This volume represents a new name and a new focus for its predecessor, Current Perspectives on Aging and the Life Cycle (volumes 1-4). We begin our new series, now titled Advances in Life Course Research, with volume 5. Its statement of purpose is the publication of theoretical analyses, reviews, policy analyses and positions, and theory-based empirical papers on issues involving all aspects of the human life course. It adopts a broad conception of the life course, and invites and welcomes contributions from all disciplines and fields of study interested in understanding, describing, and predicting the antecedents of and consequences for the course that human lives take from birth to death, within and across time and cultures (construed in its broadest sense), regardless of methodology, theoretical orientation, or disciplinary affiliation.

This text brings together sociological, anthropological and social policy perspectives on the life course with a view to developing the conceptual rigour of the term as well as to exploring the rich range of debates and issues it encompasses. Linking traditional sociological and anthropological concerns with more recent postmodern debates centred on the self, identity and time, the book integrates theoretical debates about childhood, youth, middle age and later life with empirical material in an illuminating and innovative way.

New Frontiers in Socialization

The social sciences rely more on the comparative method than on experimental data mainly because the latter is difficult to acquire amongst human populations. The International Social Survey Programme has played a pioneering role in creating and sustaining methodologically-sophisticated mass attitude surveys across the globe. Starting in 1984 with five nations, it now encompasses forty-five nations spread over five continents, each administering an identical annual survey to a random sample of their population. Analyses of the data or descriptions of the methodology already appear in over 3,000 publications. This book contains new contributions from three dozen eminent scholars who analyse and compare the perceptions and attitudes of citizens across all five continents, nations and over time. Subjects range from inequality and the role of the state; ethnic, national and global identities; the changing relevance of religion, beliefs and practices; gender roles, family values and work orientations; household and society. Some chapters focus on methodological issues; others focus on substantive findings. This book sets new standards for cross-cultural research.

Children at the Millennium

Exploring notions of the person through a wide range of anthropological literature, Cathrine Degnen analyses how personhood is built, affirmed, and maintained during various life stages and via multiple cultural forms and practices. In discussing the life course, she investigates personhood as a concept at the beginning of life, throughout life as lived, at the edges of being, and ultimately at life’s end. Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Personhood and the Life Course moves beyond the human person in isolation to consider how personhood is fashioned with regard to place and how non-humans can also be recognised as persons. Through multiple ethnographic accounts, Degnen shows that personhood emerges as a relational and processual entity, brought into being via reciprocal fields of social relations.

How do young people construct their identities in the complexity of their own country, belonging to the European Union, and being part of global society? This book is based on a unique empirical study of a thousand young people, aged between eleven and nineteen, from fifteen European countries. Covering East European states that joined the EU be