Youth Cultural Studies Research Articles

Practice theory approach to Gen Z’s sustainable clothing consumption in Finland

PurposeThis paper aims to answer the questions of what clothing practices related to sustainable fashion can be observed in young consumers' daily lives in Finland’s capital region and what prevents their further proliferation.Design/methodology/approachThis is qualitative research that draws from 22 semi-structured interviews with high school students in the capital area of Finland. The data were analyzed with the use of thematic analysis, a flexible method of data analysis that allows for the extraction of categories from both theoretical concepts and data.FindingsThis paper contributes to studies of young people’s consumption with the practice theory approach, putting forward the category of following sustainable fashion as an integrative practice. The three-element model of the practice theory allows answering the question of challenges that prevent the practice from shaping. The paper further advances this approach by identifying a list of context-specific dispersed practices incorporated into sustainable fashion.Practical implicationsThe study suggests practical ways of improving clothing consumption based on the practice theory approach and findings from empirical research. Sustainable practices require competences, knowledge and skills that the school, as an institution working closely with high school students, could help develop.Originality/valueThe study contributes to the current studies of sustainability and youth culture of consumption with a practice theory approach and findings, related to a particular context of a country from Northern Europe.

Youth Culture in Spanish and Mexican Cinema and Television: Studies and Sources

ABSTRACT This article gives an account of four studies of youth culture in the areas of recent fiction film and television in Spain and Mexico. It argues that, although the primary texts are different in medium, format and audience address, they coincide in their treatment of such themes as friends and family, and sex and violence. The article also suggests that much-criticized youth TV series in both countries deserve both close textual analysis and sympathetic reading of the social media that they have provoked and with which they have converged. These give evidence of an active and sophisticated audience response.

Youth Cultures among Immigrants: Rastafarian, Bhangra and New Muslim Youth Cultures in Britain

The study of youth culture seeks answers to the questions about youth identity, disruption, gender roles, social conformity, relationship with the previous generation, cultural and political participation and so on. Youth culture has been a well-talked matter in Britain since the 1920s. The Dandies and Flappers, Teddy Boys, Mods, Skin Heads, Hippies, Punks and Goths are some well-known youth cultures in Britain in the last century. However, though being a rich land for migration, the attention on the youth cultures or sub-cultures practised by immigrant youths is surprisingly low. In this paper, I am going to explore the Rastafarian culture of Caribbean origin, the Bhangra culture of South-Asian origin, and an attempt to form a cool version of Islamic youth culture in the UK.

Researching Youth Subcultures: A Rights Based Approach

This article critically engages with the conceptualization of youth culture as a subculture, emphasizing the deficiencies of existing frameworks in addressing intersectionality. Highlighting the inadequacies of established categories such as adolescence and youth, the article proposes a novel perspective—contemporary children's culture. The author argues for an interdisciplinary, rights-based approach that places the child at the center, challenging traditional research paradigms and advocating for the active involvement of young people in the research process. The framework presented comprises three voices: institutional voices about children, institutional voices for children, and children's own voices. By looking into each, the article contributes to advancing research methodologies in the study of youth culture.

An older age colored by youth: the continuing significance of youth-generated cultural boundaries for Sixties affiliates

ABSTRACT This article uses 14 in-depth interviews with individuals who felt involved with and were young during what is commonly known as ‘the Sixties’ in America to explore the potential relevance of youth-generated boundaries for now even older age. Analyzed data are focused upon informants’ subjective identifications and life course understandings as among a specific, though highly relevant section of the first generation to have now lived more complete lives inside Western post-World War 2 cultural transformations, in which the experience of youth and passage to adulthood became reshaped for many. Interviews show a continued significance of youth-generated boundaries around aging, parent culture, and conventional adulthood informants attribute to the Sixties that influence how they conceptualize their current self, peers, and understand social generations generally. We argue our data extend recent research from youth (sub)cultural studies on how subjective youth cultural connections can configure eventual adulthoods to the latter phases of life. Generally, where we do detect youth-generated boundaries as shaping aspects of how sampled Sixties affiliates profess to be looking ahead to later life, findings suggest a complexified corresponding older age containing newer types of markings and subjective experiences might be emerging that merit empirical consideration beginning with this generation.

‘Everyone here is willing to teach each other’: negotiations over hippie culture and resistance in Helsinki-based flow art community

ABSTRACT The article discusses the way in which a Helsinki-based flow art community negotiates resistance in terms of hippie culture, shared and embodied conventions and reclaiming the urban space. Flow art is a form of youth culture, urban creativity, community-building and spatial occupation. It is an umbrella term for different movement-based disciplines, such as juggling, dance, object manipulation (doing tricks with props such as poi, hula hoops, contact balls and dragon staffs), acrobatics, and fire-spinning. In terms of theory, the article revisits the concepts of hippie culture and resistance in youth cultural studies and discusses them in a Finnish context. In the flow art community, resistance was actualised primarily as socially shared, fluid and embodied conventions such as peer learning and teaching as well as physical closeness and hugging. The article is informed by ethnographic fieldwork done together with flow artists in Helsinki, Finland in 2017–2018.

The Subcultural Imagination: Critically Negotiating the Co-Production of ‘Subcultural Subjects’ through the Lens of C. Wright Mills

This article interrogates the following two concepts: the ‘subcultural imagination’ and the ‘subcultural subject’. We explore debates surrounding the ways in which interactions between the researcher and participant produce knowledge, in order to further establish the critical contribution of subculture within sociology. This article draws upon the notion of critique and ideas of C. Wright Mills (1959) in order to demonstrate the potential of new forms of ‘imagination’ within subcultures research. We seek to show through ethnographic examples how researchers and participants can be engaged in co-production of fieldwork, analysis and writing within research at different levels of engagement. The article will cover four areas, all focused on placing ‘imagination’ at the centre of subcultures research: first, it critiques the postmodern post-subcultural position within youth cultural studies; second, it defines the subcultural imagination and third, it explores specific empirical examples of subcultural subjects and, finally, we shall address the potential for micro co-production.

Muslim Girlhood, Skam Fandom, and DIY Citizenship

While fandom is a dominant girlhood trope, few accounts examine faith in the context of girls’ fandom. Addressing this gap, using a feminist poststructural analysis, I draw on interviews and participant observation to locate fan communities as a space in which Muslim girls can enact citizenship. Combining youth cultural studies, girlhood studies, and fan studies, I explore how Muslim fangirls of the Norwegian teen web-dramaSkam(2015–2017) draw on their desire for recognition and their creativity as cultural producers to engage in participatory storytelling that challenges popular representations of Muslim girls. This process enables the production of communities rooted in shared interests, experiences, and identities. I suggest that fandom should be recognized for its capacity to generate new meanings of citizenship for minority youth.

Listening differently: youth self-actualization through critical Hip Hop literacies

Purpose This study aims to refocus the field of Hip Hop based education on youth identities and epistemologies rather than on the tangible artifacts of Hip Hop culture. It argues that centering classroom pedagogy and curriculum on youth self-actualization best supports the critical literacy development of students grappling with social and structural inequities within an ever-evolving youth and media culture. Design/methodology/approach Building upon previous literature on critical literacy, Hip Hop pedagogy and adolescent identity formation, this paper shares data from a semester-long teacher–researcher case study of a high school Hip Hop literature and culture class to explore how young people develop critical literacies and self-actualizing practices through a critical study of youth culture. Findings For youth engaged in Hip Hop culture, co-constructing spaces to discuss their consumption of popular media and culture in class allows them to openly grapple with questions of identity, provide support for each other in dealing with these questions and reflect more critically upon their self-constructed, performed and perceived identities. Originality/value This form of English education challenges traditional notions of teaching and learning as it positions students as co-creators of curriculum and as part of the curriculum itself. Building on research that frames Hip Hop pedagogy as a culturally relevant tool for engaging urban youth, this paper argues that educators should approach critical Hip Hop literacy development as a means by which young people across diverse educational and social backgrounds come to know themselves and others as part of the process of self-actualization and critical resistance.

Is There an Ibero-American “Youthology”? A Conversation

This article reproduces a conversation between Carles Feixa and Maritza Urteaga, researchers in youth studies, whose paths converge in the critical study of contemporary youth culture. Carles Feixa, PhD, is Professor of Social Anthropology at the Pompeu Fabra University (Barcelona) and holds a Doctorate Honoris Causa from the University of Manizales (Colombia). He was previously a lecturer at the University of Lleida, and has been visiting scholar in Rome, Mexico City, Paris, Berkeley, Buenos Aires, Santiago de Chile, Newcastle and Lima. He has also been a public policy consultant for the United Nations and VP for Europe of the “Sociology of Youth” research committee of the International Sociological Association. In 2017 he was awarded the icrea Academia Award by the Autonomous Government of Catalonia and an Advanced Grant from the European Research Council. Maritza Urteaga, PhD, is Research Professor at the National School of Anthropology and History in Mexico City, and a level ii member of the National System of Researchers in Mexico. This conversation reviews Feixa’s career, from its beginnings in the 80s to the present, to determine whether there is something that can be called Ibero-American “youthology”.

One Foot in the Rave: Aging Ravers’ Transitions to Adulthood and Their Participation in Rave Culture

Challenging adolescence limited life-course theory, this article presents the results of an online survey in 2016 that aimed to establish if, how and to what extent ageing ravers continue to participate in rave culture. The survey collected data from members of the original rave generation. We explored the ravers’ transitions to adulthood, and how these influenced their participation in club culture. We found that our ravers continued to participate in rave culture; their persistence is related to the frequency of their engagement at a younger age. Adopting interdisciplinarity, we apply theories from both life course research and youth culture studies and argue that the persistence of leisure practices, such as raving, can be understood in the same way as persistence of drug use: frequent behavior in adolescence determines persistence in older adulthood. Consequently, we are able to recognize patterns of leisure beyond adolescence, thus making leisure choices more predictable.

Class, Style and Territory in the Drari Microcultures of Brussels

Much like Parsons’s notion of “youth culture,” the tradition of subculture developed by the Birmingham School was criticised as being too romantic, too general, and too dependent on a simplistic model based on the inside/outside binary. Since the 1990s, “post-subcultural” studies have developed which prefer to focus on agency rather than structure. A “third school” of youth cultural studies focused on medium sizes groups and their attachment to place, which they called “microcultures”. This paper, drawing from fieldwork undertaken in Brussels between 2013 and 2016 with young people, studies members of the Brussels “street culture” called the drari, while zooming in on the combinations of personalities, the events they share and the locations they make their own. Specifically, this paper argues that the drari microculture does not fit in the binary model of (post-)subcultural theory, nor in the criminological frame of urban youth gangs, by focusing on the affective and class-related phenomena internal to their practices of territory-building.

Between Pleasure and Resistance: The Role of Substance Consumption in an Italian Working-Class Subculture

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.

Book Reviews

Abstract Punk Pedagogies: Music, Culture and Learning, Gareth Dylan Smith, Mike Dines and Tom Parkinson (eds) (2017) London: Routledge, 236 pp., ISBN: 978-1-13827-988-9, p/bk, £29.99 The Punk Reader: Research Transmissions from the Local and the Global, Mike Dines, Alastair ‘Gords’ Gordon and Paula Guerra (eds) (2017) Porto: University of Porto Press and the Punk Scholars Network, 328 pp., ISBN: 978-9-89864-879-2, p/bk, £50 International Anthem, Gee Vaucher (2018) London: Exitstencil Press, 132 pp., ISBN: 978-0-94638-117-3, p/bk, £35.00 All Gates Open: The Story of Can, Rob Young and Irmin Schmidt (2018) London: Faber, 572 pp., ISBN: 978-0-57131-149-1, h/bk, £25.00 Hard-Core: Life Of My Own, Harley Flanagan (2016) Port Townsend, WA: Feral House, 444 pp., ISBN 978-1-62731-033-8, p/bk, $23.95 The Punk Turn in Comedy: Masks of Anarchy, Krista Bonello Rutter Giappone (2018) Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 254 pp., ISBN: 978-3-31973-840-7, h/bk, £75

Multiple Cultural Encounters of Urban Youth in Russia’s Muslim Regions

ABSTRACTThe article presents the results of studies of urban youth culture in two Russia’s predominantly Muslim regions. Gerard Delanty’s theory of cultural encounters and the cultural scene approach form the theoretical base of the work. Its empirical base is the research project entitled ‘Fields of positive interethnic interactions and youth cultural scenes in the Russian cities’. Fields of interactions are regarded as contact zones where some combination of practices and agents produces a potential for bridging ethnic divides. The results of two case studies conducted within the project are discussed in the article. First, a case study of a Tatar post-folk metal group demonstrates that elements of ethnic culture can be used as a resource for creating communicative ties among young people. Second, a study of animé fans describes the formation of a new youth cultural style in Makhachkala and the difficulties in interaction of its carriers with a mostly conservative environment.

Back to the future: mapping a historic turn in youth studies

ABSTRACTTraditionally, the study of youth culture has been dominated by contemporary, sociological accounts of young people's leisure pursuits and identity-laden social practices. However, in recent years, it has become evident that there is an emergent scholarly interest in examining youth culture history. While many historians and sociologists situate the birth of youth culture as a post-WWII phenomenon, this essay contends that scholars from varying disciplines are expanding upon this popularly accepted timeline. Moreover, it is argued that there is now a historic turn in youth studies both in content and methodology. By providing an overview of what current youth history scholarship exists, and what methodologies enable such texts, this article advocates for further socio-historical work that foregrounds the longstanding, indelible influence and importance of young people's experiences within the tapestry of everyday cultural life.

10 Years of Black Girlhood Celebration

Research Article| September 01 2017 10 Years of Black Girlhood Celebration: A Pedagogy of Doing Chamara Jewel Kwakye, Chamara Jewel Kwakye Chamara Jewel Kwakye is a womanist scholar–educator with interdisciplinary interests at the intersections of race, class, gender, sexuality, ethnography, performance, and pedagogy. She has published works on qualitative methods, hip-hop feminist pedagogy, and is currently working on a monograph that examines Black women's pedagogy and praxis of love and labor. Correspondence to: Chamara Jewel Kwakye, c/o The Galloway School, 215 W. Wieuca Road NW, Atlanta, GA 30342, USA. Email: ckwakye@gallowayschool.org. Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Dominique C. Hill, Dominique C. Hill Dominique C. Hill is Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of Black Studies at Amherst College. She is a body-lyricist, disrupter, and ethnographer committed to socially just and artistic practices. Her teaching and scholarship situates the body as a pivotal vessel and she incites questions that foreground voices, bodies, and knowledges of often disappeared and/or silenced populations. Her current project examines Black girlhood, education, and the body as entanglements. Her interdisciplinary scholarship emerges from her life work, which is dedicated to documenting and reimagining Black life with a focus on Black girls and women. Correspondence to: Dominique C. Hill, Department of Black Studies, Amherst College, 108 Cooper House, 86 College Street, Amherst, MA 01002, USA. Email: dhill@amherst.edu. Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Durell M. Callier Durell M. Callier Durell M. Callier is Assistant Professor of critical youth studies and cultural studies of education in the Department of Educational Leadership at Miami University. His current research documents, analyzes, and interrogates Black youth lived experiences as it intersects with constructions of race and queerness. In his research and creative projects, he employs feminist and queer methodologies to research how Black and queer communities broadly defined make use of art and narrative towards knowledge creation, staging critical resistance, and actualizing freedom. Correspondence to: Durell M. Callier, Department of Educational Leadership, Miami University, 304 McGuffey Hall, Oxford, OH 45056, USA. Email: calliedm@miamioh.edu.The guest editors would like to begin by expressing their gratitude for girls, women, moments, and visions passed through and circulated in SOLHOT. Thank you to the OG Homegirls, Aisha, Candy, Grenita, Chamara, Jasmine, Christina, and Camille for your courage and commitment. To Ruth Nicole Brown, thank you for insisting Black girlhood studies be a celebration. Generations of Black girlhood celebration exist because of each of you. To the current homegirls/homeboys/homebois and to those to come, this is for you and for future Black girlhood turn-ups in all of their forms—ratchet, bougie, oldskool, analog, digital, and out of this world. Lastly, the guest editors would like to thank Stacy Holman Jones and Sohinee Roy for making such a timely issue on the importance of Black girls, their lives, and survival a possibility. Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Departures in Critical Qualitative Research (2017) 6 (3): 1–10. https://doi.org/10.1525/dcqr.2017.6.3.1 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Chamara Jewel Kwakye, Dominique C. Hill, Durell M. Callier; 10 Years of Black Girlhood Celebration: A Pedagogy of Doing. Departures in Critical Qualitative Research 1 September 2017; 6 (3): 1–10. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/dcqr.2017.6.3.1 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentDepartures in Critical Qualitative Research Search People often ask, “What is Saving Our Lives, Hear Our Truths (SOLHOT)?” Sometimes the answer is it's a poem, sometimes it's a dance, sometimes it's an art installation in a local gallery, sometimes it's a song, sometimes it's a rhyme, sometimes it's a book, sometimes it's a lesson on theory and praxis, sometimes it's an article, sometimes it's an editorial, sometimes it's a performance, and sometimes it's a one-word answer. The answer however, no matter the form, is never simple. It's nuanced, layered, multifaceted, and ever changing. If we had to give a succinct and clear answer to the question: “SOLHOT is a space to envision Black girlhood critically among and with Black girls, who… are often the people least guaranteed to be centered as valuable in collective work and social movements.”1 Black girlhood studies, though burgeoning, continues to center the lives of Black girls in various disciplines. The... You do not currently have access to this content.

非行・犯罪鑑別を通して見た青年文化 ( 青年と文化)

非行・犯罪鑑別を通して見た青年文化 ( 青年と文化)

Gender, Sexuality, and Social Change in Contemporary China

Drawing upon Raymond Williams’ notion of culture and in-depth interviews with 40 women, this article examines forces that have shaped the landscape of sexuality in China. It argues that the process of changing sexuality contains multiple and overlapping forms of sexual culture, in which the party-state’s ideology, emergent sexual cultures and traditional Chinese beliefs intertwine and struggle. In addition to age-based differences in attitudes towards sexual practices within studies of youth culture, this study incorporates a class-based variable into the account.

‘Swagger’: Urban Youth Culture, Consumption and Social Positioning

Sociological studies of youth culture have often focused on processes of social identification. Though some of this work has explored the importance of consumption within young people’s identity practices, much has foregrounded the effects of economic marginality and neglected the importance of ‘race’. This article explores the role of clothing and embodied dispositions, popularly referred to as ‘swagger’, within the ways that young people position themselves in relation to each other. Drawing on field notes and focus group data with a predominantly Somali sample of teenage boys, in a northern English city, this article elucidates the centrality of these seemingly mundane cultural signifiers within everyday processes of ‘racial’ and classed positioning. In doing so, the article seeks to extend contemporary studies of youth culture, consumption and identification by evidencing how marginalized young people simultaneously challenge and reaffirm their positioning, through the performance of stylized masculinity and swagger.