Young Men as Whistleblowers (Dirck van Bekkum forthcoming 2019)

(read HERE the contents and summary of the book which contains 20 publications of the author between 1992-2017)

In the past decades, criminal, dangerous, violent, and radicalizing young men have drawn much attention in social sciences and public debates. Hardly any books can be found which show the beauty, strength, creativity, care and indispensability of boys and young men for the survival of our families and societies. This book of 20 articles wants to fill this omission. It was partly written together with fellow anthropologists, therapists and educators. The biologist, anthropologist and (eco) system thinker Gregory Bateson (1904-1980) grew up in British families of evolutionary thinkers and artists’ habitats. From these histories and contexts, he developed a knowledge-seeking position that all biological ecosystems can derail, including those of humans. Consequently, in Bateson’s view, all individuals, families, communities, as social systems entail solutions to recover from derailment and return to synchrony with how nature works as a macro-ecosystem. This cross-biological-cultural-comparison angle has served van Bekkum as a route planner to understand young men’s hazardous transition into adult, multicultural Dutch male and female worlds for the last 35 years.

“LEARNING TO THINK HOW NATURE WORKS” (Gregory Bateson in Ecology of Mind 2010)