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Thailand has seen waves of youth-led protests over the past three years. Pro-democracy youth activists have vociferously criticised authority figures: teachers, parents and political leaders, especially the king. Drawing on vignettes assembled over a 14-year ethnographic work with young people in Thailand, as well as on current research on youth (online and offline) activism in Bangkok, I examine the multi-layered meaning of kinship in Thai society. The chapter reveals the political nature of childhood and parenthood as entangled modes of governance that come into being with other, both local and international cultural entities. I argue that Thai youth activists are attempting to rework dominant tropes that sustain “age-patriarchy” in the Buddhist kingdom. Their “engaged siblinghood” aims to reframe Thailand's generational order, refuting the moral principles that establish citizens' political subordination to monarchical paternalism and, relatedly, children's unquestionable respect to parents. As I show, Thai youth activists are doing so by engaging creatively with transnational discourses such as “democracy” and “children's rights,” while simultaneously drawing on K-pop icons, Japanese manga and Buddhist astrology. In articulating their dissent, these youths are thus bearers of a “bottom-up cosmopolitanism” that channels culturally hybrid, and politically subversive notions of childhood and citizenship in Southeast Asia's cyberspace and beyond. Whatever the outcome of their commitment, Thai youth activism signals the cultural disarticulation of the mytheme of the Father in Thailand, as well as the growing political influence of younger generations in the region.

This article traces the regimes of worth that defined energy for centuries as a productive force of human and animal labor, an understanding that transformed in the 18th century to an “industrial-energy” regime of worth supporting an economy of mass production, consumption, and profit and more recently one centered on market forces and price. Industrial and market energy and the conventions and institutions that support them are currently in a period of discursive and material ferment; they are being challenged by different higher order principles of worth. We discuss eight emergent energy justifications that argue what kind of energy is – and is not – in the best interests of society.

Approximately 70 years ago, descendants of Trinidadian enslaved Africans created an instrument from steel drums discarded by the US Navy. Since then, the steelpan has attracted entrepreneurs from around the world because of its unique sound, and, as the quintessential instrument for the pre-Lenten Trinidad Carnival, it also entices tourists. Its production did not stay under the “breadfruit tree”; however, as they are now mass produced and even patented abroad. Some argue this amounts to cultural piracy, as the steelpan is more than an artifact but is the mentifactual property of a people. Thus, the question remains whether the authenticity of the steelpan is lost when not crafted within the landscape of Trinidad.

This chapter documents monthly meetings of Bank Street College Reading and Literacy alumnae between October 2002 and December 2004. It describe the ways in which case study and self-study methodologies enabled participants to support their own professional development and that of colleagues. Findings suggest that the process enabled participants to revisit, reconsider, and reframe understandings and perspectives both in the minute and later as they shared experiences with a broader audience. Outcomes include a more extensive professional knowledge base, increased ability to meet the needs of children and parents, and a stronger sense of self as professional identity.

Arts festivals use projects to showcase creative works, configuring a creative field, whether locally, regionally or internationally, by whom engages and attends to the arts festival: artists, funders, media and audiences. This study compares the Edinburgh and Berlin arts festivals founded after World War II. Each city began with a founding festival. Edinburgh International Festival of Music and Drama sought to reconcile and heal international relations whereas the Berlin International Film Festival sought to showcase free expression and democracy. Both founding festivals were internationally oriented, as seen in their names. Each city added festivals over time and engaged in distinct temporal strategies and configured different creative fields. Edinburgh’s additional festivals entrained to its founding festival, synchronizing in time and place five festivals which led to greater duration and intensity of the experience and configured an international creative field: artists, media, and audiences who attended and engaged with the city festivals. In contrast, Berlin’s founding Film festival, which was internationally oriented, was followed by festivals that were treated as distinct, scheduling each festival sequentially across a yearly calendar and configuring a creative field regionally oriented around Germanic language and culture. Thus, a city’s temporal strategies for arts festivals may configure international, regional and local creative fields, changing who comprises the field to interact.