The changing social contract for younger generations in the U'S' and Europe

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The changing social contract for younger
generationsin the U.S. and Europe

• Connie Flanagan
• Penn State University

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The no long term rules of flexible capital

• Through most of human history, people have
  accepted the fact that their lives will shift
  suddenly due to wars, famines, or other
  disasters, and that they will have to improvise
  in order to survive.
• Whats peculiar about anxiety today is that
  it exists without any looming historical
  disaster instead it is woven into the everyday
  practices of a vigorous capitalism.
• Instability is meant to be normal.
• Richard Sennett, 1998
• The Corrosion of Character
• The Personal Consequences of Work in the New
  Capitalism

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Interview with Margaret Thatcher reported in
Keay, 1987.

• I think we have gone through a period when too
  many children and people have been given to
  understand
• I have a problem, it is the Governments job
  to cope with it! or
• I have a problem, I will go and get a grant
  to cope with it!
• I am homeless, the Government must house me!
  
• and so they are casting their problems on
  society
• and who is society? There is no such thing!
• There are individual men and women, and there
  are families and no government can do anything
  except through people, and people look to
  themselves first.

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Suppose some people from a foreign country
visited the U.S. and asked you to explain some
things to them. Like how would you explain why
some people are poor or rich or unemployed.

• People who are rich worked hard, got what they
  wanted, had a good education, wanted to be
  someone, not a nobody.
• The reason why people have good jobs is because
  they work for 17 20 years in school.
• Obviously they take education, motivation,
  intelligence very seriously. Somewhere in the
  family someone had to work hard to get where they
  are a trait that should is passed down in the
  family.
• People who are unemployed probably didnt think
  of their future as youngsters but they now should
  pay back by being unemployed
• If is there fault because they didnt go to
  school and work hard.
• Most of these people were born into poverty.
  There fate can be blamed on their ancestors.

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No long term rules of flexible capital

• Lifelong learning
• Credential accumulation
• Identity capital
• Entrepreneur of oneself
• Youth at risk

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Trends in Europe and the U.S.Disconnected youth

• 2004 Kids Count Report
• One in six 18 25 year olds
• No degree beyond high school
• No job
• Not enrolled in school
• A 19 increase over three prior years
• Council of Europe -- Exploring the European Youth
  Mosaic
• Significant proportions of young people aged 15
  19
• Not in education
• Not in training
• Not employed
• Prominent in southern and especially in southeast
  Europe and the Caucasus.

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Classic Measures of Social Trust

• Generally speaking, would you say that most
  people can be trusted or that you cant be too
  careful in dealing with people?
• Would you say that most of the time people try to
  be helpful or that they are mostly just looking
  out for themselves?
• Do you think that most people would try to take
  advantage of you if they got a chance or would
  they try to be fair?

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Politics is rooted in social relations

• It concerns the way we think about membership
• in communities and our relationships with Others
  in those communities.
• A citizen is, most simply, a member of a
  political community,
• entitled to whatever prerogatives and
• encumbered with whatever responsibilities
• are attached to membership.
• Walzer, Citizenship

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ADOLESCENTS VIEWS OF OTHERS IN THEIR COMMUNITY
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Prevention as a Civic Issue
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Private vs. public hope

• Trust and trustworthiness were invented as a way
  of dealing with the uncertainties of human beings
  who are free.
• Democratic faith is the decision to believe that
  a world of democratic trust is possible because
  we can see it in each person sometimes.
• It is the decision to believe in what people can
  be on the basis of what they are sometimes.
• None of this has been proved, neither has it
  been disproved.
• One is free to believe either way.
• The democratic virtues In Radical
  Democracy
• C. Douglas Lummis, 1996