Proposal for an Edited Volume on Civic Engagement in Phase II

In the first phase of the Network, we completed one edited volume (On the Frontier of Adulthood) and made significant strides on the second (On Your Own Without a Net). Both volumes have been good collaborative ventures for the Network, and will be excellent venues for advancing new views on early adulthood. The first volume has charted the broad contours of the transition to adulthood, tracing how it has changed historically and how it varies cross-nationally and for subgroups of the population. It has, of course, emphasized the protracted nature of transition today. The second volume has focused on vulnerable groups for whom the transition is made more difficult as they age out of various systems of care. Together, the two volumes stress the simultaneous need to strengthen the capacities and skills of young people and the institutions through which they move.

Building on these themes, we propose a third volume for the next phase of Network activity. This volume would focus on civic engagement during early adulthood and emphasize the contributions, often untapped, that young adults make to their communities, cities, and society. During the early adult years, individuals naturally wrestle with social issues and struggle to define themselves in relation to others and the world around them. The transition to adulthood is therefore a critical juncture at which opportunities for civic engagement, if successful, might have immediate and cumulative positive benefits for both individuals and society. The volume would envision service – both episodic and intense forms – as an emerging and boundary-less institution that brings the potential to prompt positive development in young people from many social and economic backgrounds. It would examine features of programs that maximize benefits to different groups of young people.

The volume would extend some of the themes and evidence that emerged in the Phase I meeting on civic engagement (Washington, DC, December, 2002). These include:

• The importance of both active engagement (rather than mere interest in issues) and active integration into social networks of peers as key to lasting and transformative effects of civic participation.
• The importance of affiliation with an institution and its legacy over isolated individual action.
• The varied ways in which youth civic engagement (in general) and national service (in particular) have been framed, and the personal and political implications of different models of “engagement.”
• The costs and benefits of a prolonged period of spiritual quest without institutional religious affiliation.
• An historical view of national service programs in three eras: CCC, VISTA, and Americorps.
• Evidence that social class and ethnic differences in extracurricular participation as early as 8th grade predict differences in civic participation in young adulthood.

In addition, the volume would:

• Capitalize on the fact that several large scale studies of national service programs – including City Year, Americorps, Teach for America – have been (or will shortly be) finished. Some of these programs are also targeted at young people from marginalized groups. One goal would be to examine which aspects of programs do or do not facilitate personal development and enable engagement, especially for those who have, for one reason or another, been excluded from civic participation.
  Incorporate new debates about the goals of higher education, and whether and how civic engagement fits (or should fit) into curricula.
• Address new forms of civic participation, and new political initiatives, important to young people (e.g., recent initiatives that use the internet to bring individuals together and mobilize action).
• Highlight the feelings that young people themselves have on matters of civic engagement and social responsibility.
• Draw in the experiences of participants in, and the feelings of the public and government officials about, these programs.

We have not yet worked out the full contents and contributors, but we are developing a set of themes to which we think the Network can bring a unique lens. Over the past decade, the topic of civic engagement has become important in both scholarship and policy debates. Those discussions focus largely on adolescents and young adults, and on formative factors that incorporate them into the body politic. As such, they raise questions about what it means to be an adult and how institutions might better prepare younger generations to assume and actively exercise the rights and obligations of adulthood. Our view, like those offered by other initiatives of our Network, would extend the view through the 20s and into the 30s; consider broader forms of participation beyond conventional politics; and add a unique perspective to current and future research and policy-making.

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