This book explores the prevailing role of rites of passage, ritual, and ceremony in contemporary children’s lives through the lens of modern-day incarnations of uniformed youth movements. It focuses on the socialising ritual and customary practices of present-day grass-roots Scout and Guide groups, asking how Britain’s largest and best-known uniformed youth organisations employ ritualised activities to express their values to their young members through language and gesture, story and song, dress, and physical artifacts. The author shows that these practices exist against a backdrop of culturally-constructed beliefs about what constitutes the ‘good child’ and ‘good childhood’ in twenty-first century Britain, with in-movement practices intended to help children develop positively and prepare for social life. The book draws on case study accounts of group performances, incorporating the voices of children and adults reflecting on their practices and experiences.​
Catherine Bannister is a Research Associate within the School of Education at the University of Sheffield, UK. She works on projects related to children’s play, including digital play with technology, bringing to the research her own interests in folklore, as well as ritual and passage practices for and by young people.

“Scouting and Guiding in Britain is a rare book. It makes an important contribution to the study of ritual, youth organisations and English social history whilst speaking to all the disciplines that engage with ethnography, especially folklore and sociology. It is perceptive about the lived experience of growing up and the theories that model its transitions. I learnt much about what I knew was there, but never properly understood.”

—Dr Matthew Cheeseman, University of Derby, editor of Folklore and Nation in Britain and Ireland, UK

Contributes to an under-researched field of Scouting and Guiding traditional and ceremonial cultures past and present Explores Scouting and Guiding internationally, including in the United States, Australia, and Canada Focuses on personal experience and individual voices

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