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ETD Abstract Container

Abstract Header

Our World Around the Corner: How Youths Make Meaning of Place, Belonging, and Citizenship

Harshman, Jason R.
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1403884488

Abstract Details

2014, Doctor of Philosophy, Ohio State University, EDU Teaching and Learning.
The increased urbanization of spaces in our global age requires new ways of thinking about citizenship. Within the nascent, but increasingly important field of study on spatiality and citizenship, this dissertation provides an examination of how the perspectives and experiences of youths can inform a more place-conscious and transnationally relevant approach to citizenship education. Framed by work in cultural studies and critical geography, this project departs from the current literature on citizenship education by examining the critical perspectives that youths possess in relation to the experiences they have away from school. In taking this approach, I am better able to illustrate how power, race, gender, capitalism, borders, and religion affect how places are constructed and are differently experienced by today’s youth. In doing so, this study initiates new lines of inquiry within research on the intersection of transnational citizenship and urban geography in the social studies. Using symbolic interactionism to conduct interviews and experience spaces along with participants, as well as examine photographs captured by participants during photo elicitation interviews, analysis of data collected during this qualitative study provide insight into four relationships pertaining to youth citizenship and critical concepts of space: (1) what youths identify as being responsible for how they imagine and experience places; (2) the pervasiveness of race in how youths conceptualize places and define their sense of belonging; (3) how youths speak back to media and power geometries that privilege white culture; and (4) the ways in which transnational “scapes” deterritorialize cultures and disrupt borders. Taken together, these relationships serve to forward a more place conscious, flexible, and youth centered approach to citizenship education in a global age. The critical perspectives of transnationally connected urban spaces offered by the youths involved in this study provide new discourses for conceptualizing belonging and citizenship education in social studies education.
Binaya Subedi (Committee Chair)
Beverly Gordon (Committee Member)
Cynthia Tyson (Committee Member)
Merry Merryfield (Committee Member)
305 p.
Education; Geography; Multicultural Education; Social Studies Education
belonging, citizenship, community, culture, gender, geography, global, local, mobility, photographs, race, religion, scapes, social studies, space, transnational, youth

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Harshman, J. R. (2014). Our World Around the Corner: How Youths Make Meaning of Place, Belonging, and Citizenship [Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1403884488

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Harshman, Jason. Our World Around the Corner: How Youths Make Meaning of Place, Belonging, and Citizenship. 2014. Ohio State University, Doctoral dissertation. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1403884488.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Harshman, Jason. "Our World Around the Corner: How Youths Make Meaning of Place, Belonging, and Citizenship." Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University, 2014. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1403884488

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

osu1403884488
156
© 2014, all rights reserved.
This open access ETD is published by The Ohio State University and OhioLINK.