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Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 1971. / Typescript. Vita. eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 54-57).

By the turn of the twentieth century, "rural youth" came to symbolize the spirit of hard work, masculinity, and patriotism. The village youth associations, the seinendan, as well as a number of other youth training programs, carried that ideal and spread it all over the Japanese empire. This dissertation examines how the movement to create "rural youth" unfolded in different parts of the empire and how young farmers responded to this mobilization. By examining three rural areas in Miyagi (northern Japan), Xinzhu (Taiwan), and South Ch'ungch'ŏng (Korea), I argue that the social tensions and local dynamics, such as the divisions between urban and rural, the educated and the uneducated, and the young and the old, determined the motivations and emotional drives behind youth participation in the mobilization. To invert the analytical viewpoint from the state to youth themselves, I use the term "Rural Youth Industry." This indicates the social sphere in which agrarian youth transformed themselves from perpetual farmers to success-oriented modern youth, shared an identity as "rural youth" by incorporating imperial and global youth activism, and developed a sense of moral superiority over the urban, the educated, and the old. The social dynamics of the "Rural Youth Industry" explain why many of these youth so internalized the ideology of Japanese nationalism that they volunteered for military service and fought for the empire. This dissertation offers a new perspective to the study of modern empires in several respects. It provides a new way to dissect the colonial empire, challenging the methodological trap of emphasizing the present-day national boundaries of Japan, Taiwan, and Korea. It highlights rural modernity, often neglected in the urban-centric historiography of colonial modernity. It also brings together global, regional, and local histories. The seinendan were part of the global waves of imperialism, nation-state building, agrarianism, and the rise of youth. I argue that the spread of the "Rural Youth Industry" most clearly exemplifies a central characteristic of the Japanese empire, which is summarized as its drive to pursue nation-building across its imperial domains, forming a "nation-empire." This dissertation examines the operations of the "nation-empire" at the grassroots level by comparing the social environments of mobilized agrarian youth. Situating the practices of the Japanese empire in these broader contexts as well as the specific local conditions of village societies, this dissertation illuminates the nature of mass mobilization and the shifting relationship between the state and society in the first half of the twentieth century.

The aim of this study is to investigate the occupational orientations and choices of young people in rural Crete, a society, which is in constant change as it finds itself caught between tradition and modernity. To achieve this, the study looks into two cases: the case of Anogia, a small mountainous cattle-raising village, and the case of Archanes, which is a farming village on a plain. Both communities are undergoing a process of change due to the influence exerted upon them through the frequent contacts with the ‘outside world’ and the diffusion of modernity in all areas of life. The study expects to shed light on how the young people of these villages experience the transition from tradition to modernity and how this transition influences their choice of occupation. More specifically, the aims of this study are to investigate: A. The occupational orientations and choice of occupation of the young people within the communities of Anogia and Archanes. B. The main contextual factors that contribute to the young people’s occupational orientations and choice of occupation in Anogia and Archanes. The overall approach is a qualitative inquiry consisting of two case studies. The empirical research took place in the field of the communities of Anogia and Archanes, and addresses 29 young people of the villages, so as to gather primary data through semistructured interviews. The age has been defined to be 16 to 25 years old. In order to arrive at the findings, data analysis derived from the Grounded Theory methodological approach was employed (Strauss, 1987). The main findings of the study show that the transitional process from school to work seems to be the most crucial issue for the young people under study, in the process of shaping their occupational orientations and choices. The attitude, either positive or negative, that each one has adopted towards school and education generally and the level of education constitutes the main tool that determines the limitations and the opportunities for job placement. In these small societies, the traditional roles have been overturned as regards the youth and their professional orientations. The majority of young people follow new practices in seeking employment. These characterise the following three types of youth: the stayers, the ambivalent and the leavers.

This dissertation explores how rural young people imagine their futures in neo-liberal times. The analysis is based upon three months of ethnographic research with grade 7/8 students in ‘Fieldsville,’ a predominantly white and working-class rural community in Southeastern Ontario. I examine students' participation in a widely-used career-education program called The Real Game, in which they are encouraged to become entrepreneurial subjects capable of crafting productive futures in an uncertain world. My study asks: How do these young people produce and perform their imagined future selves, and what does this suggest about the opportunities and constraints that shape their current identities? Integrating insights from feminist poststructural theory and cultural geography, the project extends and challenges studies of the neo-liberal subject by integrating an analysis of place. The thesis builds upon, and contributes to, critical scholarship theorizing young lives as socially, spatially and temporally situated by exploring processes of location within subjectivity formation. Integrating classroom and playground observations with focus groups and interviews, the analysis reveals that young people draw upon diverse discourses in order to envision the person they hope to become. In addition to the subject positions on offer in The Real Game, popular culture provides a key resource in practices of self-making, as students invest in middle-class ideals of the “good life,” and distinguish their own rural location from racialized mappings of urban and global others. Although Fieldsville students are deeply invested in their rural community, tensions emerge where local attachments meet dominant narratives of mobility that encourage them to locate their futures elsewhere. These place-based tensions present particular challenges for girls, who must negotiate the gendered dynamics of rural social space alongside popular discourses of “girl power” that proffer unlimited possibilities for today's young women. Teasing apart the intersections of gender, race, class and space within students' narratives, I argue that studies of neo-liberal subjectivity must examine how dominant discourses are negotiated from particular social and geographical locations. Methodologically, the analysis demonstrates how school-based ethnography can shed light on broader socio-historical processes as they are lived in specific geographical and cultural spaces.

This dissertation explores how rural young people imagine their futures in neo-liberal times. The analysis is based upon three months of ethnographic research with grade 7/8 students in ‘Fieldsville,’ a predominantly white and working-class rural community in Southeastern Ontario. I examine students' participation in a widely-used career-education program called The Real Game, in which they are encouraged to become entrepreneurial subjects capable of crafting productive futures in an uncertain world. My study asks: How do these young people produce and perform their imagined future selves, and what does this suggest about the opportunities and constraints that shape their current identities? Integrating insights from feminist poststructural theory and cultural geography, the project extends and challenges studies of the neo-liberal subject by integrating an analysis of place. The thesis builds upon, and contributes to, critical scholarship theorizing young lives as socially, spatially and temporally situated by exploring processes of location within subjectivity formation. Integrating classroom and playground observations with focus groups and interviews, the analysis reveals that young people draw upon diverse discourses in order to envision the person they hope to become. In addition to the subject positions on offer in The Real Game, popular culture provides a key resource in practices of self-making, as students invest in middle-class ideals of the “good life,” and distinguish their own rural location from racialized mappings of urban and global others. Although Fieldsville students are deeply invested in their rural community, tensions emerge where local attachments meet dominant narratives of mobility that encourage them to locate their futures elsewhere. These place-based tensions present particular challenges for girls, who must negotiate the gendered dynamics of rural social space alongside popular discourses of “girl power” that proffer unlimited possibilities for today's young women. Teasing apart the intersections of gender, race, class and space within students' narratives, I argue that studies of neo-liberal subjectivity must examine how dominant discourses are negotiated from particular social and geographical locations. Methodologically, the analysis demonstrates how school-based ethnography can shed light on broader socio-historical processes as they are lived in specific geographical and cultural spaces.

Thesis (Ph. D.) -- Lincoln University, 2009. / Also available via the World Wide Web.

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the Indiana Cooperative Extension Service Community Development Youth Project and the steps used to implement this new project. The Community Development Youth Project was adopted as a state project in the Indiana Cooperative Extension Service in January, 1973, when the guidelines for implementation of the project were published. This study evaluated the results of implementation one year later. Questions raised in the study included (1) What implementation steps had been taken by the agent? (2) What was the relationship of each agent's total Cooperative Extension Service tenure and the community position tenure to the successful implementation of the project? (3) What relationship was there between the number of hours reported expended on the Community Development Youth Project and the successful implementation of the project into a county program? (4) What was the relationship between an agent's following the guidelines and his achievement of the project goals? (5) Did the theory developed by the North Central Regional Agricultural Extension Service concerning "innovator, early adopter, adopter, and non-adopter" hold true for implementing new programs within the Cooperative Extension Service? (6) Were the goals of the project achieved?Procedures for the study involved the use of three sources of data. The first source was a questionnaire sent to each of the Cooperative Extension Service agents in charge of the Community Development Youth Project. The second source was the Indiana Automated Extension Reporting System Activity Report. The third source was comprised of ten in-depth group interviews with participants in the Community Development Youth Project. The chi square test for significant difference was also utilized in the research to determine whether or not there was a significant difference at the .05 level. The population of the questionnaire included all of the ninety-three youth agents in charge of the Community Development Youth Project in their counties. The population of the Indiana Automatic Extension Reporting System Activity Report included all 302 extension agents in Indiana. The ten group interview population included seventy-two youths who participated in the Community Development Youth Project and who were selected from a total population of 2186 youth who had participated.Research indicated that the implementation steps of the Community Development Youth Project guidelines were followed by the Cooperative Extension Service Youth Agent. The research also demonstrated that there was a positive relationship between an agent's following the guidelines and the successful achievement of the project goals. The hypothesis that both the total extension service tenure and the county tenure of a youth agent were positively correlated with successful implementation of the new Community Development Youth Project was also supported. The study, however, did not support the hypothesis that there is a correlation between time reported expended in community development and successful implementation of the project in a given county. The research revealed that two or three per cent of the population were "innovators" and that five to seven per cent of the population were "early adopters." The research also indicated that the Community Development Youth Project had achieved the stated goals of the project.

Thesis (Psy. D.)--Indiana University of Pennsylvania. / Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis PlanB (M.S.)--University of Wisconsin--Stout, 2008. / Includes bibliographical references.