Soo Ah Kwon

 

 

 

 

 

Curriculum vita (pdf)

Education

Ph.D. 2005, University of California, Berkeley, Social and Cultural Studies, Education

M.A. 1999, Stanford University, Social Sciences of Education

B.A. 1995, University of California, Berkeley, Anthropology

Research Interests

Youth political activism and identity formation, youth culture, community organizing, race and ethnicity, urban communities, social movements, and qualitative research including ethnography, participatory action research, and oral histories.  

My underlying research interest is to ground the richness of social theory to real-life social practices, with the purpose of understanding and working towards social change.

I am working on a manuscript that critically examines youth as political actors and the relations of power that operate in the production of youth—particularly racial minority youth—as democratic citizen-subjects in need of proper governance and care. I examine the role of nonprofit youth organizations in promoting youth development and activism.

In a related research project, I am conducting a longitudinal study to investigate the long-term individual and community impact of young people’s participation in politically oriented youth groups. I am interested in whether young people’s participation in such organizations results in more positive individual outcomes (i.e. leadership employment position, educational status, confidence, positive future outlook) and community outcomes (i.e. staying in the community as leaders, contributing to their immigrant communities, participating in careers or education that works towards positive changes for their communities).

In the Chicago area, I am working on a project that investigates how young people are building political capital in their families and communities. The project examines the processes and mechanisms of how second-generation youth build political capital in their families and immigrant communities and how participation in community-based youth organizations facilitate these types of outcomes. I am interested in the nature of political capital these young people acquire and how they generate new forms of community participation.  The processes that transform these young people are key to the ways in which these youth, and in turn, their families, learn to overcome social and political obstacles.

Selected Publications

(in press) “Moving from Complaints to Action: Oppositional Consciousness and Collective Action in a Political Community.” Anthropology and Education Quarterly

(2006) “Youth of color organizing for juvenile justice.” Beyond Resistance: Youth Activism and Community Change: New Democratic Possibilities for Policy and Practice. Shawn Ginwright, Pedro Noguera and Julio Cammarota (eds). New York: Routledge Press. 215-228.

 

(2006) “Urban Youth Building Community: Social Change and Participatory Research in Schools, Homes, and Community-Based Organizations” with Kysa Nygreen and Patricia Sanchez, Journal of Community Practice, 14(1/2): 105-122.

(2004) “Autoexoticizing: Asian American Youth and the Import Car Scene.” Journal of Asian American Studies, February 7(1): 1-26.

(under review) “The Politics of Culture and the Culture of Politics”

(In progress) Untitled, manuscript on youth organizing

Courses Taught

AAS 346/HDFS 341: Asian American Youth
AAS 199/HDFS 199: Asian American Communities
HCD 595/AAS 590: Youth, Culture, and Society