Police Department’s Hispanic Society, and the president of New York City’s Board of Education. Giuliani’s spokesperson opined, “John Jay should be a college for criminal justice, not for criminal practices”; and proceeded to say that the conference “sent a message of gang legitimacy to our young people.” Meanwhile, the president of the Board of Education bemoaned our “support of street thugs” rather than “positive role models.” Such were the recriminations from the city’s moral entrepreneurs, all of which were intended to indict and infl ame rather than to educate. But what was the nature of the sin that drew such reproach? We were not guilty of sponsoring a teach- in, a sit- in, or a demonstration aimed at disrupting the status quo. Rather, the aims of the conference were to assemble “re- searchers, educators and organizers from around the globe to share knowledge, com- pare characteristics, discuss causes and shed light on successful interventions regarding the growing problems” confronting street and marginalized youth. As stated in the Conference Manifesto, we wanted to address the transnational character of the newly emerging street youth cultures. The interlock- ing nature of the informational, technical and production revolutions that are pushing lower class youth even further into the margins and the speed and depth of the global- izing forces of cultural production and exchange that are feeding the processes of youth empowerment, youth identity and the social control of youth.

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