Reviews 147 Best and Bogle also might have devoted more attention to the race/class issues that bracket the book. The first chapter acknowledges that it is the white, middle-class child who is the subject of collective concern in modern legends and social problems: ‘‘going wild,’’ in no small part, means acting like non-white or non-middle-class kids. The final chapter notes that low-income and non-white teens really do engage in sexual activity at earlier ages; they have more sexual partners, pregnancies, and higher STD rates than their white, middle-class counterparts. Surely, undifferentiated stories about out-of-control kids divert attention from more complicated stories. But here it would have been helpful had the authors indicated what sorts of storylines might treat sexual health in the context of social inequalities, without making recourse to resurgent culture of poverty arguments—which say in the end that poor people are poor because they had sex at younger ages. The new media are part of what the authors cannot quite see, because they are the lens through which the authors view other phenomena. But research like theirs raises wider questions about the nature of communication in the digital age: what exactly do we count when we count new media references to something? Does the spread of ‘‘hits’’ show that a subject actually occupies more collective headspace than it would have under the previous regime of water-cooler discussions? Does this even matter, if lawmakers’ staffs sort through Google searches the way they once pored over newspaper coverage to determine an issue’s importance? Acceleration and diffusion, surely, are what successive waves of media afford: messages can spread and multiply more quickly over e-mail than by way of landline telephones. Meanwhile, topics discussed on decentered media are subject to far less vetting than items aired in newspapers or nightly news shows. There is good reason, then, to think that new media accelerate and intensify phenomena such as rumors, legends, social problems—and, I would argue, panics. Best and Bogle correctly set aside the term ‘‘sex panic’’ (p. 17) for the cases they examine, but I think they are too quick to minimize the term’s utility in the wider field they treat. Like legend, panic is a narrative, a form of

communication. In it, social actors work from set scripts, staging ritualized displays of fear and disgust to ‘‘heat up the rhetoric,’’ to mobilize supporters, and to pressure authorities to take action. The authors convincingly show how the lower levels of agitation they study serve to sustain notions of sexual innocence and to keep public attention focused on sexual perils; this, I suggest, paves the way for periodic outbursts of more intense forms of social mobilization and punitive lawmaking directed against folk devils and outsized monsters—that is, panics. This fresh book might also be showing us something else. Part of what shocked the public about the sexting stories was the fact that minors who swapped sexually explicit selfies were subject to draconian child pornography laws and sex-offender registration requirements. Such laws, of course, were the result of sequential sex panics spread out over many years; and with every successive wave of agitation, those laws became more inclusive and more draconian. What resulted from the new alarms, however, was a reversal of the usual trends: legislators in some states looked for ways to carve out exceptions or to reduce penalties for sexting among teens. Perhaps, then, we are finally beginning to see limits to the expansion of punitiveness on the American legal scene, even if exaggerated concerns and anxieties about youth sexuality have not yet abated.

The Passage from Youth to Adulthood: Narrative and Cultural Thresholds, by Pierluca Birindelli. Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 2014. 177 pp. $29.99 paper. ISBN: 9780761863892.

JEYLAN T. MORTIMER University of Minnesota [email protected] The Passage from Youth to Adulthood: Narrative and Cultural Thresholds is an ethnographic study that examines the plight of Italian youth whose passage to adulthood is thwarted by an array of structural and cultural obstacles. Deficiencies in the Italian educational system, the absence of bridges from school to work, youth unemployment, Contemporary Sociology 45, 2

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148 Reviews and escalating costs of living make it difficult for many young people to acquire the traditional markers of adulthood. In addition to these structural problems, Birindelli identifies a ‘‘culture of collusion’’ in which parents and children cooperate in extending youth dependency well beyond what prior generations would consider normal. In 1998, Birindelli conducted interviews designed to elicit life stories with 29 Italian young people, ages 22 to 29, who lived with their parents while attending a university. This small sample was selected with the assistance of the author’s acquaintances. For these young people, living at home was fraught with ambivalence—they realized they would be unable to maintain themselves independently, but at the same time they resented their parents. Birindelli conducted the interviews in the respondents’ bedrooms, which he described as oases of retreat from the world, ‘‘sheltering and protecting against the adversities of external reality’’ (p. 37) as well as from other members of the household. Some youth restricted other family members’ entry into their rooms or ventured beyond their bedrooms only when other family members were away. The author goes to great length in describing the ‘‘historic archive’’ in the bedroom (p. 37): the collection of objects—souvenirs, photos, and knickknacks—commemorating important life experiences and events. Such objects are classified as atmosphere-objects, symbolmemory objects, signal objects, passage objects, warning objects, fetish-objects, and so on. Birindelli supplements the bedroom interview data with essays his Italian students wrote between 2001 and 2003. Sixty were autobiographical essays. In another set of 60 papers, his students, ages 22 to 29, reflected on the meaning of being young and being adult (57 of these were living at home). Finally, the author draws on autobiographical essays written by 50 American students participating in a study-abroad program in Florence. Several themes permeate the Italian students’ interviews and essays. For the author, the autobiographies led to ‘‘the feeling of being catapulted into cocooned, padded, soundproofed worlds, bubbles that never burst’’ (p. 129). The absence of collective rites of passage placed youth in a liminal,

indeterminate position, somewhere between adolescence and adulthood, but without evidence of forward movement. Vocational exploration did not occur, as youth put off thinking about work indefinitely. Occupational goals and work experiences were notably absent. Disengagement with the outside world was manifested in complete disinterest in civic events and politics. In Birindelli’s words, ‘‘The world that the young people invest in has limited horizons, which start from the family nest and end only a short distance beyond it, in the circle of friends and sentimental relations’’ (p. 19). While some participated in demonstrations, the youth viewed these events more as occasions for recreation, a brief respite from their normal, humdrum lives, than as opportunities to effect social change. Instead of indignation, they felt resigned to the rampant corruption in Italian politics. The youth encountered few challenges or struggles that might spur their growth. Schools, concerned about dwindling enrollments, have lessened academic demands so that youth get by with little effort. While prior generations looked upon travel as an occasion to test oneself and become immersed in another culture, thereby growing psychologically, socially, and philosophically, these youth participated in canned programs with other young people from the same locale, never leaving their comfort zones. Altogether, this book presents an exceedingly grim commentary on ‘‘the infantilisation of young Italians’’ (p. 22) and a society, in general, in decay. This reader wonders, however, whether the perils are quite as large as the author suggests. The problem of selection looms over this work. While many Italian young people live with their parents into their late twenties, not all do. (In 2012, according to a Eurostat survey, 63 percent of Italians age 25 to 29 were living in their families of origin.) Was Birindelli’s small interview sample, drawn from his own social circles, especially likely to be alienated and clinging to a pre-adult mode of existence? Were his students influenced in writing their own essays by their professor’s critical commentary on Italian society and the youth phase within it? An undercurrent of personal blame lurks throughout, perhaps linked to the

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Reviews 149 psychoanalytic framing (Freud, Jung) of much of the analysis. Although Birindelli presents statistics documenting structural problems, there appears to be little sympathy for parents who are attempting to cope. It would have been interesting to assess the parents’ subjective understanding of their own and their children’s circumstances. Birindelli refers to a ‘‘fear of solitude’’ (p. 133) as motivating their extended support of their children. One wonders, however, whether this support helps their children to eventually receive university degrees, resulting in improvement in their job prospects and earning power. What happens when these children reach their mid-to-late thirties? Is what he describes a delay in the transition to adulthood, or a long-term adaptation extending to ‘‘middle age’’? Birindelli finds strong contrasts between the outlooks of Italian versus Northern European and American youth, who are perceived to be more optimistic and futureoriented, actively seeking opportunities for work and willing to withstand some privation to become economically independent. Interestingly, he comments that Italian and American university students who live most of the year in their college towns, but return home during summers and holidays, perceive their circumstances differently. When asked whether they live ‘‘on your own’’ or ‘‘with your parents,’’ American students say they live with their parents, while Italians think they are living on their own. Birindelli interprets this difference as illustrating the stronger American emphasis on autonomy; to be on your own means you are 100 percent independent. Italian youth, in contrast, have a much lower bar: just living away from home is enough. Such snippets of insight reward the reader who is sufficiently motivated to wade through frequent repetition and often stilted prose. While this monograph is much stronger in critical commentary than in empirical grounding, it may be of interest to specialists on the transition to adulthood, especially those with a comparative cross-cultural perspective.

The Global Right Wing and the Clash of World Politics, by Clifford Bob. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012. 225 pp. $29.99 paper. ISBN: 9780521145442.

MICHAEL DECESARE Merrimack College [email protected] Clifford Bob’s award-winning first book, The Marketing of Rebellion, established its author as a first-rate scholar of transnational contentious politics. Bob’s latest book solidifies his reputation. Like its predecessor, The Global Right Wing and the Clash of World Politics challenges received wisdom about the mechanics of political activism and the nature of relationships among non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in global civil society. For that reason alone, it is an important contribution to the political science and sociological literatures on transnational social movements. Bob begins from the observation that global civil society is not, as many scholars and journalists would have us believe, an arena of cooperation characterized by deliberative political persuasion. It is not, to put it differently, a space where the framing strategies or powerful arguments of one NGO simply convince government officials and the public to agree, thus giving birth to new policy without any complications. Instead, Bob asserts, transnational civil society is a contentious sphere marked by ideologically diverse activist networks whose battles know no geographical or institutional boundaries. This ‘‘globalized combat,’’ to use Bob’s colorful language, is what brings new public policy into existence. The struggle can also lead to no policy at all. A third possible outcome is ‘‘zombie policy’’: a document that has no life to it. Much scholarly theorizing—too much, in Bob’s view—has focused solely on how progressive NGOs and networks find success in global civil society. As the first part of the book’s title signals, Bob intends to draw our attention to the contenders at the conservative end of the ideological spectrum. He accomplishes this through the presentation of four case studies of two issues: gay rights (Chapters 3 and 4) and gun control (Chapters 5 and 6). The data are drawn from interviews Contemporary Sociology 45, 2

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