Title first published in 2003. This timely and original book is the most comprehensive and authoritative analysis of Russia's risk society to date. Referring to the works of Douglas, Beck and Giddens, it considers a variety of theories of risk and applies them to young people in different risk societies, showing how these youngsters have adapted to cope with risk.

Title first published in 2003. This timely and original book is the most comprehensive and authoritative analysis of Russia's risk society to date. Referring to the works of Douglas, Beck and Giddens, it considers a variety of theories of risk and applies them to young people in different risk societies, showing how these youngsters have adapted to cope with risk.

This book analyzes the dubious role of the Democratic Antifascist Youth Movement "Nashi" in contemporary Russia. Part of the Putinist project of political stabilization, Nashi mobilizes young Russians through its emotional appeal, skillful use of symbolic politics, and promise of professional self-realization.

A major new resource book for academics and students of youth studies, this work offers a rare comparative review of a field which is often focused on the local or national situation. Drawing together authors from across the world, the book combines assessments of the theory, methodology and practice of youth research, and the impact of globalization on this field of study. A particular strength of the text is its exploration of theoretical issues of globalization through substantial pieces of empirical work, some of which cover regions frequently overlooked in the international youth research scene, such as South East Asia and Eastern Europe.

This book offers the first comprehensive analysis of youth, in all its diversity, in Muslim Central Asia and the Caucasus. It brings together a range of academic perspectives, including media studies, Islamic studies, the sociology of youth, and social anthropology. While most discussions of youth in the former Soviet South frame the younger generation as victims of crisis, as targets of state policy, or as holy warriors, this book maps out the complexity and variance of everyday lives under post-Soviet conditions. Youth is not a clear-cut, predictable life stage. Yet, across the region, young people’s lives show forms of experimentation and regulation. Male and female youth explore new opportunities not only in the buzzing space of the city, but also in the more closely monitored neighbourhood of their family homes. At the same time, they are constrained by communal expectations, ethnic affiliation, urban or rural background and by gender and sexuality. While young people are more dependent and monitored than many others, they are also more eager to explore and challenge. In many ways, they stand at the cutting edge of globalization and post-Soviet change, and thus they offer innovative perspectives on these processes. This book was published as a special issue of Central Asian Survey.

Since their spectacular rise in the 1990s, Russian gangs have remained entrenched in many parts of the country. Some gang members have perished in gang wars or ended up behind prison bars, while others have made spectacular careers off the streets and joined the Russian elite. But the rank and file of gangs remain substantially incorporated into their communities and society as a whole, with bonds and identities that bridge the worlds of illegal enterprise and legal respectability. In Gangs of Russia, Svetlana Stephenson explores the secretive world of the gangs. Using in-depth interviews with gang members, law enforcers, and residents in the city of Kazan, together with analyses of historical and sociological accounts from across Russia, she presents the history of gangs both before and after the arrival of market capitalism. Contrary to predominant notions of gangs as collections of maladjusted delinquents or illegal enterprises, Stephenson argues, Russian gangs should be seen as traditional, close-knit male groups with deep links to their communities. Stephenson shows that gangs have long been intricately involved with the police and other state structures in configurations that are both personal and economic. She also explains how the cultural orientations typical of gangs—emphasis on loyalty to one’s own, showing toughness to outsiders, exacting revenge for perceived affronts and challenges—are not only found on the streets but are also present in the top echelons of today’s Russian state.

Two decades have now passed since the revolutions of 1989 swept through Eastern Europe and precipitated the collapse of state socialism across the region, engendering a period of massive social, economic and political transformation. This book explores the ways in which young people growing up in post-socialist Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union negotiate a range of identities and transitions in their personal lives against a backdrop of thoroughgoing transformation in their societies. Drawing upon original empirical research in a range of countries, the book's contributors explore the various freedoms and insecurities that have accompanied neo-liberal transformation in post-socialist countries - in spheres as diverse as consumption, migration, political participation, volunteering, employment and family formation - and examine the ways in which they have begun to re-shape different aspects of young people's lives. In addition, while 'social change' is a central theme of the issue, all of the chapters in the collection indicate that the new opportunities and risks faced by young people continue both to underpin and to be shaped by familiar social and spatial divisions, not only within and between the countries addressed, but also between 'East' and 'West'. This book was originally published as a special issue of Journal of Youth Studies.