Abstract
In this article I discuss how illegal substance consumption can act as a tool of resistance and as an identity signifier for young people through a covert ethnographic case study of a working-class subculture in Genoa, North-Western Italy. I develop my argument through a coupled reading of the work of the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS) and more recent post-structural developments in the fields of youth studies and cultural critical criminology. I discuss how these apparently contrasting lines of inquiry, when jointly used, shed light on different aspects of the cultural practices of specific subcultures contributing to reflect on the study of youth cultures and subcultures in today’s society and overcoming some of the ‘dead ends’ of the opposition between the scholarly categories of subculture and post-subculture. In fact, through an analysis of the sites, socialization processes, and hedonistic ethos of the subculture, I show how within a single subculture there could be a coexistence of: resistance practices and subversive styles of expression as the CCCS research program posits; and signs of fragmentary and partial aesthetic engagements devoid of political contents and instead primarily oriented towards the affirmation of the individual, as argued by the adherents of the post-subcultural position.
Highlights
Substance consumption has been widely recognized as an important aspect of identity for many young people [1,2,3]
“sensitizing concepts” [29] that guided the analytical framing of the paper; thirdly, I introduce a few considerations regarding the nature of the fieldwork conducted and the overall methodology of the research; fourthly, I present the analysis of the case study proposed accounting for three dimensions: (a) the importance of the sites inhabited by the subculture; (b) the processes of socialization, with a focus on their confrontational and political features; (c) and the hedonistic ethos of substance consumption
This might have been possible through overt research methodologies—see for instance Lalander’s [74] study on heroin use in a Swedish town—the convergence between illegal activities and the hooligan roots of some of the member of the subculture, were reasons that pushed me to conceal my identity as a researcher; fourthly, in line with a “consequentialist perspective” [59], I considered that the benefits of the research outweighed the costs of secrecy and to a certain degree of the ‘deception’ imposed to the participants [75,76]
Summary
Substance consumption has been widely recognized as an important aspect of identity for many young people [1,2,3]. I will argue that CCCS-inspired scholarship and post-subculture developments, when jointly used, albeit apparently being contrasting lines of inquiry, may be able to shed light on different aspects of the cultural practices of specific subcultures as performed in different every-day contexts With this contribution I attempt to (a) reflect on the study of youth cultures and subcultures in today’s society, with a focus on substance consumption as a meaningful cultural practice, where meaningful refers to the subculture’s use of substance consumption as simultaneously a form of resistance and as an identity signifier for its members; and (b) to overcome some of the ‘dead ends’ of the opposition between the scholarly categories of subculture and post-subculture that characterizes contemporary debates in the field of youth studies. The paper ends summarizing the main results of this contribution and the relevance of a joint reading of CCCS-inspired scholarship and post-structural developments in the field of youth studies
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