"Read All About It": Newspaper Discourses and At-Risk Students in Sweden (and the U.S.)
[H]umanity, which for the eighteenth century...was no more than a regulative idea, has today become an inescapable fact.... [Humanity today refers to] the right to have rights, or the right of every individual to belong to humanity, should be guaranteed by humanity itself.
Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (1968:298)
In the movie, The Sixth Sense (M. Night Shyamalan 1999), 9-year-old Cole Sear tells Dr. Malcolm Crowe, a child psychologist, that he (Cole) can see dead people. Early in the movie, Cole explains to Dr. Crowe: "I see dead people...walking around like regular people. ...They talk to me; they tell me things." Over the past two decades of doing research with teenagers in the Sweden and the U.S., like Cole, I have frequently felt that I am describing something that others cannot see. I have often joked to gain people's attention: "I see teenagers from marginalized backgrounds...walking around as complex human beings. They talk to me; they tell me things!" In other words, I "see" that these living persons have been classified as socially dead. In this lecture I link scholarly discourses about Social Death to interviews with marginalized teens from Sweden and the U.S. as well as to Swedish and American newspaper (mis)representations of these teens as dangerous. Framing youth as "thugs" or "gangs" or "dangerous" can diminish support for potential reforms by deflecting responsibility from school systems to the youths. This can perpetuate a cycle of "dead ends" wherein the designation of the teens and other young persons as non-persons or nobodies who are hopeless confirms their status as "dead" through structural regimes of self-fulfilling prophecies. An alternative approach—one that sees them as alive and fully human—could tap into the potential that is inherent in all youths if we dare to see it. Short Bio L. Janelle Dance, an Assoc. Prof. of Sociology & Ethnic Studies at UNL. From 2009 to 2014, she was a Co-PI for a multi-million project on The Middle East at Lund Univ. in Sweden, where she remains a Visiting Senior Researcher. Recent article: Performativity Pressures at Urban Schools in Sweden & New York (Ethnography & Education 2014). Book-in-progress: Gone With the Neo-Liberal Wind: Minority Teens, School Reform, & Urban Change in Sweden & the U.S. Established cross-national symposia using poetry to engage urban youths in empowering dialogues (www.streetposia.org). Long Bio Lory Janelle Dance is an Associate Professor of Sociology and Ethnic Studies at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln (UNL). Dance received a B.A. from Georgetown University (1985), a Master's Degree from Harvard University (1991), and a Ph.D. from Harvard University (1995). In regard to recent activities, Dance has been a Co-Principal Investigator for "The Middle East in the Contemporary World" (MECW) grant project, a multi-million research project funded by the Swedish Research Council and housed at Lund University's Center for Middle Eastern Studies in Lund, Sweden. Dance's most recent publications include "Performativity Pressures at Urban Schools in Sweden and New York," published in Ethnography and Education in 2014, "Impoverished Clientele and Influential Institutions: Perspectives on Neighborhood Poverty near Harvard," published in Sociology Compass in 2010 and "More Like Jazz Than Classical: Reciprocal Interactions Among Educational Researchers and Respondents," published in Harvard Educational Review in 2010. Dance is currently completing a book manuscript titled Gone With the Neo-Liberal Wind: Minority Teens, School Reform, and Urban Change in Sweden and the U.S. From 2011 to 2014, Dance served as the Co-Director for strategic research of the MECW grant mentioned above. During the spring of 2010, Dance was awarded a Hedda Andersson fellowship from Lund University (LU). In honor of Hedda Andersson, the first female student to receive a degree from LU, this internationally competitive fellowship recognizes women doing cutting-edge scholarship. Dance still holds a Visiting Senior Scholar position at Lund University's Center for Middle Eastern Studies. Dance has established a symposium series called Streetposia. "Streetposia" refer to a series of cross-national symposia that use poetic expressions to engage youths from marginalized urban backgrounds in critical debates, empowering dialogues, and life changing experiences. With two capital cities of leading Western democracies as backdrop, namely Washington D.C. and Stockholm, Sweden, the Streetposia series provides a platform for addressing social justice issues. For more information see www.streetposia.org. Here is a weblink: http://soc.unl.edu/lory-janelle-tomni-dance