On Monday evening, I?ll be speaking to a bunch of young volunteers who serve through Greater DC Cares, a large ?coordinator of volunteerism and corporate philanthropy? in our area. I think I?ll start by pointing out that young Americans often view volunteering as a substitute for political engagement. Voting by people under the age of 25 has declined by one third since 1972, although turnout by older people has not fallen in that period. Yet young people have become more likely to volunteer over the last 15 years. In a 2002 survey, CIRCLE?s colleagues found that young people were just as likely as older people to be heavily involved in ?civic? activities, such as volunteering, working on local problems, and belonging to groups. However, they were considerably less likely to be involved with electoral politics. When Campus Compact hosted a summit of campus leaders in 2001, many said that they deliberately rejected formal politics?for reasons of principle?and preferred helping people face-to-face.

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I took a Greyhound bus to Charlottesville on Tuesday, all dressed in my best suit to speak at UVA. It turns out that the bus to Charlottesville continues on to Atlanta, mainly on smaller roads so that it can stop in places like Orange, VA. The guy next to me had been hitching from the suburbs of Philadelphia toward the Gulf coast of Mississippi, but with all the rain coming up with Hurricane Ivan, he had decided to backtrack to Virginia and get on a Greyhound. He had about 18 hours left before Mobile, where a friend would pick him up.

The driver was friendly and had a rapport with the passengers, who were going to be with him for a long time. He said that he was required to announce that alcohol and drugs are forbidden on the bus–but (he added) most everybody had just been given a drug test, anyway. This wasn’t a joke, to judge by the passengers’ response. I wondered why most people on a Greyhound would have been drug-tested very recently. Is it because they work for companies that constantly test their employees’ urine?

In this and many other respects, a Greyhound trip through the rural south is different from the USAir shuttle that I took last Friday. I don’t mean in any way to romanticize the life of the people on the bus. But nobody on the shuttle offered me half of his peanut butter crackers and told me his life story. Nor would all the passengers immediately try to help if there were a minor mechanical problem on USAir–as they did when the back door wouldn’t close on the Greyhound.

I recommend an article by Craig Calhoun, President of the Social Science Research Council, entitled Toward a More Public Social Science (pdf). I endorse all of Calhoun’s key points:

1. “Engagement with public constituencies must move beyond the dissemination model. It is not enough to say that first scientists will do whatever ‘pure’ research moves them and then, eventually, there will be a process of dissemination, application, and implementation.” Instead, social scientists need to develop appropriate two-way relationships with journalists, librarians, non-specialist readers, policymakers, and others.

2. “Public social science does not equal applied social science. More ‘applied’ research may be helpful, but the opposition of applied to pure is itself part of the problem. It distracts attention from the fundamental issues of quality and originality and misguides as to how both usefulness and scientific advances are achieved.”

3. “Problem choice is fundamental.” There is no pure scientific agenda; the choice of what to study is always a matter of values. These values should be articulated publicly, acceptable to non-scientists, and informed by public deliberation.

4. “A more public social science needs to ask serious questions about the idea of ‘public’ itself. What is ‘the public’? How are its needs or wants or interests known?'”

I’m on my way to Charlottesville for a panel discussion, organized by Prof. Larry Sabato, on “Young People and the 2004 Election.” I’ll be the geek on the panel, which will also include Rock the Vote President Jehmu Greene, “American Candidate” Malia Lazu, and others. I’ll probably summarize some points I’ve made here before. Meanwhile, the Cleveland Plain Dealer quotes me on the same topic:

Peter Levine, deputy director of CIRCLE, said there are increasing signs that young people are paying attention to this election and that turnout among young Americans could climb.

How many are likely to vote?

“I think that depends on how the two parties conduct themselves,” said Levine. “If it turns into a ‘hackfest,’ I think that’s going to turn off young people.”

Update, Sept. 15: The New York Times has a very optimistic front-page story that cites CIRCLE and quotes my colleague Carrie Donovan. Probably as a result, our server can’t handle the traffic and keeps going down.

On Saturday, I attended a meeting on ?transnational youth activism? in New York City. The classic ?transnational activists? are opponents of corporate capitalism who also distrust all hierarchical, disciplined organizations (such as nation states and unions). They build SPINs??segmented, polycentric, ideologically integrated networks??that are united by common values rather than by centralized leadership, rules, or market relations. Their tools include the Internet and open-source software projects as well as face-to-face meetings, co-ops, squats, and community-supported agriculture projects. As a matter of strategy, they choose to work in loose networks rather than organizations so that ?there is no head to cut off.? At the same time, they see networks as morally superior to organizations.

We debated how far beyond the paradigm cases to go in conducting research. Should a research project be limited to the youthful left (mainly anarchists, pacifists, and radical Greens), who work internationally and adopt new social forms? Should the project also include various right-wing groups that are opposed to existing social institutions, that work internationally, and that form networks instead of top-down organizations? Should research on ?transnational youth activism? even encompass various moderate young people who are perfectly happy with traditional institutions, such as the Catholic Church or UNESCO?

How you answer this question may depend on your own ideological opinions. However, I believe that there is an important empirical question, the answer to which would help decide the scope of any plausible research project. We know that there are radical leftists who are young, who work across national boundaries, and who use new social forms. But how many right-wingers also fit this description? Are there just a few skinheads, or is there a broad movement? And how many politically moderate, traditionalist people are involved in work that could be called ?transnational youth activism?? If the answer is ?hardly any,? then it?s appropriate to limit the research to the radical left?regardless of what one thinks of this movement. However, if there are transnational youth activists from across the whole political spectrum, then it seems necessary to study the full range in order to place each group in context.

I don’t know how much transnational youth activism exists outside of the radical left, but I’d like to learn more about that.