Center for Gender, Sexuality and Health
Urbanism, Globalization and Youth Sexuality Round Table:
Public Health Research and Practice
May 16, 2003
Breakfast & Welcome 8:45-9:15am
Richard Parker and Diane di Mauro
Themes for discussion: From an interdisciplinary perspective (e.g., anthropology, psychology, social work, political sciences, sociology, etc.), how do we define “youth”? What are the assumptions behind this concept? How is it different or similar to the notion of adolescent? How is urban youth research conducted in the United States?
Discussion Framers: Lucia O’Sullivan & Gary Dowsett
Moderator: Theo Sandfort
Themes for discussion: What are the major effects of urbanism and globalization on youth lives? How the decay of the urban environment, and the inner city in particular, has affected urban youth communities since the 1980s to the present? What are the major social struggles within and across groups of youth in the urban setting? What social spaces are available to youth? How do youth construct or appropriate social space that can be used in identity formation? What is the role of “everyday migrations” through urban space in the construction of sexual identities and the maintenance of ties to multiple and sometimes conflicting communities? How does power, in the form of survival, repression, oppression, get manifested in the lives of urban youth (e.g., the search for respect, the stigmatization of the dark skin and the effeminate, etc.) across ethnic groups? How do the processes of becoming members of the larger society (becoming men and women, becoming “productive members of society,” becoming members of cultural/ethnic communities, etc.) relate to the processes of identity development? How these two processes are affected and shaped by the formation of/participation in informal and formal social groups (such as gangs and boy scouts)? How does power, in the form of resistance and transgression, is expressed in urban youth cultures? How do youth construct their communities?
Discussion Framers: Mindy Fullilove & Lynn Roberts
Moderator: Connie Nathanson
Coffee Break 11:40am-11:50am
Globalization, Sex, Drugs and Risk 11:50am-1:15pm
Themes for discussion: How does sexuality and drug use relate to each other in urban youth culture? What are the interconnections and disconnections between sexual risk and drug use risk? How do we contextualize sexual-drug use risks within other risks confronted by youth, e.g., homelessness, street-violence? What are the major structural-cultural-situational factors that create sexual-drug use risks in urban youth social millieu? What are their mechanisms for creating vulnerabilities for youth? How these risk factors have been exarcerbated by rapid social changes in the last decade, e.g., globalization of the drug industry, changes in global labor markets, rapid polarization between upper and lower classes, acceleration migration to urban settings, globalization of the pornographic-sex industries, the war against drugs, the emergence of extreme and strong moral fundamentalism, etc.?
Discussion Framers: Stephen Lankanau & Delia Easton
Moderator: Emily Arnold
Themes for discussion: How do we develop meaningful-effective interventions and policies to address the health and rights of urban youth? How do individually-based intervention frameworks (such as self-efficacy, skill-development and empowerment) relate to collective-intervention frameworks (such as agency, consciousness raising and citizenship) or structural intervention frameworks (such as policies on access to information and services, policies/programs on employment/educational opportunities) in the arena of health for urban youth?
Discussion Framers: Vera Paiva & Bruce Armstrong
Moderator: Jean J. Schensul
Facilitator: Diane di Mauro and Miguel Muñoz-Laboy