‘Speaking of Youth Culture’: A Critical Analysis of Contemporary Youth Cultural Practice

Abstract

For a number of years, theorists have suggested that the term ‘youth culture’ corresponds with particularized forms of youth cultural practice clustered around the more spectacular manifestation of the consumption of music, style, and associated objects, images, and texts. However, such a focus serves to close off any discussion of ‘ordinary’ youth, that is, those young people who are not obvious, card-carrying members of style-based youth cultures. With the increasing turn in academic research to issues of youth leisure and lifestyle in more mundane contexts, combined with a growing body of work focusing on youth’s online practices, questions now need to be asked about the value, and validity, of focusing on ‘youth culture’ as this term has hitherto been defined and applied in sociology, cultural/media studies, and other academic disciplines interested in the cultural practices of youth. Aligned with this is the blurring now evident between youth culture as an age-specific practice and as a series of discourses through which individuals who are far beyond any categorization as ‘youth’ based on age continue to invest in ‘youth cultural’ identities. For example, many adults identify as punks, hard-core, or dance music fans, while simultaneously engaging with adult responsibilities and leading adult lives. This chapter will examine these and other challenges to our understanding of the term ‘youth culture’ and consider whether the latter continues to be a valid conceptual and analytical category.