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European youth studies increasingly use critical modernisation theory to understand the changing social circumstances and cultural context of contemporary youth in advanced western societies. It is generally argued that the social biography of youth is taking a new form and meaning in the light of individualisation and destandardisation/destructuring processes. On the basis of data drawn from two recent studies of British and Dutch teenage girls, this paper argues that the relationships between youth and social change are more complex and fragmented than has been frequently implied. In particular, youth transitions continue to be marked by the effects of systematic social inequalities, such as gender relations, and these imply that gender-specific adult Normalbiographien remain of sociological and personal significance.

Europe is a rapidly changing world region in all respects Young Europeans in a Changing World Manuela du Bois-Reymond, Lynne ChisholmThe authors in this volume report what it is like to be young in the rapidly changing, enormously diverse world region that is early 21st-century Europe. The chapters privilege a decidedly sociological analysis of youth as a social and cultural construction and sets of contemporary social and cultural practices characteristic of young people and young adults living in European societies. In doing so, they signal a dual conviction. First, conceptualizing and understanding child and adolescent development also require the more structural perspectives that sociologists bring to macrolevel and microlevel theorizing. Second, the authors in this volume use the terms youth and young people rather than adolescence and adolescents, and they routinely introduce the terms young adulthood and young adults into their analyses. In this way, they underline the importance of research perspectives anchored in the study of the life course as a historically and culturally specific social phenomenon. Furthermore, this phenomenon is firmly situated within the large-scale economic and political change processes currently taking place in Europe and in the global context of Europe as a world region in interaction with other world regions.As a North American-based series with a largely North American readership, the New Directions series has published content that has naturally centered on North American debates and research findings. This issue 1

Action research enjoys an established position in educational thinking and practice. Feminist theory and praxis has inspired and guided anti-sexist educational policy and practice. However, 'anti-sexist' and 'mainstream' action research in education draw on divergent methodological and political discourses. This is revealed in the sense of distance/difference the two traditions can experience when they encounter each other in the educational community. We might alternatively approach the issues raised in such encounters by considering the contradictory elements built into action research itself. These oppositions mirror the dualism of our accustomed ways of thinking. Some characteristic shortcomings of action research projects result from avoiding rather than confronting these contradictory elements. The problems they entail may be ultimately irresolvable, but they cannot be circumvented if action research is not to become increasingly vulnerable to political 'actionism'.In this paper I want to explore some features of action research by considering the nature of and the reasons for the relative 'distance' between what I would term the mainstream in contrast to anti-sexist educational action research. The discussion is taken up in the first instance through a description of the research, institutional and discourse contexts which prompted my reflections; this is the background for drawing up a typological map of action research. In effect, mainstream and antisexist traditions tend to inhabit, sociologically speaking, structurally different locations on that map. The discussion then moves on to look at problematic issues lying beneath the surface features of action research, a mode of inquiry which in practice is known to be difficult to handle, or 'manage', successfully. This is equally so in both its mainstream and anti-sexist varieties, although published reports are prone to gloss over difficulties. Drawing on feminist analysis, we can expose contradictory elements of the action research mode; these are related to a binary dualism of western-style thinking in which rationality and distance are separated from and opposed to emotionality and engagement. This dualism itself, and the techniques we employ to get around its consequences, contributes to the character-