Youth on Streets and Bob-a-Job Week: Urban Geographies of Masculinity, Risk, and Home in Postwar Britain

Mills, Sarah

doi:10.1068/a45400

Cited by 3 publications

(5 citation statements)

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“…Aitken, 2001; Massey, 1998; Stainton Rogers, 2004; Valentine, 1996). In Britain, these ideas were arguably at their most powerful in the post-war period following the emergence of various youth sub-cultures and the advent of the ‘teenager’ – a figure usually associated with the urban cityscape (Bugge, 2004; Cohen, 1973; Hall and Jefferson, 1976; see also Mills, 2014). Rather than provide another historical account of youth sub-cultures in post-war Britain, this paper is an attempt to uncover how an established youth organisation – the JLB & C – responded to post-war ‘youth culture’ and the changing leisure practices of young people in the city of Manchester (on local youth clubs, cultures of leisure and the post-war period see Clements, 2016).…”

Section: Moral Geographies Of Youth Gender Religion and The Post-wamentioning

confidence: 99%

“…First, the article contributes an in-depth and sustained focus on the moral geographies of the post-war city in relation to young people (Bugge, 2004; Mills, 2014; Stainton Rogers, 2004). While the study of ‘moral geographies’ is now a long-standing interest within disciplinary human geography with diverse foci (e.g.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Cresswell 1996Cresswell , 2005Driver 1988;Matless 1998). In previous work, I have explored how moral geographies were embedded in the contours of British uniformed youth movements, primarily through their ideological construction of duty-bound 'good citizens' to unify and distinguish between different groups of young people and their behaviour (Mills 2014). A whole body of scholarship on childhood and youth has traced how young people have been framed within certain discourses -for example trouble and risk -that creates a wider moral landscape of childhood (e.g.…”

Section: Moral Geographies Of Youth Gender Religion and The Post-wamentioning

confidence: 99%

“…First, the article contributes an in-depth and sustained focus on the moral geographies of the post-war city in relation to young people (Bugge 2004;Mills 2014;Stainton Rogers 2004).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Jives, jeans and Jewishness? Moral geographies, atmospheres and the politics of mixing at the Jewish Lads’ Brigade & Club 1954–1969

Mills

2016

Environ Plan D

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This paper examines a series of anxieties about mixing at the Jewish Lads’ Brigade and Club (JLB & C) in Manchester, UK during the 1950s and 1960s, primarily focused on inter-faith activities, relationships and marriages. This paper explores how a powerful moral geography of gender and religion came to be shaped, regulated and negotiated at this youth work space. The concerns expressed by some adults over teenage encounters in the post-war city were articulated and understood through the notion of ‘atmospheres’, and this paper suggests how this idea and language captured some of the anxieties and emotions surrounding cultures of leisure at this time. This paper contributes an in-depth and sustained focus on the moral geographies of the post-war city in relation to young people, as well as addressing an important gap in scholarship on Jewish youthful religiosities. Furthermore, it pushes at ideas about meaningful encounters through the consideration of the JLB & C as a meeting space and arena for visitors. Overall, the paper examines how the JLB & C acted as both a mirror to the wider social changes of the post-war era, while also being an active contributor in shaping those same processes of social change.

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Section: Moral Geographies Of Youth Gender Religion and The Post-wamentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Moral Geographies Of Youth Gender Religion and The Post-wamentioning

confidence: 99%

“…First, the article contributes an in-depth and sustained focus on the moral geographies of the post-war city in relation to young people (Bugge 2004;Mills 2014;Stainton Rogers 2004).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Jives, jeans and Jewishness? Moral geographies, atmospheres and the politics of mixing at the Jewish Lads’ Brigade & Club 1954–1969

Mills

2016

Environ Plan D

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“…This paper has a unique focus on Jewish youth, as Judaism is somewhat marginalised within the loci of work on geographies of religion (Kong ; although for an important exception, see Valins ). In doing so, this paper moves beyond official histories of the JLB (Kadish ) and, significantly, it adds a religious dimension to academic debates on the emergence of youth sub‐cultures in post‐war Britain (Cohen ; Hall and Jefferson ; see also Mills ; Nayak ) through excavating alternative accounts of post‐war (religious) youth. Here, I demonstrate how fears surrounding post‐war youth were internalised by Anglo‐Jewry and the JLB at a national level, but how at the local scale, this one meeting place in Manchester tried to replicate post‐war youth's leisure activities in the (safe) space of the Club as part of a wider culture of support to help Jewish youth in their transitions to adulthood.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Geographies of youth work, volunteering and employment: the Jewish Lads' Brigade and Club in post‐war Manchester

Mills

2015

Trans Inst British Geog

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This paper brings together current geographical debates on volunteering and employment through a unique focus on post-war youth work. I use the example of the Jewish Lads' Brigade and Club in Manchester, UK to make a series of wider arguments about the emotional labour of paid/unpaid work, faith-based identities and the spatialities of informal education. Through conceptualising youth work as a series of localised and inherently spatial practices, the paper explores how the identities of employed volunteers and youth workers shape -and are shaped by -the contexts through which they 'work' with young people. I draw on archival materials to show how the Club operated in practice at one site in Manchester, and place this experience in the context of the national organisation's post-war reconstruction efforts. I show how the Club navigated a path through the post-war moral landscape of childhood, shaped by the wider Anglo-Jewish community, and I illustrate the dynamic relationships between paid and unpaid helpers in the performance of youth work. The paper concludes by drawing connections between the historical record and contemporary youth work practice. The professionalisation of youth work that emerged in the post-war era is currently being dismantled via new geographies of voluntarism in austere times and, now as then, questions around the role of faith-based youth organisations and the religious identities of their volunteers and employees remain politically charged.

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‘Doing nature’ and being a Guide: the problem of the town guide in the British Girl Guides Association, 1930–1960

Edwards

2020

HER

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PurposeTo explore the advice given by the British Girl Guides Association, a popular girls' youth organisation, to urban members in the period from 1930 to 1960.Design/methodology/approachThis article is based on an analysis of the Girlguiding publications The Guide and The Guider in 30 years spanning 1930–1960.FindingsThe article shows that, although rural spaces maintained symbolic position in the education and training of the British Girl Guides Association throughout the mid-twentieth century, the use of urban spaces were central in ensuring that girls embodied Guiding principles on a day-to-day basis. While rural spaces, and especially the camp, have been conceptualised by scholars as ‘extraordinary’ spaces, this article argues that by encouraging girls to undertake nature study in their urban locality the organisation stressed the ordinariness of Guiding activity. In doing so, they encouraged girls to be an active presence in urban public space throughout the period, despite the fact that, as scholars have identified, the post-war period saw the increased regulation of children's presence in public spaces. Such findings suggest that the organisation allowed girls a modicum of freedom in town Guiding activities, although ultimately these were limited by expectations regarding the behaviour and conduct of members.Originality/valueThe article builds upon existing understandings of the Girl Guide organisation and mid-twentieth century youth movements. A number of scholars have recently argued for a more complex understanding of the relationship between urban and rural, outdoor and indoor spaces, within youth organisations in the 20th century. Yet the place of urban spaces in Girlguiding remains under-explored.

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Youth on Streets and Bob-a-Job Week: Urban Geographies of Masculinity, Risk, and Home in Postwar Britain

Abstract: Additional Information:• The definitive, peer-reviewed and edited version of this article is published

Cited by 3 publications

References 34 publications

Jives, jeans and Jewishness? Moral geographies, atmospheres and the politics of mixing at the Jewish Lads’ Brigade & Club 1954–1969

Jives, jeans and Jewishness? Moral geographies, atmospheres and the politics of mixing at the Jewish Lads’ Brigade & Club 1954–1969

Geographies of youth work, volunteering and employment: the Jewish Lads' Brigade and Club in post‐war Manchester

‘Doing nature’ and being a Guide: the problem of the town guide in the British Girl Guides Association, 1930–1960

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