Uncivil Youth: Race, Activism, and Affirmative Governmentality Soo Ah Kwon. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2013.

Uncivil Youth: Race, Activism, and Affirmative Governmentality Soo Ah Kwon. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2013."An analysis of youth of color organizing movements must be tethered to the history of depoliticalization of such movements waged by people of color and the nonprofitization of activism in the latter half of the twentieth century" (12). Those lines give a reader a sense of the highly challenging, provocative analysis of youth of color activist movements that are provided by Kwon. Grounded in the author's work as a "volunteer staff member and ethnographer" (1) of the Asian/Pacific Islander Youth Promoting Advocacy and Leadership (AYPAL), Kwon began to ask a series of questions surrounding the government, nonprofit agencies, and other philanthropies that led to the underlying premise of the book: "a cautionary tale" that questions "the relationship between the state and civil society, specifically the nonprofit organizations that develop and promote youth organizing" (4).Grounded in Michel Foucault's definitions of governmentality, Kwon defines affirmative governmentality as what happens when youth are called upon and empowered "to exercise self-government" (9). To examine how this happens among youth of color in the United States, Kwon uses a variety of "interdisciplinary" (21) methods. The author roots her study as an ethnography, but (rightfully) explains that it "is not a traditional ethnography, nor does it rely solely on ethnographic methods" (21). Indeed, readers of more traditional ethnographic studies, such as those of Barbara Myerhoff, or even more contemporary work by Carolyn Ellis, Harry West, or Ann Gray will find little familiar in Uncivil Youth. Kwon is so busy deconstructing the complex relationships surrounding the activism of youth of color that she often neglects to show the reader exactly what this activism is.The book's "Introduction" lays out the purpose and methodology, as well as elaborate chapter summaries that clarify not only the content but also the purpose and reasoning behind each. Kwon explains that she relies upon "multiple forms of evidence" to tap "interdisciplinary methods found in cultural studies and social sciences" which allows her methodologically to develop a "humanistic social science" (21) approach in her writing. The "Introduction" also demonstrates a flaw of this work, common in many critical cultural studies: succumbing to binary thinking. Examples of this binary thinking include how forces at work revolve around the forces of "subjectivity and subjection" (6); how the government is "both caring and ruthless" (8); how the 1960s made strides forward in dealing with raciality and the "gradual neutralization of race and race-based political mobilization" (13); and how nonprofits are engaged in both "activism and depoliticalization of race" (23).Chapter One, "Civilizing Youth Against Delinquency," attempts to "situate the youth organizing movement and the emergence of these agencies and actors in the 1990s within a historical context going back to the late nineteenth century" (27). Grounding the work in such Progressive-era thinkers such as G. Stanley Hall, the chapter contrasts the efforts of activists such as Jane Addams and Ellen Starr, founders of the Hull House settlement, with the rise of the juvenile court system. …