Dan Woodman, Andy Bennett (Eds.) - Youth Cultures, Transitions, and Generations - Bridging The Gap in Youth Research-Palgrave Macmillan UK (2015)

Youth Cultures, Transitions, and Generations
Youth Cultures,
Transitions, and
Generations
Bridging the Gap in Youth Research
Edited by
Dan Woodman
University of Melbourne, Australia
and
Andy Bennett
Griffith University, Australia
Selection and editorial matter © Dan Woodman and Andy Bennett 2015
Individual chapters © Respective authors 2015
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Contents
List of Tables and Figures ix
Acknowledgments x
Notes on Contributors xi
1 Cultures, Transitions, and Generations: The Case

for a New Youth Studies 1
Dan Woodman and Andy Bennett
2 Transitions, Cultures, and Identities: What Is Youth

Studies? 16
Andy Furlong
3 Complex Worlds, Complex Identities: Complexity in

Youth Studies 28
Johanna Wyn and Rob White
4 ‘Speaking of Youth Culture’: A Critical Analysis of

Contemporary Youth Cultural Practice 42
Andy Bennett
5 Generations, Transitions, and Culture as Practice: A

Temporal Approach to Youth Studies 56
Dan Woodman and Carmen Leccardi
6 Waiting for the Weekend? Nightlife Studies and the

Convergence of Youth Transition and Youth Cultural
Analyses 69
Robert Hollands
7 Transitions, Cultures, and Citizenship: Interrogating

and Integrating Youth Studies in New Times 84
Anita Harris
8 Bourdieurian Cultural Transitions: Young People

Negotiating ‘Fields’ in Their Pathways into
and Out of Crime 99
Dorothy Bottrell and Alan France
vii
viii Contents
9 Sexy Selfies of the Transitioning Self 113

Airi-Alina Allaste and Katrin Tiidenberg
10 Transitioning to a New Manhood: Subcultures as Sites of

Inclusive Masculinity 127
Ross Haenfler
11 Youth Political Subjectivity in the Global South: Crossing

Conceptual Boundaries in Less Examined Contexts 142
Darcie Vandegrift
12 Applying Theoretical Paradigms to Indonesian Youth in

Reflexive Modernity 157
Steven Threadgold and Pam Nilan
13 Toward a Different Youth Studies: Youth-and-Researchers

as Affective Assemblages 171
Susan Talburt and Nancy Lesko
14 Transitions, Cultures, and the Future of Youth Research 186

Index 192
Tables and Figures
Tables
6.1 Youth transition–youth cultural analyses divide (ideal

types) 71
Figures
11.1 Internet meme using Mafalda, 2012 152
ix
Acknowledgments
Foremost, thanks to our contributors for their hard work in produc-

ing such compelling chapters. Some of these chapters had their genesis
in presentations at the ‘Youth Cultures, Belongings, Transitions’ con-
ference held in November 2012 at Griffith University, Queensland,
Australia. The conference was cosponsored by the Griffith Centre for
Cultural Research and The Australian Sociological Associations Sociol-
ogy of Youth Thematic Group. We co-convened this conference with
Steven Threadgold and Christine Feldman. Thanks also to Harriet Barker
and Amelia Derkatsch, our editors at Palgrave, and to Marie Felina Fran-
cois and her production team. Finally, thanks to Julia Cook for her
assistance with proofreading and for compiling the index.
x
Contributors
Airi-Alina Allaste is Professor of Sociology and Director of the Institute

of International and Social Studies at Tallinn University, Estonia. Her
research and teaching concentrate on youth lifestyles, subcultures, and
social participation. She has been national coordinator of various inter-
national projects including the FP7-funded project ‘Memory, Youth,
Political Legacy and Civic Engagement’. She has published articles on
the topics of subcultures and social movements in Estonia and recently
edited five books/special issues including ‘Back in the West’: Changing
Lifestyles in Transforming Societies (2013).
Andy Bennett is Professor of Cultural Sociology at Griffith University

and Director of the Griffith Centre for Cultural Research, Australia. Prior
to his appointment at Griffith, he held posts at Brock University in
Canada and at the universities of Surrey, Kent, Glasgow, and Durham.
He was a cofounder of the British Sociological Association’s Youth Study
Group and is Faculty Associate of the Center for Cultural Sociology at
Yale University. He was editor-in-chief of Journal of Sociology between
2009 and 2012 and serves on the editorial board of Cultural Sociology
among others. He is the author of Popular Music and Youth Culture: Music,
Identity and Place (2000), Cultures of Popular Music (2001), and Culture and
Everyday Life (2005).
Dorothy Bottrell is Senior Lecturer in Social Pedagogy in the College

of Education, Victoria University, Melbourne, Australia. She is coauthor
of A Political Ecology of Youth and Crime (2012) and coeditor of Schools,
Communities and Social Inclusion (2011). Her main field of research is
young people’s resilience.
Alan France is Professor of Sociology at the University of Auckland,

New Zealand. Prior to this, he was Director of the Centre for Social
Policy at Loughborough University (2006–2010) and the Centre for
Childhood and Youth Studies at the University of Sheffield (2002–2006).
His research interests are on youth and the life course, and he has
published on a wide range of areas, such as youth and citizenship,
youth crime, youth and risk taking, and youth policy. His publica-
tions include Youth in Late Modernity (2007) and the recent publication
xi
xii Notes on Contributors
Political Ecology of Youth and Crime (2012, Palgrave Macmillan, with

Bottrell and Armstrong). He is presently writing a book on the impact of
global crisis on youth (Understanding Youth in Global Crisis, Polity Press
due 2016).
Andy Furlong is Professor of Social Inclusion and Education and Dean

of Research at the University of Glasgow, Scotland. He is a sociologist
with a long-standing specialism in the study of youth with a strong
interest in the reproduction of inequalities and in processes of social
change. He is editor-in-chief of the Journal of Youth Studies and has
written extensively on youth-related issues, with his work translated
into 12 languages. He is an academician of the UK Academy of Social
Sciences.
Ross Haenfler is Associate Professor of Sociology at Grinnell College,

USA. His research, including an eight-year ethnographic study of the
clean-living or ‘straight edge’ punk scene, investigates how everyday
people engage in social change as participants in ‘lifestyle movements’
and other cultural groupings. He has also explored the cultural forma-
tions of contemporary skinheads, goths, virginity pledgers, hip-hoppers,
and computer gamers with the aim of critiquing and developing theories
of subcultures and deviance. His books include Straight Edge: Clean-Living
Youth, Hardcore Punk and Social Change (2006) and Subcultures: The Basics
(2014).
Anita Harris is an Australian Research Council Future Fellow and

Associate Professor of Sociology at Monash University, Australia. She
has undertaken projects on young people and social inclusion in
multicultural cities and another on civic life and belonging among
young Australian Muslims. Her research interests include youth iden-
tities and cultures; citizenship, participation, and multiculturalism;
and girls’ studies. Her books include Young People and Everyday
Multiculturalism (2013); Next Wave Cultures: Feminism, Subcultures,
Activism (edited, 2008); Young Femininity: Girlhood, Power and Social
Change (with Sinikka Aapola and Marnina Gonick, 2005); Future Girl:
Young Women in the Twenty-First Century (2004); and All about the Girl:
Culture, Power and Identity (edited, 2004). She is an associate editor of
the Journal of Youth Studies.
Robert Hollands is Professor of Sociology at the School of Geography,

Politics and Sociology, Newcastle University, UK. He has worked in the
field of urban sociology and youth studies since the early 1980s and is
Notes on Contributors xiii
the author of numerous articles and books including The Long Transi-
tion: Class Culture and Youth Training (1990); Friday Night, Saturday Night:
Youth Cultural Identification and the Post-Industrial City (1995); Changing
Our Toon: Youth, Nightlife and Urban Change (2001, with Paul Chatterton);
and Urban Nightscapes: Youth Cultures, Pleasure Spaces and Corporate Power
(2003). He is currently engaged in research and writing on alternative
urban cultures and the egalitarian arts.
Carmen Leccardi is Professor of Cultural Sociology and Director of the

PhD program in Applied Sociology and Methodology of Social Research
at the University of Milan-Bicocca, Italy. She is President of the European
Sociological Association. She has researched extensively in the field of
youth cultures, cultural change, time, and gender. She was coeditor-in-
chief (1999–2009) of Time & Society and is now consulting editor of the
same title. She served as vice president for Europe of the International
Sociological Association, Research Committee 34, ‘Sociology of Youth’
(2006–2010). Her latest book is Sociologías del tiempo (2014, in Spanish).
She also coedited A New Youth? Young People, Generations, and Family Life
(2006, with Elisabetta Ruspini).
Nancy Lesko is a professor in the Department of Curriculum and Teach-

ing, Columbia University, New York City. She teaches in the areas of
youth studies, sociology of education, gender studies, and social theo-
ries and education. She was the inaugural Maxine Greene Chair in the
Teachers College, Columbia University, and a Fulbright New Century
Scholar (2005–2006). Her book Act Your Age! A Cultural Construction of
Adolescence won an outstanding book award from the Curriculum Stud-
ies Division of the American Educational Research Association in 2002.
Pam Nilan is Professor of Sociology at the University of Newcastle,

Australia. She has published widely on youth in Indonesia, Australia,
Vietnam, and Fiji. She is Treasurer of the Asia Pacific Sociological Asso-
ciation. She was the team leader for an Australian government-funded
project, ‘Masculinity and Violence in Indonesia and India (2009–2011).
She is the author of two published books on youth and youth cul-
ture. Her latest book is Adolescents in Contemporary Indonesia (2013, with
Lyn Parker). She is working as coauthor with Carles Feixa and Carmen
Leccardi on a forthcoming edited collection: Spaces and Times of Youth
Cultures in the Global City (2015).
Susan Talburt is a professor in the Institute for Women’s, Gender, and

Sexuality Studies at Georgia State University, She teaches in the areas of
xiv Notes on Contributors
feminist theory, sexuality studies, affect theory, and youth studies. Her
research has engaged questions of gender, sexuality, and subjectivity in
the fields of youth studies and educational studies. In addition to jour-
nal and book publications, she is coeditor of Keywords in Youth Studies:
Tracing Affects, Movements, Knowledges (2012, with Nancy Lesko). She is
presently researching the transnational circulation of the figure of the
‘global gay youth’.
Steven Threadgold is Senior Lecturer and Head of Sociology and

Anthropology at the University of Newcastle, Australia. He is the for-
mer editor of Youth Studies Australia and former co-convenor of The
Australian Sociological Association (TASA) Sociology of Youth Thematic
Group. He is on the editorial board of the Journal of Youth Studies. His
most recent research projects are on young people’s construction of
‘DIY careers’ in networked music scenes and on the ways contempo-
rary media create class-based distinction while denying the very notion
of class. His current writing projects are a research monograph enti-
tled Youth, Class and Culture; a coedited collection, with Lisa Adkins and
Caragh Brosnan, Bourdieusian Prospects; and a cowritten introduction to
a sociology primer with Dan Woodman.
Katrin Tiidenberg is Lecturer in Sociology at Tallinn University,

Estonia. Her main fields of research are Internet studies, with a par-
ticular focus on questions of personal identity, gender, sexuality, and
self-presentation through images on platforms such as Tumblr and
Instagram.
Darcie Vandegrift is Chair of the Department for the Study of Cul-

ture & Society and Associate Professor of Sociology at Drake University,
Des Moines, USA. Her research examines youth political subjectivities
as constructed in spatial and temporal locations in the Global South.
She has researched this topic in Venezuela, China, Russia, and the
United States. She is currently working on a book manuscript, Politics
Is Our Daily Bread, an exploration of young adult citizenship and global
cultural repertoires in contemporary Venezuela.
Rob White is Professor of Criminology at the School of Social Sciences,

University of Tasmania, Australia. He is former director of the Australian
Clearinghouse for Youth Studies and is a foundation member of the
Centre for Applied Youth Research based in Hobart. His recent pub-
lications include Youth and Society (2013, with Johanna Wyn), Youth
Notes on Contributors xv
Subcultures: Theory, History and the Australian Experience (2nd edition,

2012), and Youth Gangs, Violence and Social Respect (2013).
Dan Woodman is the TR Ashworth Senior Lecturer and Discipline Chair

of Sociology in the School of Social and Political Sciences, University
of Melbourne, Australia. He is Vice President of The Australian Socio-
logical Association and also Vice President for Australia, New Zealand,
and Oceania of the Research Committee for the Sociology of Youth
within the International Sociological Association. His work focuses on
the sociology of generations, social change, and the impact of insecure
work and variable employment patterns on people’s relationships. His
recent books include Youth and Generation (2015, with Johanna Wyn)
and the four-volume collection Youth and Young Adulthood (2015, with
Andy Furlong).
Johanna Wyn is Professor of Education and Director of the Youth

Research Centre at the University of Melbourne and a fellow of the
Academy of Social Sciences Australia. She has held visiting professor-
ships at the University of British Columbia, University of Toronto,
University of Groningen, and University of Glasgow and an adjunct
position at the University of Western Sydney. Her recent books include
Youth and Generation (2015, with Dan Woodman), Young People Making
It Work (2012, with Hernan Cuervo), Youth and Society (2013, with Rob
White), and The Making of a Generation (2010, with Lesley Andres). She
is the editor of the Handbook of Children and Youth Studies (2015), (with
Helen Cahill) and the editor of the book series Perspectives on Childhood
and Youth (with Helen Cahill).
1
Cultures, Transitions,
and Generations: The Case
for a New Youth Studies
Introduction
Youth studies is made up of many perspectives. While built around

a sociological core, it is interdisciplinary. It draws contributions from
geography, history, anthropology, education, cultural and media stud-
ies, and even critical strands of adolescent psychology and economics.
Its topics range widely from the criminological study of gang formation
to the cultural reshaping of music genres and even high school proms,
and from patterns of household formation to the potential of austerity
policies to create a ‘lost generation’ facing the scarring effects of their
early labor market experiences across their working lives.
Yet there are also similarities that help provide shared points of ref-
erence for youth scholars. Youth studies is understood by many of its
practitioners as having two dominant poles under which many studies,
despite their diversity, can be grouped. These ‘transitions’ and ‘cultures’
poles have been called the ‘twin tracks’ of youth research (Cohen 2003).
The first focuses on transitions to ‘adulthood’ statuses such as the com-
pletion of study and entry into the full-time labor market. Researchers
look to identify patterns of transition and the structures of inequal-
ity visible within these patterns, often but not exclusively drawing on
quantitative data sets. Studies employing a cultural perspective focus
on youth cultural forms, particularly those tied to the most visible or
confronting music scenes and fashion styles of the day. Scholars in this
tradition tend to draw on ethnographic methods, focusing on the mean-
ing of experiences and events to young people themselves, often with
1
2 The Case for a New Youth Studies
the aim of highlighting young peoples’ creativity and resistance to the

status quo (Bennett 2002).
The division between youth cultures and transitions can be exagger-
ated, and some of the most enduring writing in youth studies from the
past works across the division (Furlong and Woodman 2015: 13). There
are, however, many studies that do resemble one approach more than
the other and orient to the different canonical texts and to the latest
debates within either the transitions or cultures approach. A focus on
some aspect of young lives and not others can be justified in many ways.
It is needed for a deeper investigation of particular research questions.
The limits imposed by the availability of research funding – and by any
researcher’s, or even team of researchers’ capacity – mean that restrict-
ing a study’s focus is a practical necessity. Yet, unless research findings
are understood in the context of young lives as a whole, potentially
misleading or overly simplistic claims can easily emerge (Woodman
2013).
On the one hand, there is a danger of exaggerating social change.
There could be substantial change in some aspects of young lives
while other aspects remain stable. For example, cultural forms could
change markedly without any change in young people’s economic posi-
tion relative to each other as inherited from the previous generation
(Furlong et al. 2011: 356–357). On the other hand, if some parts of
young people’s lives are changing significantly, the appearance of sta-
bility in another aspect of their lives may itself be misleading. Youth
studies scholars are increasingly recognizing that engagements that
shape young people’s lives – their work, their relationships, their cul-
tural engagements – are intertwined (Henderson et al. 2007, Bennett
and Hodkinson 2012). This means that demands made by changes in
one sphere may lead to changes, or difficulties in meeting existing
expectations or responsibilities, in another.
The most important research insights into the lives of young people
today might indeed be found in the gaps and disjunctions created in
people’s lives by social change. It has been suggested, for example, that
the subjectivities of this late modern age may be built through hold-
ing together lives across such gaps (Beck and Beck-Gernsheim 2002).
Collectively, the chapters that make up this book suggest that any neat
division between transitions and cultures in youth studies is increas-
ingly out of step with the reality of young lives, and the future of
youth studies will demand renewed efforts to bridge the gap between
the two.
Dan Woodman and Andy Bennett 3
The twin tracks of youth studies
The history of youth studies can be traced back over a century, but its
current shape and its key debates took form largely in the late 1970s
through to the start of the new millennium (Furlong and Woodman
2015). It was a set of economic, social, and cultural changes occurring
at this time that led to the emergence of the twin tracks of youth stud-
ies in their current form. Prior to this point, proto-transitions research
was largely concerned with role socialization and how young workers
found their ‘niche’ in the workforce. While the transition to work was
acknowledged as potentially stressful, it was also seen as largely unprob-
lematic for most (Ashton and Field 1976: 115). Yet, from the end of
the 1970s onward, youth unemployment has been a persistent problem
across many parts of the world, coinciding with the structural shift in
the economy toward neoliberalism. This made the transition to work a
major concern of youth policy and youth researchers (Cuervo and Wyn
2011).
As more young people continued their education, increasingly
through to tertiary level, delayed trying to enter the full-time labor
force (while often mixing their study with part-time employment), and
delayed marriage and parenthood, youth studies scholars proposed vari-
ous new models of transition. Arnett (2004) was among the most radical;
with his concept of ‘emerging adulthood’, he proposed what amounted
to a new life-course stage. Some theorists proposed that ‘arrested’ or
‘delayed’ transitions to adulthood were becoming commonplace (Côté
2000) while others offered a conceptualization of yo-yo transitions
(du Bois-Reymond and Stauber 2005, Biggart and Walther 2006) and
nonlinear transitions (te Riele 2004, Furlong et al. 2006), arguing that
the transition to adulthood had become messier.
At the same time that transitions were becoming a concern among
youth researchers and policy-makers, a new approach to youth cultures
was emerging (Blackman 2005). The ‘subcultures approach’ based on
work conducted by scholars at the Centre for Contemporary Cultural
Studies (CCCS) at the University of Birmingham came to prominence
at this time. Youth cultures was already a central topic of social sci-
ence research, with functionalists arguing that postwar youth culture
was a side effect of economic prosperity and the institutionalization
of compulsory schooling, which together created the conditions for a
separate adolescent culture to emerge that was in opposition in many
of its values to adult culture (Coleman 1961; see also Parsons 1962).
The ‘Birmingham school’ instead looked back to earlier theorizing of

youth ‘gang’ culture from the United States, combining this with neo-
Marxist theorizing from Europe, to question the existence of such a
general youth culture at all (Clarke et al. 2006 [1976]).
From the CCCS subcultures perspective, young people from working-
class backgrounds were drawing on culture to symbolically re-create a
working-class community and protest against the effects of capitalism in
the face of changes, including urban redevelopment and slum clearance,
which were breaking down the previously existing forms of commu-
nity (Cohen 1972, Clarke et al. 2006 [1976]). In these conditions, youth
subcultural groups such as Teddy Boys, mods, and skinheads emerged
as cohesive and relatively long-lasting groupings, which at least for the
young people who were part of them did solve the problem of belong-
ing and identity and manifested a type of symbolic challenge to the
class system (Clarke et al. 2006). In this context, the stylistic resources
of youth, although mass-produced as items for consumption, became
reinscribed by young people as symbolic of their resistance to dominant
social institutions such as the school and regulatory bodies such as the
police and the court system.
While of continuing influence, the subcultures approach has come
under concerted critique as ‘post’ and ‘after’ subcultures approaches
have questioned the extent to which class provides the foundation for
youth cultural divisions. Theoretical commitments meant that subcul-
tures research, on the one hand, was prone to blindness toward other
social divisions such as gender (McRobbie 1991) and race (Nayak 2003,
Huq 2006) and, on the other, risked downplaying the impact of social
change and intergenerational difference (Woodman and Wyn 2015).1
Critiques of the subcultures approach have also highlighted that
despite the CCCS’s focus on young people belonging and committed
to one subculture many young people engage concurrently in several
different ‘scenes’, ‘tribes’, and ‘lifestyles’. The CCCS’s focus on abstract
forms of textual and semiotic analysis meant that the voices of the actual
youth subculturalists were often ignored and hence the messy lived
reality of these multiple engagements was downplayed (Cohen 1987,
Bennett 1999). This perceived deficit in the subcultural approach was a
primary driver for the ethnographic turn (Bennett 2002) that informed
the post-subcultural work of youth studies researchers such as Bennett
(2000), Miles (2000), and Muggleton (2000), and recent studies that
have turned to cultural practice center upon digital technologies, includ-
ing social networking (Robards 2012) and cell phones (Green 2003,
Lasén 2015).
Bridging the gap
Despite a substantive division between the twin tracks of youth stud-

ies, there are and have been many points of resonance and many
powerful examples of studies that work across the two (Willis 1977,
Jenkins 1983, Chatterton and Hollands 2002, Henderson et al. 2007).
Debates about social divisions, inequalities, and change shape research
in both contemporary transitions and cultures traditions. Today, much
like conceptualizations of nonlinear transitions, youth cultures are often
conceptualized as messy and cultural belonging as multiple and poten-
tially transient. While different ways of engaging with social change
and social division set researchers down one of the two ‘twin tracks’ of
youth studies in the past (Cohen 2003), the shared concern with these
questions can also potentially help youth researchers better traverse the
division between the two today (MacDonald 2011).
We are far from the first to call on youth studies scholars to better
attend to these resonances between the twin tracks of youth research,
and for approaches that can ‘bridge the gap’ (Coles 1986, MacDonald
et al. 1993, 2001, Geldens et al. 2011). We believe, however, that the
case for taking a holistic approach to young lives has become more
pressing. Around the world, with a different tenor in different places,
a generation of young people is living and indeed has no choice but to
live different lives to those that their parents have lived. These changes
make a case for studying cultures or transitions in isolation difficult to
maintain.
For the transitions approach, events that were once clearly and unam-
biguously seen to mark the end of the youth transition, such as the
completion of education, full-time employment, and household and
family formation, have become protracted, increasingly reversible, and
less likely to occur concurrently. In other words, the boundaries of
youth and adulthood are changing – they are indistinct and porous, and
the social meaning of both phases of the life course is being redefined
(Leccardi and Ruspini 2006).
Some researchers starting broadly from within the transitions
approach have asked in this context whether the concept of transi-
tions itself may lead researchers to mistake evidence of the emergence
of new understandings of adulthood for evidence of delayed or nonlin-
ear transition (Cuervo and Wyn 2011). The meaning of adulthood (how
adulthood is culturally understood) can change over time and become
contested when earlier models of adulthood become structurally impos-
sible or undesirable for many young people (Blatterer 2007, Silva 2012).
In particular, it seems that the association of adulthood with stability

and a ‘completed’ set of transitions may characterize fewer and fewer
lives. As such, it appears that a history of managing adversity (Silva
2012), or developing the resources to cope with change, is becoming
part of new definitions of adulthood (Dwyer and Wyn 2001, Blatterer
2007).
Youth as defined by distinct sets of subcultural practices is also diffi-
cult to maintain. Several youth cultures researchers have recently taken
up a life-course perspective to think about people’s continuing engage-
ment with ‘youth’ culture beyond their youth. These scholars have
concurrently focused on embedding their study of cultural forms in an
understanding of the social structures that shape everyday life (Bennett
and Hodkinson 2012). This research provides new understandings of
cultural engagement in the context of other commitments such as
work and caring. While not wholly retreating from the post-subcultural
claim that much youth cultural engagement is not as singular or struc-
tured as the CCCS approach suggested, these researchers have shown
that some people maintain their involvement with and emotional
connection to a particular ‘youth’ culture beyond what is normally
considered youth, including in many cases well into middle age and
even beyond (Bennett and Hodkinson 2012). While it has been sug-
gested that this is evidence for the ‘infantalization’ of adulthood and
the rise of ‘kidults’ and an ‘intergenerational mulch’ (Hayward 2013:
230), this is too simple an analysis. A biographical approach shows
instead that engagement with ‘youth’ culture over the life course does
not mean dissolution of youth as a meaningful category or experience
(Woodman and Wyn 2015: 116–117). Engagement takes different forms
at different points in the life course, particularly as commitments such as
parenthood, a heavy workload, or even the physical aging process mean
that ways of engaging change over time (Bennett and Hodkinson 2012,
Bennett 2013).
Additionally, youth still matters for the study of culture in light of
what the theorist of generations Karl Mannheim (1952: 293) called
‘fresh contact’. The way that young people come to an existing cul-
tural heritage and set of cultural potentials in their teens and early
twenties, and have to in a sense re-create or create this culture anew,
remains a central driver of the emergence of new culture forms, such
as new musical subgenres. As the affective investments formed during
this significant early engagement with culture are often felt to be highly
meaningful for identity, it is understandable that they continue to shape
engagement over time.
New approaches
In light of the above empirical changes, and the recurrent and mount-
ing calls to account for young lives holistically, youth researchers have
been searching for the right conceptual vocabulary to bring together the
strengths of transitions and cultures approaches. The first 15 years of the
new century have seen an increasing number of suggestions for a con-
ceptual ‘middle ground’. Two influential concepts in this regard have
been ‘bounded agency’ (Evans 2007) and ‘structured individualization’
(Roberts 2003). The case for these bridging concepts is the claim that
they help overcome the limitations while retaining the strengths associ-
ated with each approach. The view is that recent cultures research may
have the theoretical and methodological (ethnographic) tools to high-
light how young people build meaning and creatively shape their lives,
but that particularly in its post-subcultural manifestations it is limited
in its ability to understand the structural limitations faced by young
people. In turn, transitions research is seen as providing just such an
understanding of labor market and educational structures, but as more
limited in its understanding of agency.
While understandable as a response to this division in youth stud-
ies, these middle-ground responses can only progress the project of
working across the gap between transitions and cultures research so
far (Woodman and Wyn 2015: 113–114). While it is difficult to rea-
sonably deny that agency is structured or bounded, drawing on such
concepts avoids fully grappling with the questions raised by late-20th-
century sociological and philosophical theorizing of subjectivity. This
includes models of the co-constitutive relationship between self and
social structure through the formation of everyday routines and dispo-
sitions (Giddens 1984, Bourdieu 1990), and the more radical critiques of
the structure-agency binary that see the subject as a contingent out-
come, produced only through social practices (Foucault 1982, Butler
1990), or that aim to dissolve the concept of identity altogether (Deleuze
and Guattari 1987). So, for example, from Deleuze and Guattari, who
appear in several of the chapters in this collection, comes an alterna-
tive conceptual repertoire of ‘assemblages’ and ‘becomings’ – that aim
to highlight the pushes and pulls of multiple forces, some that impose
order and shape (molar) and others that continually avoid being so
caught (molecular) – which may help youth scholars work beyond the
dualisms of cultures and transitions, difference and identity (Renold and
Ringrose 2011).
The concepts scholars of youth use to do their research must fit the
challenges and the times. To understand the way young people shape
their lives and their contexts, and how they are in turn shaped by the
sociohistorical conditions they face, necessitates investigating the inter-
sections of different transitions and different cultural engagements, as
they unfold in different places (Henderson et al. 2007). Attention to
the way new generations emerging in different parts of the world are
inventing adulthoods and shaping culture in conditions different to
those that shaped their parents’ young lives points to the way that
many young people themselves are being asked to ‘bridge’ significant
gaps, even if they are also ostensibly being exposed to a greater number
of possibilities. An example is the growing gap between the promises
made about the returns from investment in education and labor mar-
ket realities (Brown et al. 2011). Young people are able, and being
asked, to redefine social structures for themselves in our contempo-
rary conditions. This is not, however, because social structures have
disappeared, or even diminished in their power, but because the con-
tradictions to be juggled have increased (Woodman 2010). Attending
to the everyday and less spectacular biographical work necessary to cre-
ate and hold together a life in late modernity, which often goes on in
the gaps between clearly defined transitional events or cultural prac-
tices is essential for a convincing account of young lives (Hall et al.
2009: 559).
This collection
It is within this context of generational change, new cultural con-

nections, potentially new opportunities, but often deepening inequal-
ities that cultures and transitions need to be understood by youth
researchers today. This is the task that is taken up by our contribu-
tors. The chapters in this collection aim to develop alternatives to a
‘middle-ground’ approach, drawing among others on the concepts of
assemblage, belonging, disposition, and generation to do so. They also
provide numerous examples of the complexities and contours of young
lives in late modernity.
The insights and suggestions the contributors make are multiple, and
do not come together into a single conceptual alternative or call for a
new orthodoxy. Neither as a whole is this collection an argument that
a primary focus on either cultures or transitions is invalid. The chapters
presented in this book do suggest, however, that any such research will
need to be embedded in new and broader conceptual frameworks as
youth studies faces the challenges of the future (see the concluding
chapter to this collection).
The four chapters that follow this one ask foundational ques-
tions about what youth studies is for in the contemporary world. In
Chapter 2, Andy Furlong considers the strengths and weaknesses of the
transitions and cultures strands of youth research, drawing on Norbert
Elias’s sociology of processes to dissolve the ‘false binary’ between
the two approaches to youth studies. For Furlong, the existence of
the binary is due to a confusion of the ways each of the traditions
contributes to a holistic understanding of youth in contemporary times.
In Chapter 3, Johanna Wyn and Rob White explore the intercon-
nection of social, political, and environmental structures as they shape
young lives in different places, drawing on the analogy of a ‘triple helix’
(referencing the interwoven strands of DNA). They argue that three ele-
ments need to be brought together in conceptualizing youth: individual
transitions, social transformations, and identity. Discussing the impact
of place in young people’s lives, and the coming impact of climate
change, they argue that this three-stranded approach avoids the ten-
dency to focus on individual transitions (if in the aggregate) as opposed
to transitions in society and culture.
In Chapter 4, Andy Bennett traces a recent shift in youth cultures
research away from spectacular forms of consumption to more ordinary
forms of everyday youth culture, including the rise of online culture.
He suggests that new possibilities for connecting with and contributing
to the study of and understanding of youth transitions are emerging
with this turn to everyday culture over the life course. Alongside the
evidence discussed above that engagements with ‘youth’ culture are far
from the preserve of the young, the mundane aspects of young peo-
ple’s cultural engagement also point to both significant continuities
with ‘adult’ cultural practice and the impact that age and key transitions
events continue to have on cultural engagement.
In Chapter 5, Dan Woodman and Carmen Leccardi draw on the soci-
ology of time and return to the legacy of an underutilized approach
to youth studies, the sociology of generations, to argue for understand-
ing youth cultures and transitions from a generational perspective. They
propose that the impact of social change on the types of biographies that
young people can live provides a lens for seeing the way inequalities
emerge through the temporal structures of everyday life.
The chapters in the middle of this collection provide a series of more
concrete suggestions for conceptual bridges between understandings of
youth as a transition and youth cultures, drawing on research traditions
that do not neatly fit with the cultures and transitions division of youth
studies. In Chapter 6, Robert Hollands surveys recent contributions to
studies of the nighttime economy and youth ‘nightlife’. He suggests

that there are a number of innovative ways to think about bridging the
youth culture/transition divide that emerge from focusing on ordinary
and stratified youth experience in the nighttime economy. He high-
lights that contemporary youth cultural practice is inextricable from a
consideration of structural factors, but is not reducible to these struc-
tural factors. Class divisions among young people, for example, are not
reducible to economic transitions but powerfully enacted and embodied
in the sphere of consumption.
In Chapter 7, Anita Harris shows that the concept of citizenship acts
as a critical meeting point between youth cultural practices and theoriz-
ing about transitions. Interrogating the ‘DIY’ or ‘self-actualizing’ citizen
thesis – that young people must now create personalized versions of
citizenship and belonging – she argues that youth researchers must go
beyond an account of spectacular political action to an account of the
politics of ‘ordinary’ youth cultural practices and the discourses of the
good citizen with which these practices are intertwined.
In Chapter 8, Dorothy Bottrell and Alan France draw on perspec-
tives from the cultural criminology of youth, providing an account of
the place of illegal activity in young people’s everyday lives. They aim
to broaden the conceptual repertoire of youth studies scholars using
a Bourdieurian focus on ‘practices’ in which the concept of ‘field’ is
applied to understand how the transitional and cultural experiences of
youth interrelate through their perceptions of involvement in crime (as
both perpetrators and victims). According to Bottrell and France, such
a focus is critical in moving beyond the individualist interpretations
of crime and deviance preferred by neoliberal governments and their
agents of social control.
The chapters that close out this book draw on empirical research from
across the globe to apply new conceptual frameworks combining tran-
sitions and cultural perspectives. The chapters show how class, gender,
and culture are being reshaped in postindustrial nations like the United
States and in rapidly changing parts of the world such as Venezuela
and Estonia, and how new political and cultural practices are emerging
across both the North and South. This final section focuses on building a
new youth studies that can account for difference and inequality, as well
as general social change in the experience of youth. In Chapter 9, Airi-
Alina Allaste and Katrin Tiidenberg investigate identity practices built
around the taking of ‘selfies’, particularly the practice of ‘sexting’. They
see within these practices evidence of a ‘transitioning culture’, a cultural
form built on the shared practice of constant personal transition, which

has emerged in a period of social change.
In Chapter 10, Ross Haenfler looks at the changing face of masculinity
in youth cultures, drawing on contemporary research with young emo,
goth, hip hop, straight edge, queer, and other scene participants in the
United States. He illustrates that rather than succumbing to the ‘crisis
of masculinity’, many participants in these cultures are experiment-
ing with new masculinities less bound to traditional patriarchal norms.
While there is limited evidence that these explorations are translating
into a marked decline in structural sexism, either within these youth
scenes or more broadly, Haenfler argues that theories of hegemonic
masculinity do not capture the nuances and complexity of contempo-
rary manhood in youth cultures and how these can translate into new
understandings of employment, intimate relationships, and fatherhood.
In Chapter 11, Darcie Vandegrift returns the collection to the concept
of generations, seeking to decenter the Global North as the container
in which youth and generation are understood. Drawing on a case
study of young people’s politics in Venezuela to do so, she argues that
assumptions about youth experiences that are based on Global North
particularities tend to be embedded in both cultures and transitions lit-
eratures. Using the experiences of these young Venezuelans, she reveals
the partiality and particularities of youth experience and the importance
of attending to place in thinking about generational change.
In Chapter 12, Steven Threadgold and Pam Nilan also engage with
the possibilities and limits of theories from the North for research in
the South. They aim to develop the conceptual apparatus put forward
by Deleuze and Guattari and Bourdieu for new times (the contempo-
rary) and places (Indonesia). Drawing on their own research with young
Indonesians working in the cruise ship industry and with those who
engage in street music scenes, they argue that key concepts in youth
studies from the Global North can be of value for understanding youth
experience elsewhere, but that they must be adapted for the task.
In Chapter 13, Susan Talburt and Nancy Lesko turn to collective
action in the context of neoliberalism and austerity; also drawing on
Deleuzian concepts – of assemblage and affect – they show that youth
activisms today in Spain and North America push youth researchers into
tracing alternative destabilizing representations and ways of relating to
‘youth’. Youth is not a transition or a culture, but particular assemblages
of bodies, ideas, and affects at particular times and places. On the one
hand, they point to the dangers of romanticizing youth; on the other,
they highlight the ordinary and everyday activism by which young

people are reshaping their worlds.
In the short concluding chapter, we set out a series of questions that
we believe can help orient youth research in the coming decade. We
ask how youth studies scholars can conceptualize and study the ways
in which cultural forms and the meaning of youth are made through
everyday actions as well as the decisions of policy-makers, new global
connections, and unintended consequences. The study of youth pro-
vides a unique angle into the way particular collective futures are being
made and resisted and inequalities produced. While patterns of inequal-
ity in youth research show much continuity over time, we finish with
the deliberately provocative claim that to understand this continuity
will require understanding how it is reproduced and contested through
cultural forms that are in constant flux. As such, the challenge for youth
research, and the promise offered by bridging the transitions and cul-
tures perspective, is the ability to see the new ways in which preexisting
patterns are remade.
Note
1. Hall and Jefferson (2006: xvii) largely acknowledged both of these limitations
in their preface to a new edition of Resistance through Rituals, arguably the
central text in the subcultures tradition.
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2
Transitions, Cultures, and
Identities: What Is Youth Studies?
Andy Furlong
Introduction
What insiders refer to as youth studies is often poorly defined. The focus
is on young people’s lives in a wide variety of contexts, although the
tendency to avoid chronological definitions of youth means that the
stage of life that we study may be interpreted narrowly, as broadly con-
current with adolescence as a bio-psychological stage of development,
or more generously interpreted to cover young adulthood. While soci-
ology remains the predominant discipline, other perspectives are drawn
from social psychology, political science, human geography, and anthro-
pology. With contemporary sociology often seen as being internally
divided, decentered, with the lack of a coherent core (Dunning and
Hughes 2012), it is perhaps unsurprising that sociological approaches
to youth are fragmented with divisions between those who work with
various forms of structuralism and those wedded to poststructuralist
perspectives.
In youth studies there is a fairly widespread assumption that the
relationship between research in what we might call the ‘transitions tra-
dition’ (which often focuses on forms of economic integration, such
as the transition from school to work) and the ‘cultural tradition’
(which tends to focus on youth cultures and forms of consumption)
is somewhat strained. Indeed, in a paper published in the Journal of Soci-
ology (Furlong et al. 2011), reference was made to the so-called false
binary between the two traditions, and it was argued that there was a
widespread confusion about the ways each of the traditions contributes
to a holistic understanding of youth in modern societies.
16
Andy Furlong 17
In this chapter, I want to reinforce that argument and make an

attempt to move this debate forward. I highlight what each of the tradi-
tions brings to the table and argue that the work of Norbert Elias, who
was always careful to avoid individual/society binaries and was com-
mitted to viewing the social world as a process, is helpful in addressing
some of the issues that have divided youth studies. In the context of
late modernity, it is important that we bridge any gaps and address
what are sometimes little more than misunderstandings of what con-
stitutes good youth research. Indeed, to move forward and develop a
fruitful new agenda, I argue that it is necessary to be a little clearer
about what youth studies is, because sometimes we have a tendency
to ‘talk past each other’ as a result of a lack of clarity about our
subject area.
It is important to begin by exploding some myths. To read some of the
contributions to the debate, an outsider could be forgiven for thinking
that work on transitions was lacking in theory or had a tendency to lean
toward positivism (Cohen and Ainley 2000). In contrast, work on youth
cultures could be portrayed as overly descriptive and with a tendency
to exaggerate the associations of changes in style, fashion, and musical
taste and processes of social change. It is certainly true that there is some
work on both sides that conforms to these pictures. However, there are
clear strengths in both approaches as well as examples of unimaginative
and inadequately theorized work on both sides of the false binary. To
be clear, there is poor research in both the transition and cultural tradi-
tions, but, equally, there is a strong body of work that does not conform
to these caricatures, and this work, especially in contemporary contexts,
tends to span the two traditions.
For many of the most eminent youth researchers, culture and transi-
tion are lenses, starting points, and researchers working outward from
these positions work freely across what is rightly regarded as a false
binary. The most obvious example here is work that came out of the
CCCS tradition in the 1960s and 1970s. People like Paul Willis (1977),
John Clarke and colleagues (1976), and Angela McRobbie (1991) made
clear contributions to the understanding of youth culture while enhanc-
ing knowledge of transitions and processes of social reproduction. From
a similar era, the work of James Coleman (1961) in the United States
provides a good example of work that broadly began from a transi-
tions perspective, focusing clearly on the impact of social background
on patterns of attainment, while at the same time enhancing our
understanding of the ways in which outcomes are mediated through
peer-based youth cultures.
18 What Is Youth Studies?
If one considers the classic pieces of youth research that are quoted
three, four, and even five decades on, little will be found that can be
considered to be narrowly grounded in one tradition. Indeed, landmark
studies tend to tell us something significant about social processes in a
holistic sense: they are concerned to contribute to core, long-standing
sociological concerns and debates and to enhance social theory. Further-
more, if we reflect on contemporary theoretical debates and on the ways
in which they intersect with the youth research agenda, it is clear that
in a context where we recognize the importance of reflexivity, it is vir-
tually impossible to produce robust and meaningful research without
moving freely across this false binary. Indeed, many of us regard our-
selves, first and foremost, as sociologists, with youth being a powerful
vehicle from which we can explore big issues with implications for social
science as a whole: big issues which never sit neatly on one side of this
imagined fence.
Transitions
Before focusing on ways to move thinking forward, I will say something,

in turn, about the transition and cultural traditions so as to highlight
the strengths of the approaches as well as their shortcomings. As I sug-
gested earlier, transitions are often seen as the serious side of the field.
Without doubt the questions that are being addressed here are extremely
important and government is often willing to put money into research
focused on the changing experiences of young people in a period where
many find it difficult to move smoothly into employment and many
encounter fragmented experiences and protracted periods of unemploy-
ment. Research here is often, but not always, quantitative and focuses
broadly on patterns of inclusion and exclusion, identifying winners and
losers and showing how various bridges and barriers impact on path-
ways. In the UK, the last Labour government set up what it called the
Social Exclusion Unit, and much of the work of that unit focused on
mapping patterns of social exclusion and evaluating policies introduced
to assist the most disadvantaged young people. Similarly, in Australia,
much of the work funded by organizations like the Foundation for
Young Australians focuses on education and employment, and their
annual publication How Young People Are Faring (FFYA 2012) focuses on
transitions with a strong recent emphasis on the implications of a rise
in long-term unemployment and a decrease in job stability.
With government and charities being a major funder of this type
of work, some of the research produced is narrow. It may be about
Andy Furlong 19
identifying who takes part in activities regarded as risky, who truants

from school, and what sort of people cope best with adversity, but
sometimes it fails to adequately identify the processes that lead to these
outcomes and focuses on the present without due concern for long-term
societal trends. At one extreme, it can be about the evaluation of policies
and simply concerned to learn about how many people who take part
in a particular program achieve outcomes that are judged to be positive.
Clearly there is value in work that enhances our knowledge of pat-
terns of social reproduction, that highlights new complexities and raises
awareness of factors that predict adverse experiences. Research has
shown how early school leaving impacts on future labor market expe-
riences, how youth unemployment leaves lasting scars, and that, in
Europe, the annual cost of young people’s disengagement from the labor
market is around 153 billion (EUROFOUND 2012). The problem is that
a quantitative focus on transitions often reveals patterns while leaving
us relatively unenlightened about the long-term processes that lead to
these patterns. Here, I would argue that, although one of the strengths of
quantitative research is that it helps maintain an awareness of the con-
tinued power of social structures and helps us keep things in perspective,
the best research in the transitions tradition combines quantitative and
qualitative approaches, providing robust evidence of outcomes and a
fuller understanding of experiences.
One of the most cutting criticisms of work on transitions is linked to
the idea that young people’s experiences have become so diverse, frag-
mented, and protracted that there is little sense in searching for an ‘end
point’ that defines the idea of transition. If many young people are not
managing to move into stable employment and if they remain depen-
dent for much of their lives, in what ways are they making a transition?
Now transition might be the wrong word: it does imply a move from one
quite distinct state to another; it is a change that is quite profound in
that ‘time one’ and ‘time two’ look very different. It implies a metamor-
phosis: it is the caterpillar changing into a butterfly. What if the shape of
young people’s lives at ‘time two’ has as many similarities as differences
with ‘time one’? Clearly there are still changes taking place, but perhaps
the term ‘transition’ needs replacing with a term such as ‘transforma-
tions’ (or to borrow a favored term of Norbert Elias, ‘process’), which
highlights multiple, ongoing, change and recognizes the prevalence of
nonlinear pathways set within a broader discourse of the modernization
project.
While we might want to refine our terminology, it would be a mistake
to abandon a focus on change within the life course. As far back as the
1970s, Glen Elder (1974) managed to move us away from a conceptu-

alization of individuals’ journeys as normative and decontextualized by
highlighting the dynamic and de-linearized nature of the life course in
which human agency is played out in constrained settings. Elder also
argued that human lives are shaped by context, showing how the expe-
rience of the 1930s Great Depression varied significantly between two
generations. Over the last 40-odd years, youth researchers have become
acutely aware of the dynamic nature of transitions – or transformations –
the de-sequencing of events, and the interconnected nature of young
people’s lives. The increased emphasis on navigation does not involve
the wholesale abandonment of structural perspectives, and we are much
more aware of the extent to which reflexive agency occurs within
contexts that restrict the scope for life management (Evans 2002).
Cultural approaches
With cultural approaches to youth studies often focusing on expres-

sion and sometimes on spectacular dimensions of youth life, this work
is sometimes portrayed as more peripheral to policy and even as a
sideshow. Indeed, reading work grounded in a cultural perspective, we
often need to remind ourselves that highly visible changes in expression
can occur without any meaningful change in underlying relationships
and without what Willis (1977) calls ‘penetrations’, or understandings,
of the unjust and exploitative nature of life in advanced capitalist soci-
ety. The best work in the cultural tradition is measured; it does not
exaggerate change and maintains a clear awareness of the boundedness
of agency. Work of this sort is not unusual, and researchers working
within a cultural approach are just as able as those working in the transi-
tions tradition to highlight suffering and social injustice and to provide
a rich picture of young people as drivers of social change.
We could select many examples of modern work that comes under
the broad banner of a cultural perspective that successfully avoids being
blinded by superficial expression in order to engage in meaningful social
critique. For example, Robert Hollands’ (2002) work on the nighttime
economy in the North East of England focuses on young people’s night-
time consumption and on the places they congregate and consume
in the evenings, especially pubs and clubs. Whereas others who have
focused on what Hollands refers to as ‘nightscapes’, such as Redhead
(1990), fail to take us much beyond a description of club cultures some-
times wrapped up in impenetrable postmodern jargon, Hollands focuses
on the reshaping of the nighttime economy by the leisure industries to
Andy Furlong 21
appeal to a range of style communities but not to all. Through this, he

looks at the ways in which some groups of young people, especially the
poor, increasingly find themselves excluded. In this way, Hollands pro-
vides a rich picture of young people’s changing leisure lifestyles while
at the same time drawing attention to the interplay between youth cul-
tures and corporate concerns and to the emergence of new forms of
exclusion that are embedded in longer-term transformational processes.
Another good example of excellent work in the cultural tradition is
Nayak’s monograph, Race, Place and Globalization (2003). In an investiga-
tion of the ways in which young people’s identities have been reshaped
in the postindustrial city, with a strong focus on processes of racializa-
tion, Nayak draws attention to sources of continuity as well as change,
and examines the interplay between place and identity. While richly
unpicking the complexity of diverse youth cultures, he recognizes the
impact of material cultures on young people’s identities. Thus, while
providing significant cultural insights, Nayak clearly shows ‘how labor
market restructuring, migration and the cultures of globalization have
impacted upon contemporary youth formations’ while highlighting the
importance of ‘time, place and circumstance’ (2003: 167).
Reflecting on the relationship between the cultural and transitions
perspectives, Bennett (2011) argues that we need to consider structural
experience as reflexively managed though the creative appropriation of
cultural resources. For Bennett, cultural practices can be regarded a pro-
cess within which people are active in shaping their cultural milieu and
understanding and addressing structured inequalities.
Changing contexts
Reflecting on the division between cultural and transitions perspec-

tives, the relationship starts to look problematic in the mid- to late
1980s. One explanation can be found by focusing on shifting theoretical
paradigms in social science more generally, in particular the grow-
ing popularity of postmodern perspectives and the so-called cultural
turn, which has been criticized by Rojek and Turner for its privileging
of aesthetics over ‘engaged detachment’ (2000: 638). But theoretical
shifts tend not to develop in some sort of abstract intellectual sphere;
they arise from our reflections on changes in the world more gener-
ally. In the UK, we entered the 1980s as a society clearly marked by
class-based divisions and identities, and, following a prolonged neolib-
eral attack on collectivist structures and traditions, by the time we
reached the late 1980s, people were starting to question the relevance
of class, as traditionally framed, and were beginning to imagine their

lives and the processes through which they were socially embedded in
new ways.
In the context of youth studies, prior to the 1980s, youth culture was
clearly conceptualized as a subculture, a subset of broader class relations.
Researchers were interested in the interplay between the cultural dimen-
sions of young people’s lives and the dynamics of class in a context
where class-based processes of social reproduction were seen as being
played out, reinforced, and transformed, through the activities of young
people. Processes of deindustrialization, educational expansion, and an
emerging individualization involving a loosening of social bonds and
an increased emphasis on reflexivity led to a weakening of traditional
images of class and a renegotiation of identities that were once firmly
rooted in class cultures. The link between youth cultures and social class
also became weaker and more diverse.
In contexts where lifestyles and forms of consciousness appeared
to lose their association with class, the temptation was to focus on
the cultural sphere, to place an increased emphasis on agency, and to
downgrade both the importance of structure and the link between struc-
ture and agency. In youth studies, for some researchers, it triggered a
polarization between those drawn to focus on culture and those pri-
marily interested in the reproduction of structured inequalities through
transition.
In contemporary contexts, the focus on ‘choice biographies’, which
involve a process of reflexive life management, has the potential to
accelerate a process of polarization. An emphasis on reflexivity and the
tendency to think of the life course as a project can lead to the down-
playing of structural analysis as researchers focus their attention on
diverse, individualized, social biographies. At the same time, biographi-
cal approaches should aim to represent ‘consciousness and subjectivity,
as well as the objective constraints that shape individual lives’ (Rustin
and Chamberlayne 2002: 3). As du Bois Reymond (2009) makes clear, a
‘choice biography’ does not necessarily involve free choice.
Indeed, a focus on transition is entirely compatible with the idea
that individuals are constantly revising and reinterpreting their bio-
graphical projects, although it does introduce greater fluidity into the
process. Youth and young adulthood are statuses that must be nego-
tiated, but negotiation takes place in contexts that are never wholly
of our making. Moreover, the work put into developing life projects
requires us to draw on a range of resources that are economic as well as
cultural.
Andy Furlong 23
In the recent past, few sociologists would take issue with the idea
that the resources that underpinned and shaped the life course were
essentially components of social class. But of course social class has
become one of the victims of postmodern thought. Theorists who are
popular among youth researchers, such as Beck (1992), Giddens (1991),
and Sennett (1998), have all, in different ways, argued that class has
weakened or become irrelevant as orientations become more fragmented
and individualized. There is little doubt that forms of consciousness,
attitudes, and lifestyles have become much more loosely connected to
structural locations, but the fact that some people find it difficult to link
their social suffering to a social position they share with others does
not signal the death of class and therefore does not remove the need
to make linkages between youth cultures and social class (Furlong and
Cartmel 1997).
Aside from those who subscribe to a ‘pure’ postmodern perspective,
relatively few social scientists would argue that structured inequalities
have ceased to exist, and there is clear evidence that life chances are still
patterned in accordance with people’s position in the socioeconomic
order. Many social scientists would argue that social classes exist in situ-
ations where locations in a socioeconomic structure shape life chances,
irrespective of whether we can identify a set of cultural perspectives that
neatly map onto such divisions. Moreover, research (especially among
young adults) continues to show that many individuals do have a basic
awareness of the ways in which their lives are shaped by unequal oppor-
tunity structures and can often link their experiences to a class position
(e.g., MacDonald and Marsh 2005, Furlong and Cartmel 2009). While
the everyday language of class may have declined, UK surveys continue
to show that people are willing to acknowledge the existence of class
and to assign themselves to a specific social class (albeit in ambiguous
ways) and are able to ‘articulate a sense of class’ (Savage 2000: 36).
One of the issues we face is that, for young people who move through
a series of part-time and temporary jobs, experiencing periods of unem-
ployment, underemployment, and precarious work forms, it is difficult
to use occupations as a proxy for class. As a consequence, increas-
ingly culture becomes the key to understanding class, and here youth
researchers have been coming to terms with the ways in which cultural
expressions of class can be confusing and contradictory (Thornton 1995)
and are beginning to explore ‘how class processes are manifest in more
implicit and individualized forms in daily lives’ (Hebson 2009: 29). This
process is entirely compatible with a modern youth studies agenda that
has moved beyond the false binary.
New challenges
Today, young people across the world are facing far-reaching economic,
political, and social changes, and the agenda for youth studies has
become ever more challenging. Opportunities for young people are
being fundamentally reshaped, leading several commentators to argue
that we are entering a new social, economic, and political era that young
people find difficult to negotiate. Standing (2011), for example, has
focused on the deterioration of economic conditions, the fragmenta-
tion of employment, and the growth of insecurity: processes that have
hit young people hard. For Standing, late modernity is marked by the
growth of the precariat: an emerging ‘dangerous class’ comprised of
those suffering from the withdrawal of basic securities in the modern
labor market.
Youth researchers are acutely aware of the severity of conditions in
the contemporary labor market. In parts of southern Europe, such as
Greece and Spain, at least one in two young people are unemployed,
and many more occupy insecure positions and work too few hours to
make a living. Young people are being locked out of the labor market,
forced to pick up steep bills for their education, and face difficulties in
accessing suitable housing. The older generation who caused the finan-
cial crisis and generated huge amounts of debt are passing the costs onto
the younger generation while protecting their own benefits and assets
(Howker and Malik 2010). These changes have political repercussions,
and, from London to Athens, from Tel Aviv to Washington, young peo-
ple have been active in protests about the conditions they face, such as
the lack of jobs, student finances, and housing costs.
To begin to face these challenges and to move forward both the study
of youth and the disciplines in which it is embedded, we need to address
some fundamental issues that have constrained and divided social sci-
ence. One of our primary tasks involves a better definition of the core
focus. Agenda-setting youth studies should be theoretically driven and
focused both on forms of expression, or culture, and on patterns, or
structure. It should be grounded historically in the sense that there is
an awareness of change and continuity and of the factors that shape
the era that we are studying: it should heed Elias’ (1987) warning of the
limits on explanatory power that arise from the tendency of sociologists
to retreat into the present. More than that, it is political in the broadest
sense of the word: it is on the side of young people as a group, who are
often relatively powerless and subject to ongoing and legitimized dis-
crimination by older citizens who expect to be able to control their lives
and set political, economic, and social frameworks.
Andy Furlong 25
To bring these strands together, to build a firmer theoretical founda-

tion that provides greater clarity concerning the relationship between
the culture and transitions perspective thereby breaking down the false
binary, contemporary youth researchers have much to learn from the
work of Norbert Elias and the figurational sociology that he developed.
While an emphasis on processes of individualization in contempo-
rary youth studies encourages us to think of individuals as unique
and as subject to social forces that are external to them, Elias was
extremely critical of reductionist tendencies and argued that we can
only understand humans as pluralities in context (Dunning and Hughes
2012).
Frequently, work on transitions encourages us to think about indi-
vidual movements and of their stratified aggregates, and of the ways
that young people negotiate the complexities of social and economic
life and construct biographies that help them manage transition pro-
cesses. In contrast, cultural perspectives draw our attention to collective
manifestations: to meanings and practices of groups. In doing so, the
two traditions, and the forms of language they employ, sometimes help
promote the misguided belief that there can be a meaningful separa-
tion of the individual and society: that what Elias referred to as homo
clausus, closed-off individuals, underpins many of our assumptions.
For Elias, the idea of an individual as an ‘isolated abstraction’, some-
how separable from other social formations, was nonsense (Dunning
and Hughes 2012: 52–53). As Quintaneiro puts it, ‘our discourses and
thinking habits lead us to treat the concepts of “individual” and
“society” as “isolated and reposing objects” or, at best, as objects of
processes’ (2006: 2). Elias was scathing about such a separation that
reduces ‘process to static conditions’, as he put it; ‘we say “the wind
is blowing”, as if the wind were actually a thing at rest which, at a
given point in time, begins to move and blow. We speak as if the
wind were separate from its blowing, as if a wind could exist which
did not blow’ (Elias 2012: 106–107, quoted in Dunning and Hughes
2012).
For Elias, attempts to separate stratified social processes from culture
would be equally ridiculous as it would suggest that the individual and
society are separable entities. Seen in this light, the categories of tran-
sition and culture reflect no more than ‘differences in the viewpoint of
the observer, which at times may focus on the persons that form the
group and others on the group formed by them’ (Elias 1995: 63, quoted
in Quintaneiro 2006). For youth studies to thrive and to lead theoretical
debates, we have to ensure that we overcome false separations between
culture and transitions.
By its very nature, youth research has a specialized focus: in itself

this is not problematic, but the lesson we should learn from Elias
is that we should remember that, as social scientists, we also have
a core interest (Elias would regard it as a duty) to develop a better
understanding of ‘long term social processes and associated broader
overarching questions about human societies’ (Dunning and Hughes
2012: 202). By embedding youth research in these broader, high-level
discourses, our focus moves beyond youth in the here and now as,
through the vehicle of youth studies, we turn our attention to the
increasingly complex interdependencies of a dynamic late modernity:
interdependencies that cannot be understood through dualistic forms
of thinking.
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3
Complex Worlds, Complex
Identities: Complexity in Youth
Studies
Johanna Wyn and Rob White
Introduction
This chapter starts with the fundamental sociological premise that

youth is a social relationship rather than simply being a universal and
essential category. Making this point in 1997, we argued that the ‘appar-
ent symmetry between biological and social processes’ was one of the
most significant issues confronting youth studies because it naturalizes
and universalizes youth as a phase of life, obscuring age as a social rela-
tion (Wyn and White 1997: 9). Drawing on our more recent work (White
and Wyn 2013), we revisit this question in the context of recent devel-
opments and agendas in youth sociology. These include a convergence
between youth transitions and youth cultures approaches, recognition
of the need to move beyond theoretical orthodoxies, and the emergence
of youth studies as a central field of research and scholarship explor-
ing the significance of social change, globalizing processes, new youth
mobilities, and climate change.
Theories and concepts provide the lenses through which we make our
research objects what they appear to be. Concepts do not just make the
subjects of our research visible: they constitute them. That is, how we
speak about the world (e.g., ‘young people are students’) at one and the
same time exposes particular aspects of the world in very specific ways
(e.g., the position of young people within the institutional structures of
formal education, rather than as for instance netballers or footballers).
Mindful of the need to be reflexive about the way in which theories
constitute the subjects of our research, we use the analogy of a triple
28
Johanna Wyn and Rob White 29
helix to describe a framework for youth sociology that engages with the
complex and changing meaning and experience of age.
Specifically, in White and Wyn (2013), we argue for the use of con-
ceptual frameworks that acknowledge three ‘strands’ of analysis: the
dynamic interrelationships between individual transitions, social trans-
formations, and identity. These strands are intertwined and interrelated,
although for different analytical purposes one or the other may be the
main focus. Employing the three strands enables researchers to resist the
temptation to stop analysis short at the level of the individual, by rec-
ognizing the interconnections between biography and social context. As
we observe (2013: 253):
Social change brings about new dynamics and issues of which social
theorists and policy-makers must take careful account. These new
dynamics often interact with and layer onto older dynamics that
social scientists are familiar with (such as gender, race and class
relations), but in new ways. Thus social change challenges us to be
reflexive about the frameworks we use to understand young people’s
lives, and to understand how those frameworks themselves make
some things visible to us and obscure other things.
In this chapter, we take the opportunity to expand on these ideas

through a discussion of three key themes in contemporary youth
research: social change, youth transitions and youth cultures, and the
environment. We argue that understanding complexity and the need to
move beyond orthodoxies are fundamental to each of these – and that,
in turn, these three areas can play a significant role in underpinning a
vibrant and relevant youth sociology. First, we expand on the need to
recognize complexity in social analysis, and following this, we illustrate
how the triple helix may contribute to analysis of young people’s lives
in the three areas identified above.
The analysis of complexity
Globalizing social and economic processes,1 ecological transformations,

including and especially those driven by climate change, and advances
in communications technologies and youth transnational mobilities are
among the key trends impacting youth. These trends challenge us to
revisit the use of traditional approaches and concepts in youth studies.
Within a range of disciplines, responses to these developments are
simultaneously being reflected in the increasing interest in place and
30 Complexity in Youth Studies
temporality, drawing on insights from social geography, media studies,

and cultural studies to understand the ways in which individuals and
communities are connected through time across different places (see,
for example, Hopkins 2010, Woodman and Leccardi 2015). Eco-global
perspectives on youth (White 2012) orient youth studies to understand
the nature and impacts of the multiple ‘transitions’ that are occurring
both in relation to societal processes and in relation to the environ-
ment. Poststructuralist theories, and those that draw on a Foucauldian
perspective, are also increasingly used to understand the way in which
particular institutional ‘logics’ construct youth. An example is the view
that youth is a transitional but risky phase of life that culminates in
the successful entry into the labour market (see also Lesko and Talbut
2012: 3).
To argue for a more reflexive youth sociology, which does not simply
accept traditional concepts and theories, is not to press for the abandon-
ment of sociological traditions. Rather, we argue that the critical use of
existing sociological concepts provides a way to understand young peo-
ple’s lives in a context of social change. The point is to resist orthodoxies
that have been built up around sociological frameworks and which inad-
vertently lock analysis into a static framework. The metaphor of the
triple helix, for example, is seen in Bourdieu’s project of understand-
ing the relationship between individuals and their social milieu and the
paradox of continuity of inequality in times of social change. The concept
of habitus offers a way of understanding the dynamic processes whereby
individual and collective dispositions and sensibilities are formed and
re-formed.
To take another example, the work of the individualization theo-
rists (e.g., Beck and Beck-Gernsheim 2002) can be critically understood
as an exploration of the paradox that as social institutions fragment,
individuals become increasingly caught up in multiple (individualizing)
institutional demands and arrangements. As Woodman (2009) explains,
although it has become an orthodoxy in youth sociology to argue that
the individualization thesis denies the relevance of inequality (for exam-
ple, Roberts 2010, Skrbis et al. 2011), the opposite is true. The point is
that the processes that create inequality change, creating new forms of
inequality that have elements of continuity with the past – but that also
reinvent relations of power and inequality.
We argue that (2013: 254):
one of the challenges for a relevant and vibrant sociology of youth

and for youth studies is the resistance to orthodoxies. It takes
consistent effort to avoid closure – the belief that the worlds we con-
jure up through our research are ‘real’; and the failure to understand
that theories are heuristic devices that enable us to build knowledge,
not the substantive object of knowledge itself. It is a problem when
the heuristic nature of frameworks is lost from sight and their con-
cepts become synonymous with ‘reality’. There is a reality outside
the symbolic world-building activities of humans, but we should not
conflate the latter directly with the former.
We illustrate this argument in the sections below, focusing on social

change, transitions and youth cultures, and climate change. We argue
that youth is framed and constrained by institutions (i.e., structure),
shaped and acted on by young people (i.e., agency), and experienced in
enactments of identity, taking account of different contexts and circum-
stances (subjectivity). Here, we understand subjectivity as the way that
individuals experience and enact the possible subject positions made
possible within their context, such as ‘student’ or ‘migrant’ or ‘daugh-
ter’ (see Davies 2006). Our general point is that transitions of self can, and
should, be understood in the context of transitions of society – otherwise
young people, rather than the social processes and institutions that
make them vulnerable, become the ‘problem’.
Belonging and place in a context of social change
Yuval-Davis (2006) highlights the importance of belonging to youth

studies, as a concept that points to the ‘knotting’ of subjective and struc-
tural dimensions of life, and refers not just to membership, rights, and
duties, but also to the emotions that such memberships evoke. In this
way, the concept of belonging orients youth researchers to the signifi-
cance of place, and makes visible an apparent bias toward metropolitan
and urban youth. The orthodoxy that young people in the (Western)
metropolis represent the vanguard of social change has been challenged
by youth researchers through a focus on social change in rural places.
Indeed, youth researchers (including Gieryn 2000, Geldens and Bourke
2008, and Farrugia 2013) have highlighted the surprising absence of
‘place’ in youth research. It is only relatively recently that place has been
made more visible, as researchers take more care to frame their analysis
of young people’s lives within their geographic, as well as historical con-
text. Much of this has to do with the global processes of social change
that bring developments in China as well as the UK, in South Africa as
well as Germany, and in Chile as well as Sweden into focus (see Wyn
and Cahill 2015 for examples). In countries that are developing rapidly
(many of which are in the Asia Pacific region), the processes of urban-
ization draw attention to the interrelationships between rural and urban
areas in relation to young people (see, for example, Lou 2011).
We agree with Massey (1998), who argues that place is not simply
a backdrop to life – it constitutes social relations. Recently, for exam-
ple, Cuervo and Wyn (2012) have analyzed the experiences of young
Australians from the Life Patterns longitudinal study who stayed in
rural areas after graduating from secondary school, or returned after
further study. The analysis by Cuervo and Wyn (2012) illustrates the
way in which complexity can be understood through the use of a ‘triple
helix’ of concepts that enable the interrelationships between biography
and social context to be understood. It has been traditional for urban
youth to be seen as connected to global trends and flows, in a way that
their rural counterparts are not. Youth researchers have also been influ-
enced by the idea that individuals reflexively form identities that are
free from classed, gendered, and place-based forms of identification, and
that under conditions of late modernity, identity is no longer based in
locality (Farrugia 2013), or if this is so, it is only about disadvantage.
Cuervo and Wyn’s (2012) study of young people living in rural
places found that life in rural communities is significantly impacted by
global economic and social processes. In order to build lives in rural
areas, young people need to have a sense of their local connection to
these global processes, including understanding the new and chang-
ing agricultural markets as well as the service sector, and of the skills
and knowledge that are needed to sustain a livelihood in increasingly
volatile economies. This analysis showed that young people in rural
communities are as much members of and shapers of their generation as
their urban peers. They, too, faced the brunt of new workplace relations
laws that deregulated labor markets and ushered in a new era of what
we now refer to as ‘precarious’ work. Perhaps because the young people
living in rural areas were aware of being regarded as ‘other’ against their
metropolitan peers, they openly discussed their strategies for living in
nonurban places, and the rationales behind this.
The analysis of the subjectivities of the young people who wanted to
live in rural areas reveals the stark realities that this generation faced, in
terms of (a) the importance of gaining educational credentials, (b) the
challenge of using these credentials in a changing economic environ-
ment, and (c) the importance of social relationships to people and place
in sustaining hope for a better future and strategies for building a mean-
ingful life. Although their patterns of transition were different from their
urban-based peers, Cuervo and Wyn (2012) argue that this difference is
not necessarily an indication of disadvantage. Education and employ-
ment decisions were strongly influenced by young people’s strategies to
live in a rural context where they felt comfortable, where they could
continue to interact with significant others, including parents, wider
family, and friends, and where they felt an affinity with the landscape
and ‘socialscape’. The study participants wanted their children to know
their grandparents, to understand their changing world through the lens
of a rural community – to belong. In talking about the relevance of fam-
ily and place in their lives, the participants in this research are providing
a map of the ways in which they are connected – to the past, in the
present, and to an imagined future.
The experience of belonging and aspiration of young people to
‘belong’ is conceptually significant, for it demonstrates that:
• young people are connected to locations, spaces, and places;

• everyday registers of meaning (located in place and time) provide the
portal to understanding change for individual young people and for
places/communities; and
• young people are connected to people, institutions, events, cultures,
and sites, materially and subjectively.
Belonging, therefore, is at the center of the triple helix of youth experi-

ence. It lies at the fulcrum of institutions, actions, and identity, and is
fundamentally about social connection.
Transitions and cultures
Like the focus on urban youth as being at the leading edge of social
change, the idea of youth transitions is also an orthodoxy in youth stud-
ies. In particular, ‘youth transitions’ dominates policy-oriented youth
research, and with its emphasis on individual pathways through the
domains of education and employment, has tended to ‘ossify’ the focus
on individual trajectories. The narrow attention placed on transitions
through institutionalized markers of progress downplays other signifi-
cant dimensions of life, perpetuating a division between research and
scholarship on youth transitions and that on youth cultures. However,
this divide is being challenged by the recognition of synergies between
the two areas, and of the ways in which each can bring a focus on
important aspects of common conceptual and policy-related issues, for
example, between cultural pursuits such as music and employment and
the relationship between cultural engagement and civic participation

(White and Wyn 2013).
As Furlong et al. (2011) argue, ‘youth cultural studies’ and ‘tran-
sitional studies’ draw on distinctive origins in the 1970s and 1980s,
and have developed along separate lines until recently. Early work on
youth transitions tended to have a fairly narrow focus on the economic
socialization of young people through school to work pathways (e.g.,
Roberts 1968) and to largely ignore youth cultures as such. Although
the youth cultural studies strand is often linked to the Birmingham
Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS), this attribution often
overlooks the focus of some work of CCCS scholars (Willis 1977,
for example) on understanding the interrelationships between iden-
tity, class, and social change, especially within an educational context,
and there was an explicit agenda to understand age as a social rela-
tionship and as involving certain transitions. The later work of the
CCCS, focusing on culture, consumption, and the emerging youth
subcultures that were expressed through music, leisure, and fashion
styles (e.g., Hebdige 1979), is more closely related to contemporary
‘youth cultures’ approaches which likewise have had a specific analytical
focus.
The focus on youth transitions, as conceptualized narrowly, has not
served youth or educational policies very well. Transitions through insti-
tutionalized processes (education and the labor market) have been a
central policy focus and an impetus for a significant body of youth
research for over a quarter of a century in Western countries. Yet, this
has coincided with the disappearance of full-time work for the young
and un-credentialed, and the individualization of labor market risks for
everyone.
In specific terms, the narrow focus on trajectories through education
and into work (or increasingly into precarious work or unemployment;
see Furlong 2007) has contributed little to the development of pol-
icy frameworks that address the needs of the most marginalized. In
Australia, over the last quarter of a century or more, these continue to be
young people in poverty, young people living in rural areas, and young
Indigenous people (FYA 2013). A one-dimensional transitions frame-
work tends to be employed as a tool for identifying those ‘at risk’ –
that is, those who are not in employment or training (they are ‘NEET’).
Early school leaving, for example, is revealed as a likely progression into
unemployment or unstable employment. A transitions approach tends
to view the gaining of qualifications into tertiary education as the gate-
way for progressing into stable employment. Failure by individuals to
follow the progression of events within a defined timeline creates the

risk of social exclusion. Blaming the victim comes to the fore in such
frameworks.
Among other things, what is missing from this picture is the under-
standing of subjectivities and cultures. There is a wealth of research that
shows that ‘successful transition’ is synonymous with becoming a par-
ticular kind of subject – autonomous, responsible, and integrated into
education and employment options (Kelly 2006). To be this kind of
subject requires cultural, social and material resources and a richness of
social connection to others and to institutions. Many studies show how
those who are the most disadvantaged (with the least access to social
and material resources) struggle to achieve the kind of subjecthood that
is associated with ‘success’, because they have fewer resources than their
advantaged peers. For example, the studies of young homeless women
by Watson (2011) shows how they wring what they can from the few
resources they have to leverage the kind of social and economic capi-
tal they need to get out of homelessness. Farrugia’s research on young
homeless people (2011) reveals the additional struggles required on their
part to achieve the kind of ‘subjecthood’ their more secure peers enjoy
as a matter of course.
Under conditions of neoliberal policy and practice, the exclusive focus
on school-to-work transitions reinforces a ‘blame the victim’ approach,
which sheets full responsibility for failure to achieve the requisite tran-
sition to the individual. Policy settings are designed to offer ‘choices’,
which many simply cannot exercise. Moreover, the structural nature of
labor markets (there are not enough jobs for all who seek them) means
that the system, from beginning to end, is intended to produce ‘win-
ners’ and ‘losers’. Individuals are expected to be diligent and resilient;
much less attention is paid to making social and physical environments
facilitative, inclusive, and rewarding.
There has to date been very little research that explores the flows
of influence across these areas of young people’s lives. As Hall et al.
(2009) argue, lives are lived between the series of episodes that are
regarded as transition points (e.g., leaving school, leaving home, gain-
ing employment), and it is the way that lives are lived that gives us an
understanding of what these transition points mean. Researchers miss
important details about how lives are lived in real time and in places if
we fail to ‘record the life that goes on between events and happenings –
in place and biography’ (Hall et al. 2009: 559). It is important to map
institutional markers of ‘progress’, but we gain little understanding of
what these mean or how to change them without an understanding of
the ways in which lives are lived, with and in dialog with place – socially,
economically, geographically, and culturally, including the disruption,
discontinuity, and uncertainty that accompanies structural, economic,
and political change.
In making this point in Youth and Society (2013), we drew on
McDonald’s analysis of young Australians in the 1990s (McDonald
1999). In referencing this work here, we highlight the importance of
understanding culture. This is also central to Sennett’s question: ‘what
values and practices can hold people together as the institutions in
which they live fragment?’ (Sennett 2006: 3). In this book, Sennett
explores the idea that in the context of the ‘new capitalism’, culture pro-
vides an anchor that enables people to make judgments about whether
changes are worthwhile, and provides a narrative for making sense of
their worlds. McDonald’s work shows how different groups of young
people do the work of making sense of their lives or ‘hold their experi-
ence together’, and others ‘oscillate between identities they are unable
to control, the research process revealing powerful social logics that
break down the coherence not only of the social world but of the person-
ality’ (McDonald 1999: 11). These analyses by Sennett and McDonald
are examples of research that provides insights into the challenges, com-
plexities, and uncertainties of transitions of individuals (biography),
as well as of communities and institutions (historical context). They
reflect a tradition within the sociology of youth that pays attention to
understanding how individual biographies are shaped by sociohistori-
cal conditions and demonstrating how the meaning of both youth and
adulthood is given through prevailing social and economic relations of
society (Allen 1968, Finch 1986, Mizen 2004, Blatterer 2007, Woodman
and Wyn 2015).
Some have attempted to nuance a transition approach with a more
sociohistorical approach that recognizes locational, cultural, and tem-
poral elements (Bagnall 2005). Yet the tendency to focus on transitions
of self over transitions of society in youth research robs us of the capac-
ity to really understand how inequalities are produced and what to do
about it. Instead of addressing the crucial issue of how social institutions
recognize the increasing diversity and complex lives, the policy response
is to put the onus on individual young people and their families to
conform or reform. This is how ‘responsibilization’ operates in practice.
Climate change and challenging orthodoxies
With climate change, the global ecological situation is likely to become

ever more unstable, in ever rapid degrees, in the near future. The
consequences of global warming will be felt in the form of extreme

weather events, increased competition for dwindling natural resources,
outbreaks of disease and viral infections, further extinctions of species,
and widespread climate-induced migration. Wherever they live across
the globe, young people will be greatly affected by these changes (White
2012). How they are responding to these challenges to their future also
highlights the contingent and complex nature of the triple helix.
Discussion of youth identity in relation to climate change will increas-
ingly hinge upon the distinction between the disadvantaged and the
privileged, particularly as these categories are produced and reproduced
on a world scale. The subtleties of identity construction (and alloca-
tion) will manifest in a number of different ways, and in relation to
specific issues. For example, those youth who suffer due to extreme
weather events, such as floods or cyclones, will be re-presented as ‘envi-
ronmental victims’. This is because such events have a tendency to be
deemed ‘natural disasters’, regardless of human interventions (includ-
ing global warming) that may set these in train. For these young
people, particularly those in the Third World, coming to grips with
identity will involve reimagining themselves within the frames of sur-
vival, hope and hopelessness, anger and resentment, disconnection and
vulnerability, tradition and modernity, and a myriad other labels and
psychosocial states. And all of this tends to occur in a highly gendered
way (Heckenberg and Johnston 2012).
Yet, if the predictions of substantial biophysical changes are true in
relation to climate change (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
2013), then young people of the Global South will feature more promi-
nently in the fears and trepidations of the privileged North. Blaming
the Other, blaming the victim, is increasingly widespread and is being
incorporated into official institutional ideologies and practices. Environ-
mental insecurity is thereby being responded to by a fortress mentality
that is fundamentally based upon national security, self-interest, and
the abandonment of compassion. This is reinforced by neoliberal ideolo-
gies, policies, and practices that emphasize possessive individualism and
social exclusion (see White 2014). Through all of this, the experience of
growing up will vary greatly depending upon the national and regional
context, and the composition of local class and societal resources.
Another orthodoxy of youth studies is that it is the voices and actions
of the disadvantaged that are seen to be in most need to be heard.
The tendency is to ‘study down’ rather than to ‘study up’. This con-
tinues to be an important and valued orientation within the sociology
of youth. Nonetheless, the pressing need to think about how to cre-
atively engage with climate change forces a subtle shift of analytical
gaze. Here, for example, we can point to the importance of youth-led

movements, agencies, and forums, many of which are not led by ‘at-risk’
young people but middle-class relatively privileged young people. Learn-
ing from the young includes hearing all the voices, including the less
privileged within and beyond our geographical borders. Consider for
example what is being said by the youth of the Red Cross and Red
Crescent Movement, who commit to
Involve ourselves in disaster preparedness, response and recovery,

including psychosocial support
Live up to our commitment on climate change and make little moves

every day, using peer education to change communities
Advocate strongly on climate change adaptation, including the

protection of climate migrants
Advocating on food security
Advocate for access to clean and safe water, and contribute to

sustainable solutions
(International Committee of the Red Cross 2009)
Borders have little material relevance when it comes to environmen-

tal harm associated with global warming. Climate change affects us
all regardless of where we live and regardless of social characteristics,
even if the effects of climate change, while felt by everyone, are not the
same for everyone. What differentiates young people at the moment are
the resources to survive the calamities associated with global warming.
What unites all is the continued impending threat and consequences of
climate change. This, too, is a form of belonging. Such considerations
are vital to understanding institutional change, the nature of individual
choice, and constructions of social identity pertaining to youth regard-
less of geographical location and social circumstance. The triple helix
extends into the future as well as the past, and traverses space as well as
time.
Conclusion
We argue that it is timely to revisit the metaphors and orthodoxies that

have driven youth studies over the last 25 years. The challenge for youth
studies, of understanding young people’s lives against a backdrop of sig-
nificant social, economic, and ecological changes, requires a critical and
imaginative approach to theory. To contribute to debate about what this

might look like, we have suggested the analogy of a three-stranded helix,
representing individual transformation, social transformation, and sub-
jectivity, the threads of which are always interrelated but in ways that
are difficult to predict. Although these strands are central to many of
the traditional sociological theories, we argue that their use requires
a critical approach that guards against the perpetuation of conceptual
orthodoxies and tropes.
In arguing that the orthodoxy of youth transitions may have out-
lasted its usefulness, we suggest that it is helpful to imagine a different
metaphor from the linear one of transitions to frame youth studies. To
this end, the metaphor of belonging may be helpful, and if it is not,
at least it may assist in understanding more about the work that the-
ory does in youth studies. The idea of belonging accommodates the
convergence of the youth transitions and youth cultures approaches.
It provides a framework for mapping how young people manage to be
well as they navigate their own individual lives in changing times and
circumstances, framing the constraints and possibilities they face, the
trajectories they forge, and the strategies they currently use.
In the face of global financial and economic upheaval and uncer-
tainty, the social and ecological consequences of global warming, and
the continued worldwide hegemony of the neoliberal emphasis on
individual responsibility over and above collective solidarity and the
meeting of social needs, analysis of belonging as a social process enables
us to map out how young people are surviving the present and are
simultaneously constructing their futures.
Note
1. As reflected for example in ‘the Asian Century’ prominently featuring China
and India (Australian Government 2012).
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4
‘Speaking of Youth Culture’:
A Critical Analysis of
Contemporary Youth Cultural
Practice
Andy Bennett
Introduction
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 consump-
tion 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 con-
texts, 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 disci-
plines 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 engag-
ing 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. Key to the argument presented in
42
Andy Bennett 43
the chapter will be that youth cultural studies needs to become more
aware that elements of both the spectacular ‘and’ mundane combine
in the cultural practices of youth. A further dimension of the argument
presented here is that such cultural practices increasingly form part of
the biography and identity of individuals across the life course rather
than merely being limited to youth and early adulthood.
Youth cultural studies in context
Although the phenomenon of youth culture has attracted the most

widespread attention, academically and otherwise, during the period of
contemporary history beginning with the end of the Second World War
and the emergence of the leisure and consumer industries, the historical
legacy of youth culture spans a much longer period of time. For exam-
ple, Pearson (1994) documents a style-based gang comprising young
apprentices in London during the 17th and 18th centuries who became
notorious for their drinking habits and various forms of riotous behavior
in city streets. Similarly, both Roberts (1971) and Fowler (1992) refer to
stylistically distinct youth groups, such as the Salford Scuttlers, in north-
ern England during the late 19th century and also during the interwar
years. In Germany, Peukert (1983) identifies similar historical trends in
stylistically spectacular youth cultures during the early 20th century.
Youth culture is then not merely, as is often mooted, a product of the
post-Second World War consumer boom, although there is little doubt
that socioeconomic changes and technological developments occurring
in the West during that period had a significant impact on the nature of
youth culture from that period onward.
The years following the Second World War saw a period of affluence
buoyed up by near-full employment as postwar reconstruction and the
rollout of new mass production industries got under way. Given the
sheer number of adult males killed during wartime hostilities, there
were significant gaps in the postwar labor market and these were often
filled by young people between the ages of 15 and 25. The resulting
affluence among this section of society created an increased demand
for youth-targeted leisure and the emergence of consumer products –
music, fashion, literature, and film, for example – targeted primarily at a
youth audience (see Chambers 1985, Bennett 2000). Music in particular
became a primary driver for new youth sensibilities as a new genre of
pop icons, beginning with Elvis Presley in the 1950s and expanding in
the 1960s with groups such as the Beatles and the Beach Boys, culturally
connected with youth audiences who were typically of a similar age and
44 Analysis of Contemporary Youth Cultural Practice
shared a similar outlook on life (Shumway 1992). This ‘youthquake’, as

Leech (1973) has referred to it, also gave rise to a steadily increasing
number of stylistically distinctive youth gangs or, as they came to be
termed, ‘subcultures’ (Clarke et al. 1976). Early postwar examples of
this included the Teddy Boys, the mods and the rockers. Newspaper
reports of clashes between the mods and rockers at seaside towns on
England’s southeast coast during the mid-1960s placed these youth cul-
tures at the center of a nationwide moral panic (Cohen 1987), a trend
that continued into the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s as subsequent youth
cultures/musical genres such as punk, heavy metal, and dance were sim-
ilarly targeted by the media (see Laing 1985, Thornton 1994, Bennett
2001).
In terms of its representation as an academic object of interest, youth
culture has also been considered primarily in terms of its significance in
a postwar context. Hall and Jefferson’s (1976) Resistance through Rituals is
something of a landmark study in this respect due to its highly sophis-
ticated, and much emulated, theorization of postwar British youth
cultures as articulating forms of collective resistance based on their expe-
riences of class and class relations in late capitalist society. This position
is developed and refined by Hebdige (1979) in his reading of punk as
a stylistic response to the chaos and malaise present in Britain at the
end of 1970s as the country plunged into a period of economic depres-
sion. The subcultural studies tradition initiated by Hall and Jefferson
and other researchers based at Birmingham University’s Centre for Con-
temporary Cultural Studies (CCCS) also acquired transnational currency,
for example, in Brake’s (1985) comparative study of youth cultures in
Britain, the United States, and Canada, and in Weinstein’s (1991) study
of heavy metal’s appeal for blue-collar youth in North America.
As noted elsewhere (see, for example, Bennett 2002), the CCCS
subcultural theory has been criticized on a number of accounts. These
include the CCCS’s lack of attention to gender and the role of girls
in youth (sub)cultures (McRobbie 1989), the metropolitan centeredness
of its approach (Clarke 1990), and its overreliance on textual analysis
at the expense of conducting ethnographic studies of youth (Cohen
1987). In the early 2000s, a new critique of subcultural studies emerged
in the shape of what came to be known as ‘post-subcultural’ theory.
Taking its inspiration from both postmodern theory and the ‘cultural
turn’, a movement in sociological and cultural theory that argued for
the reconceptualization of individuals as reflexive agents engaged in
the coproduction of culture, post-subcultural theorists such as Bennett
(1999), Miles (2000), and Muggleton (2000) argued that subcultural
Andy Bennett 45
theory was too rigid in its interpretation of youth cultures as merely

a product of class circumstances. Rather, it was suggested, youth cul-
tures were better positioned as key examples of the way that media and
consumerism gave rise to new, reflexive forms of cultural identity based
around affective associations grounded in taste, aesthetics, and lifestyle.
Where are the ‘ordinary’ youth?
Conceptually speaking, post-subcultural theory represented something

of a radical departure from subcultural studies (Bennett 2011), as
evidenced by the rapid publication of two edited collections dedi-
cated to evaluating the importance of post-subcultural perspectives (see
Muggleton and Weinzierl 2003, Bennett and Kahn-Harris 2004). While
debates as to the advantages and disadvantages of applying subcultural
and post-subcultural perspectives continue (see Bennett 2005, Blackman
2005, Hesmondhalgh 2005, Shildrick and MacDonald 2006), what is
clear is that in both subcultural and post-subcultural approaches the
emphasis is still largely upon what has been referred to in this chapter
and elsewhere as spectacular youth. However, while the terms ‘subcul-
ture’ and ‘post-subculture’ have essentially become conceptual code for
addressing more visually marked renderings of youth cultural identity,
for example, punk, hardcore, metal, rap, and so forth, the term ‘youth
culture’ is now also being increasingly applied to more ‘mundane’ prac-
tices such as texting, drinking, online social networking, and so forth
(see, for example, Green 2003, Griffin et al. 2009, Robards 2014). In
previous work on youth culture, such examples of more ‘mainstream’
youth activity, particularly when engaged in by youth who appeared to
have no obvious stylistic affiliation, tended to be left in the amorphous
and quite problematic category of ‘ordinary’ youth.
However, even during a time when it was largely taken for granted
that the study of youth culture amounted to something more than the
study of ‘ordinary’ youth, a number of theorists pointed out that the
distinctions between ordinary and spectacular youth were not as clear-cut
as some might want to believe. Thus, as Frith observed:
The problem is to reconcile adolescence and subculture. Most

working-class teenagers pass through groups, change identities, play
their leisure roles for fun; other differences between them – sex, occu-
pation, family – are much more significant than distinctions of style.
For every youth ‘stylist’ committed to a cult as a full-time creative
task, there are hundreds of working-class kids who grow up in a loose
membership of several groups and run with a variety of gangs. There’s

a distinction here between a vanguard and a mass, between uses of
leisure within subcultures.
(1983: 219–220, emphasis in original)
A parallel observation was raised by Clarke (1990), who also queried

the focus of subcultural studies on what he termed ‘card-carrying’ and
fully paid-up members of youth subcultures. For Clarke, the essentialism
inherent in this approach was further exacerbated by subcultural stud-
ies’ almost exclusive reliance on textual readings of youth culture. This
approach, argued Clarke, prevented subcultural theorists from uncov-
ering the different layers of investment in youth cultural style and
belonging.
When considered in this way, it is possible to see another problem
inherent in the subcultural studies project. Thus, through its fail-
ure to engage in any form of sustained empirical analysis of youth
(sub)cultures, subcultural theory could be accused of having invented
a highly romanticized notion of subculture as a space inhabited by pure
‘subcultural beings’. Indeed, it is very often the case that in much of the
formative work on youth culture, so-called youth subculturalists appear
to have no life outside the one that is created for them in theoretical
accounts. This is exemplified in the latter part of Hebdige’s (1979) highly
influential study Subculture: The Meaning of Style, where he openly admits
that the picture he has created of the youth subculturalist might well
be unrecognizable for youth subculturalists themselves. An early indica-
tion of such a disjuncture in subcultural theory – and of the fact that
subculturalists were perhaps being created according to the theoretical
whims of theorists, rather than as real people with real lives – is seen
in McRobbie’s observation that ‘few writers seemed interested in what
happened when a mod went home after a weekend on speed. Only what
happened out there on the streets mattered’ (1989: 113).
In certain respects, and notwithstanding the comments offered above
regarding its similar focus on ‘spectacular youth culture’, the emergence
of post-subcultural theory has offered something of a challenge to the
‘ideal’ subcultural type that is often seen to characterize the pages of the
youth subcultures literature. Thus, through introducing into the frame
a more nuanced understanding of youth style as something ‘worked
on’ by individuals who bring their own specific understandings to their
chosen visual image, post-subcultural theory begins to break down the
idea of youth style as reflecting cultural homogeneity while at the same
time allowing for differing degrees of investment and commitment, in a
Andy Bennett 47
way that chimes with Frith’s (1983) and Clarke’s (1990) previously cited
observations. The other critical contribution made by post-subcultural
theory in this space is its breaking down of the idea that ‘subculture’
is some reified subset of society. Instead, through utilizing the work of
theorists such as Giddens (1991), Chaney (1996), and Maffesoli (1996),
post-subcultural theorists have recontextualized youth (sub)cultures as
more fluid and characterized by shifting associations (Bennett 1999).
Aligned with this reorientation in thinking is the notion that young peo-
ple may simultaneously express allegiance with several different youth
cultural affiliations as these extend, for example, across music, sport,
and digital media.
In essence then, and perhaps with differing degrees of emphasis,
what post-subcultural theorists are essentially pointing to is a need to
embrace a more complex and diverse range of youth cultural prac-
tices under a broader and more nuanced heading of ‘youth culture’.
Certainly, there has been a marked show of resistance to this in some
quarters of what one might refer to as critical youth studies. Blackman
(2005), for example, has argued that, in its ‘celebration’ of the young
person as a consumer exemplar, youth research influenced by post-
subcultural studies and the post-modern turn has effectively abandoned
any consideration of the political capacity of youth culture. Looking at
this from a different angle, Shildrick and MacDonald (2006) argue that
consumerism is itself an exclusionary concept as not all young people
have the necessary economic resources to engage in the consumption of
cultural commodities. Again, however, there seems in such observations
to be an element of essentialism that works to conspire against mean-
ingful engagement with youth culture as a diverse landscape in which
participation may not be contingent on an overtly politicized sensibility
or discourse, nor on the availability of economic resources.
Recontextualizing youth culture
During the last 20 years, there has been an increasing interest in the
role of cultural consumerism and digital media in young people’s lives
(see, for example, Buckingham 1993, Miles 2000). Neither of these foci
are unprecedented; indeed, as the foregoing account illustrates, youth
have been seen as key agents of cultural and media consumption since
the early 1950s. What has changed, however, is the proliferation of
cultural and media resources available to youth. Youth research on
cultural consumption and the use of digital media has been signifi-
cant in a number of regards, throwing new light on aspects of youth
lifestyle, issues of inclusion and exclusion, and notions of participa-

tion and citizenship (Buckingham 2007). Within this, however, one
question that has not been addressed and yet begs critical inquiry is
what these more recent trends in youth research tell us about the inter-
face between the spectacular and the mundane in contemporary youth
cultural practice?
Bennett (2004) has suggested that with the emergence of the Inter-
net, the way that youth cultures can be identified, and indeed identify
themselves, has undergone a significant shift. In addition to a blurring
of the public and the private (Lincoln 2012) and a melding of online and
offline interaction (Robards 2012), the Internet has also thrown an inter-
esting new light on the ways through which youth understand them-
selves as ‘culturally’ connected. While music and/or style may play some
part here (see, for example, Hodkinson 2003), these may not be the most
critical barometers of collective cultural identification among youth.
Equally important may be things such as sexual preference, nightlife
activities, culinary taste, and so on. Indeed, as Robards and Bennett’s
(2011) study of youth and social networking sites on Australia’s Gold
Coast has revealed, an emphasis on these and other preferences and
tastes is very much at the forefront in the ways that young people now
represent themselves as cultural beings to others in both online and
offline contexts. Equally interesting here is that when the young people
interviewed for this study referred to issues of ‘subcultural’ belonging,
this was done in a highly reflexive way and one that saw ‘subcul-
tures’ as merely part of the way that young people culturally construct
their identities. Equally important here were things such as friendship
groups, sporting activities, and attitudes toward health and well-being.
This connection between more ‘classically’ understood notions of youth
cultural identity and the more mundane, everyday ways that youth sit-
uate themselves as cultural beings is also evident in Lincoln’s (2012)
study of teenage bedroom culture. Although this topic was famously first
explored in McRobbie and Garber’s (1976) study of early 1970s female
teenyboppers (a compelling critique of the then male-dominated sphere
of youth cultural research), that study remained something of a rarity for
a number of years. With the emergence of digital media, however, the
bedroom has taken on new dimensions of importance for youth, being
a portal to the wider world while at the same time becoming a space for
an expression of identity that must be even more carefully negotiated in
regard to the specter of parental ‘intrusion’ and potential censorship of
media-based activities. Lincoln’s work is, thus, a further indication that
the cultural lives of youth are not lives located outside other aspects of
Andy Bennett 49
their everyday lives. Rather, they exist simultaneously with, and are to
some extent a product of, those broader everyday circumstances that
shape and often constrain youth lives and lifestyles.
A further development in youth research over the last 20 years that
prompts us to question our understanding of how ‘youth culture’ should
be conceptualized is the focus on young people’s engagement with
the urban nighttime economy. Certainly, pubs and clubs have been
an important aspect of youth cultural lives for many years, and it is
arguably a significant disadvantage for youth research that this rich
vein of youth leisure and entertainment was neglected for such a long
period of time. With the onset of post-industrialization and the emer-
gence of leisure economies, however, increasing attention has been
given to this aspect of young people’s lives. In the mid-1990s, Hollands’s
(1996) groundbreaking work on youth and the nighttime economy in
the northern English city of Newcastle upon Tyne offered an important
new insight into how young people recreated their sense of local iden-
tity through their engagement with the local pub and club life of the
city. This is vividly captured in Hollands’ description of young working-
class males participating in what he refers to as the Geordie1 working
man’s weekend, where Friday night is used for drinking with male
friends while Saturday night is reserved for taking out one’s girlfriend
or partner for a meal in a more ‘civilized’ setting. In subsequent work,
Chatterton and Hollands (2002) develop this focus on youth’s engage-
ment with the nighttime economy, recasting city bars, clubs, and music
venues as a series of ‘urban playscapes’ within which young people con-
gregate. A critically salient component of Chatterton and Hollands’s
argument is the way that the hyper-commodification of urban leisure
spaces by urban developers in partnership with the local state produces
both a more regulated and segmented nighttime economy. Within this
fragmented urban space, the cultural practice of youth becomes equally
fragmented as different patterns of taste, often linked to other factors of
youth lives, play out.
Bennett and Rogers (forthcoming) have considered this segregation
in relation to the DIY creation of alternative music venues in the
Australian cities of Sydney, Brisbane, and Adelaide. As Bennett and
Rogers observe, although ostensibly focused around music and musi-
cal taste, such DIY activity is actually underpinned by a broader range
of issues. These include a mode of informed resistance to the perceived
‘encroachment’ of big business on city spaces and the restrictions this
imposes upon freedom of leisure choice, and the desire to (re-)create
spaces that are aesthetically pleasing for those who, for a mixture of
reasons – including sexual politics and preference, educational back-

ground, profession, and attitudes toward alcohol and alcohol-fueled
aggression – wish to self-exclude themselves from the more mainstream
bars and clubs. Importantly, however, such differentiated patterns of
cultural engagement with the contemporary urban nighttime economy
cannot be neatly theorized along lines of class, education, and pro-
fession. Brown and Gregg’s (2012) study of young women’s drinking
patterns and their documentation on Facebook is a telling illustration
of the fact that the mainstream bar and clubbing landscape is one fre-
quented by youth from across the social strata. Similarly, Griffin and
colleagues’ (2009) study of young people’s attitudes to intoxication and
related behavior reveals that young people from a range of backgrounds,
including a high percentage of higher education students, regularly
engage in such behavior in the context of the urban nighttime economy.
Moreover, such practices are not reported by young people in exclu-
sively negative terms as examples of reckless and embarrassing behavior.
Rather, it is frequently suggested by youth that such practices form part
of a ritual practice in which drinking adventures are designed to evoke
self-mockery and laughter among peer groups (see also Goodwin et al.
2014).
The example of alcohol consumption in the nighttime economy
serves as a further indication that the ‘cultural’ practices of youth, that
is to say the ways they collectively identify in relation to a series of
culturally inscribed activities and beliefs, extend well beyond the more
conventionally ascribed examples of music and style. Moreover, it is also
clear that such extended terrains of youth cultural practice are quite
complex. Thus, while youth assume different aesthetic positions in rela-
tion to the hyper-commodified and regulated space of the mainstream
nighttime economy, their motivations for doing so cannot be uniformly
related to issues of social structure but suggest that more reflexive and
self-elected forms of participation and behavior are at play.
A further way in which conventional notions of youth culture are
now problematic relates to the aging demographic of ‘youth’. An early
reference to this matter is seen in the work of Thornton (1995) on
electronic dance music clubs. As Thornton observes, although stereo-
typed by the media as unregulated spaces that put ‘young’ people at
risk, these clubs were also frequented by a wider demographic, including
people in their thirties and forties. Thornton suggested that this trend
could be attributed to an increasing tendency of older people to resist
the social aging expectations imposed on them by the dominant soci-
ety. This point is supported by du Bois-Reymond’s (1998) study of the
Andy Bennett 51
stretched transitions now frequently experienced by young adults. Thus,

observes du Bois-Reymond, while it was once regarded as the stage of life
in which to settle down, raise a family, and establish a career, the period
of adult life from the mid-twenties to mid-thirties is now increasingly
considered an extension of one’s youth. In a subsequent study of my
own, however, I contest such ‘resistance to social aging’ arguments, sug-
gesting instead that it is more productive to see these and other aging
examples of ‘youth cultural’ activity as part of a process of biograph-
ical development. Referring to the research participants in this study,
I observe that, ‘although their identities as hippies, rockers, punks and
so on may have initially taken form in their youth, these identities have
continued to develop over the years’ (Bennett 2013: 35). The study then
goes on to examine the cultural terrain of ‘aging’ youth in more detail,
highlighting a variety of strategies used by individuals to reconcile their
aging selves with their youth cultural identities as these relate to phys-
ical aging, work, parenthood, and peer groups (see also Bennett and
Hodkinson 2012). What this work fundamentally reveals is that those
aging individuals who continue to define themselves as punks, hippies,
dance music fans, and so on are not resisting social aging. Rather, they
are evolving strategies through which to continue practicing and artic-
ulating such identities within the context of the other social roles they
are required to perform, and openly accept, as part of their adult lives.
Conclusion
This chapter has examined the concept of youth culture and how it
might continue to be used as a meaningful term of reference in an
era when research is revealing the increasingly complex interplay of
practices engaged in by young people. The critical problem with the
concept of youth culture as applied in contemporary youth research, it
is argued, is the continuing distinction between studies that pursue an
interest in spectacular modes of cultural practice and those that repre-
sent the culture of youth in relation to more mundane activities. On
the one hand, the use of the term ‘youth culture’ in the latter context
represents a positive move in that it demonstrates that some aspects
of youth research are developing a broader understanding of the range
of practices that youth engage in and though which they understand
and represent themselves as cultural beings. Nevertheless, the contin-
uing distinction between such work and that with a focus on more
spectacular aspects of youth culture remains problematic for a number
of reasons. First, it reinforces a notion that spectacular and mundane
youth cultural practices are still essentially discrete categories, a per-

spective which, as this chapter has argued, has always been somewhat
mythically constructed. Second, and leading on from the first point, it is
increasingly clear that the production of terms such as ‘subcultural’ and
‘ordinary’ youth may serve as neat academic constructs for the formu-
lation of specific arguments but do not accurately reflect the everyday
lives and lived experiences of young people themselves. In effect then,
for youth culture to continue having critical currency as an analytical
tool in youth research, its conceptual parameters will need to be broad-
ened. This will entail a wholesale acknowledgment of the fact that youth
cultures and youth cultural lives are complex and embrace a broad range
of practices ranging from the spectacular to the mundane to varying
degrees. Attempting to bracket out certain activities of youth as more
or less relevant to the study of their cultural lives than others will only
serve to perpetuate a problem that has hampered the academic study of
youth for many years – that is, the representation of youth as largely or
purely an analytical construct. The need to move on from this highly
problematic position was forcibly demonstrated in the latter part of the
chapter, where it was suggested that the increasing incidence of aging
‘youth’ cultural identities forces new questions as to how (post-)youth
cultural lives are maintained and refashioned within a range of everyday
constraints experienced by adult individuals.
Note
1. The recognized term for a native of Newcastle, UK.
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5
Generations, Transitions, and
Culture as Practice: A Temporal
Approach to Youth Studies
Dan Woodman and Carmen Leccardi
Introduction
Youth studies is a field of research that is by definition concerned with

temporal questions. The most common understanding of youth is as a
period of transition: a transition of significance not only for young peo-
ple but also potentially for society as institutions and cultural beliefs are
either reproduced or remade (Tilleczek 2011). Research into these tran-
sitions focuses on the movement from one status to another and from
‘youth’ to ‘adulthood’, tracing changes in the timing of these transitions
over time and comparing the timing across various groups. Research
focused less on youth as a period of transition than on the cultural
and symbolic practices of young people also has questions of tempo-
rality at its core. These cultural practices necessarily unfold over time,
and demand the coordination of time between young people. Despite
the centrality of time to many of the questions driving cultures and
transitions research, this often remains implicit, and because of this,
time is under-theorized. The research in youth studies that is explicitly
engaged in thinking about temporality tends to be narrow in its focus,
researching and debating whether young people plan for the future.
In this chapter we argue that better theorizing of time and its com-
plexities can provide a theoretical anchor for working across divisions
in youth research. A commitment to highlighting the ways youth is
socially constructed, and that the way it is constructed can vary across
place and time, drives many youth researchers who take a sociological
approach (Furlong and Woodman 2015). As with youth, time is also
not a ‘natural’ fact. It is also institutionalized, and the experience of
56
Dan Woodman and Carmen Leccardi 57
time changes in different periods depending on its institutionalization

(Woodman and Leccardi 2015).
We show that understanding the institutionalization of time in late
modern societies can help to clarify how youth is being shaped today
and how studies of youth cultures and youth transitions share certain
temporal problems. We discuss three temporalities and their interac-
tion, the time of everyday life, the time of ‘the biography’ or life
course, and the time of generations, to provide a lens through which
to think about the relationship between youth transitions and youth
cultures. We work through a tension in which young people’s lives are
marked by a new time culture that erodes the capacity to exert control
while at the same time they are working hard to develop new forms of
managing time.
Time in youth research
Some of the most pressing debates in contemporary youth studies

concern the timing of the transition to adulthood. The patterns are
clear, showing how the key markers used for much of the twentieth
century in the West to define adulthood – finishing education, leaving
the parental household, entering full-time ‘career’ work, the associated
financial independence, and having children – are occurring at a later
age, if at all, for more and more people (Dwyer and Wyn 2001, Arnett
2004, Côté and Bynner 2008). In Europe, for example, although inter-
country variations in the age at which various transitions take place
remain, across the continent ‘the transition period to adulthood has
been considerably extended for younger cohorts, and the postponement
of most transition markers is observed’ (Buchmann and Kriesi 2011:
484). Although the patterns are less consistent, in general there is also
greater variation between people in the timing of these various transi-
tions markers, for example when people have their first child, and some
de-standardization of the ordering of transitions, for example a greater
number having a child before getting married (Buchmann and Kriesi
2011). Finally, some transitions, particularly leaving the family home,
are increasingly reversible (Biggart and Walther 2006, du Bois-Reymond
and te Poel 2006, Buchmann and Kriesi 2011).
The empirical evidence that the timing of transitions to adulthood
has been stretched, and become relatively more variable between indi-
viduals in the same age cohort is relatively uncontroversial (although see
Goodwin and O’Connor (2005) for a note of caution). How to interpret
this evidence is, however, hotly debated. One approach puts a largely
58 A Temporal Approach to Youth Studies
positive spin on this delay. For Arnett, a new stage of ‘emerging adult-
hood’ is now part of the standard life course. While acknowledging that
this new life stage brings some new anxieties, he argues it provides the
necessary extension of the period for exploration before people settle on
an adult identity appropriate to the demands of complex contemporary
societies (Arnett 2004: 7).
Others are more negative. The patterns that Arnett interprets pos-
itively are often derided in popular press, and sometimes but more
rarely in academic literature, as an ‘extended adolescence’. Twenge and
Cambell (2009), for example, suggest an ‘epidemic’ of narcissism among
the young: ‘Adolescence is the most narcissistic time of life, and is being
extended beyond all previous limits’ (2009: 234). Others develop models
that do not pathologize young people themselves in the way that these
claims of a narcissistic generation appear to, but nevertheless remain
largely pessimistic in their conclusions. For these scholars, we are not
seeing the rise of a narcissistic generation but a social system in which
young people are stuck in a holding pattern (Côté and Bynner 2008,
Ainley and Allen 2010).
One approach to untangling the positive and negative impacts of
these delayed transitions is to explore their impacts from the temporal
perspectives of young people themselves, asking how they think about
the future. Research, often drawing in part on qualitative methods, into
young people’s attitudes to the future is common. Some of this work has
provided qualified support to Arnett’s relatively positive understanding
of the impact of changes in the timing of transitions, proposing, for
example, that a ‘choice biography’ has come to represent the lives of
‘trendsetting’ young people (du Bois-Reymond 1998; see also Anderson
et al. 2005). The qualification is that even these new choices come as
part of an ongoing tension between legitimation and coercion; young
people are ‘forced’ to choose and justify the decision made even if they
do not feel ready to do so (du Bois Reymond 1998: 65) and even in situ-
ations so uncertain that the meaning of choosing is pushed to breaking
point (Bauman 1998: 86). Others have used research findings to contend
that it is only a small group who can live this type of choice biography,
those with the most social and economic resources. For many others,
young people’s temporal horizons are shrinking as planning for the
future becomes difficult (Brannen and Nilsen 2002, 2007, Threadgold
and Nilan 2009). Brannen and Nilsen (2002), for example, found that
the most common attitude among their research participants, young
people in Norway and Britain, is to continually defer making choices
about the future.
Research into youth cultures is also characterized by debates about

temporal questions. Arguably the central conceptual debate in this
branch of youth studies over the past two decades is between propo-
nents of a ‘subcultural approach’ built on the work of the Centre for
Contemporary Culture Studies (CCCS) at University of Birmingham in
the 1970s, and a ‘post-subcultural approach’ that came to prominence
in the 1990s and 2000s in part as a response to this work. While there
are many aspects to this debate (for summaries, see Blackman 2005,
Bennett 2011), a key marker of whether an approach is affiliated with
the post-subcultures or cultures approach is the claims made about
the temporal duration of young people’s involvement with the cultural
forms of interest.
Writing through the 1970s and into the 1980s, the scholars of the
CCCS argued that significant youth subcultures were comparatively
solid and long-lasting over time, due to their structural foundation;
youth subcultures were molded by sharp and long-standing divisions
within society, particularly class, and provided a sense of belonging for
working-class young people (men) as the types of community that had
been possible for their parents were dismantled by the hollowing out of
working-class communities (Cohen 1972, Clarke et al. 1976).
This subcultures framework came under sustained attack over the
1990s and 2000s, and was also defended, in large part on temporal
grounds. While some attention has turned recently to the way that
engagement in music scenes for example is no longer the preserve of
the ‘young’ (Bennett and Hodkinson 2012), cultures research after the
1990s has largely presented a picture of young people’s partial, multiple,
and relatively fleeting engagements with culture in contrast with the
almost total commitment that characterized the picture of subcultural
belonging developed by the CCCS. For some, the fragmenting power of
social change had won out, such that such relatively enduring identities
are now implausible (Redhead 1990). For others, the commitment over
time that members made to a subculture had been exaggerated in the
earlier work of the CCCS (Muggleton 2000).
Whether social change was positioned as a key driver or not, these
post-subcultural approaches shared a sense that the significant youth
cultures of today have a different temporality to that proposed by the
CCCS. This alternative temporality is explicit in one of most influen-
tial recent conceptualizations of youth cultures, drawing on the work
of the French sociologist Michel Maffesoli (1995) on new types of col-
lectivity, or the emergence of contemporary ‘tribes’. Neo-tribes do not
demand a long-term commitment (Bennett 1999). They represent a new
temporality, a deeply felt sense of connection with others but with a

short time horizon. For a scholar like Malbon (1999), this horizon of
engagement can shrink to the ‘present’ of the particular event such as
a rave.
The diminished importance of a shared future and a shared story of
the past to the constitution of youth cultural groupings is one of the
key planks by which post-subcultural approaches have questioned the
centrality of class (which was fundamental for the CCCS) to constitut-
ing divisions within youth culture. The youth cultural forms that are
significant for these post-subcultural scholars, in particular raves and
clubbing, are made up of young men and young women from a diver-
sity of ethnic backgrounds and class circumstances, creating new and
fast-moving hybrid cultural forms (Malbon 1999, Muggleton 2000, Huq
2006). In turn, it has been through attempting to show that, how-
ever else youth cultures may have changed, the most significant of
these cultures still maintain a basis in long-lasting social divisions that
the subcultures approach has been defended in response to this sus-
tained critique (Blackman 2005, Jefferson and Hall 2006, Shildrick and
MacDonald 2006).
In both cultures and transitions youth research, recent debates have
often been explicitly or implicitly about young people’s temporal orien-
tations and how these are linked to changes and continuities in social
structure. Yet the sociology of time is rarely drawn upon in any detail
to attempt to clarify or answer the questions raised. We believe it is
with temporal questions that the two traditions of youth research come
into closest overlap, and through which the sociology of youth can best
contribute to larger sociological questions about how society is chang-
ing and the consequences of these changes. Drawing explicitly on the
sociology of time can help in this task.
The sociology of youth and the sociology of time
The sociology of time can be complex, in part due to the intrinsic

complexity of the topic, in part due to terminological inconsistency.
For example, concepts used by different scholars that sound as if
they are opposed, such as of an ‘extended present’ or ‘contracted
present’, are meant to capture more or less the same thing, as are
‘timeless time’ on the one hand and ‘temporalized time’ on the other
(Rosa 2013: 293). All of these concepts are indexing the acceleration
of social change making the future harder to apprehend. As such,
beneath the conceptual complexity and inconsistency, a largely shared
picture of the changing temporality of late modern society can be

constructed.
A starting point for many contemporary theories of time is to show
that the ‘times’ that shape people’s lives are plural, not singular (Cavalli
1985, Adam 2004). Analytically separating these different temporalities,
for example the time of everyday life, the biography, and generations,
and understanding their complex interaction is the foundation of many
contemporary theories of time (Adam 2004, Rosa 2013). Following
Giddens (1984), Cavalli (1985), and others, Rosa (2013) suggests that
actors are shaped by three distinct but intertwined temporal perspec-
tives. The first is the temporality of their everyday lives, the pace and
rhythms and schedules that give a structure, or lack of structure, to
everyday existence. The second is the time of their ‘lifetime’, by which
Rosa captures the timing of transitions across the life course – questions
such as how long do I want to pursue my education, do I wish to start
a family before I finish studying, do I want to do this type of work for
the rest of my working life. Then finally is the time of generation, which
captures the temporal horizons in which people make sense of their own
lives in terms of their changing society, captured in sentiments such as
‘in my time things were different’, or the young person trying to con-
vince a parent to allow them to have a cell phone: ‘this is what people
my age do today, mum’. The interplay of these three dimensions creates
the sense of being in time for actors. We argue that understanding these
temporalities and their interaction can help to clarify the questions of
time at the heart of youth research.
A common claim in recent sociology of time is that the temporal
structures shaping the lives of new cohorts is different to that faced by
their parents. An influential way of characterizing this change is as a
process of ‘individualization’ (Bauman 2002, Beck and Beck-Gernsheim
2002, Woodman and Wyn 2015). Individualization is another term that
has invited confusion as it is used to reference quite separate and in
some ways contradictory processes. It is helpful to think of two distinct
waves of individualization. While some dimensions of individualization
have a long history, contemporary young people are building lives at the
height of a second and qualitatively different wave of individualization.
For Elias (2000 [1939]), at the center of classical modernity was the slow
emergence of a new type of standardization and, only seemingly para-
doxical, individualization. Modernity was characterized by an increas-
ingly complex set of interdependencies that demanded ever greater
self-control and personal attention to time management; momentary
inclinations had to be subordinated to synchronizing activities with
others through the time of the clock and calendar. For Elias (2000: 397),
this allowed the pace of change to increase but also to appear manage-
able, both for the political steering of social structure and in the personal
shaping of the individual life course; a growing sense of individual
autonomy and self-control was necessary to this new type of society.
It was this first wave of individualization that provided the context
for the development of an understanding of youth as a transition to
adulthood. Within the often sharp boundaries of a young person’s class
and gender position, the transition to adulthood meant facing questions
such as what career I should pursue, whom I should marry. The possibil-
ity of this type of life-course planning reached its zenith with the youth
of the post-Second World War baby boom, even as this generation’s life-
course patterns and their social movements would provide some of the
drivers for a new wave of individualization.
The most persuasive theorists of individualization argue instead that
the contemporary age is characterized by a second wave of individual-
ization that is ‘something very different’ from what it conveyed in the
modern era (Bauman 2002: xiv). This new phase of individualization
is shaped by an acceleration of social change, but an uneven accelera-
tion (Rosa 2013), such that forms of family life, while changing, cannot
contain the demands of change in the workplace, and educational insti-
tutions, while also changing rapidly, cannot keep up with the pace of
technological change. As such, contemporary life is characterized by
institutional desynchronization (Woodman 2012, Rosa 2013).
On the one hand, this new surge of individualization means that the
constraints increase to shape one’s own biography, as the responsibility
for managing the partial and contradictory demands made by institu-
tional desynchronization is left to the individual. On the other, the
possibility of planning for the future disappears, and the ‘temporal hori-
zons of perception narrow more and more’ (Beck 1992: 135). The late
modern young person faces a paradox: while planning for the future
is continually evoked by both individuals and collective representatives
(such as the government) as a principle of action, the actions taken belie
an underlying recognition that the present is the only temporal dimen-
sion over which a cognitive dominion is possible (Leccardi 2012a: 64).
As Leccardi (2012a) notes, this is very different from the open future
that the baby boomers imagined for their life course and which shaped
the social movements of their youth in the 1960s – this cohort could
imagine an alternative future and were confident they could shape it.
These changed generational conditions are also reshaping everyday
life. Everyday life in the temporal structures of high modernity was char-
acterized by a predefined, socially shared (with a sharp gender division)
time schedule, for example the 9–5 pm Monday-to-Friday work week, or

the expectation of full-time commitment to care demands for women
with children. In contemporary conditions economic and technological
change blurs the boundaries between paid work time and time for caring
and relationship building, and between weekdays and weekends (Rosa
2013: 236). Particularly sharply for young people, this removes individ-
ual temporal schedules from a structurally standardized shared pattern
(Woodman 2013). Time ordering is now done on the run; if work calls
an employee in at the last moment, or a deadline is suddenly moved
around, or an assignment falls due, then other plans are juggled. Long-
term or routine plans for socializing become more difficult. It is difficult
to plan to meet for lunch with friends every second Sunday, or to reg-
ularly attend a gig with friends and hence build a subcultural identity
with a select group of others around a particular cultural scene. Other
biographical commitments and temporal individualization too easily
intervene to make building the types of subcultural belonging proposed
by the CCCS difficult. Young people instead have to constantly renego-
tiate, using cell phones and social networking, shared plans to take part
in youth cultural forms (Lasén 2006).
This time sensitized lens on young lives can provide new ways to
think about youth transitions and cultures, and their overlap. This new
wave of individualization is still unfolding and is unequally felt, but is
shaping the lives of the contemporary generation of young people. As
young people juggle the demands of work, study, and relationships, each
of which threatens to demand an endless supply of devotion and care, it
is too simple to characterize young people, or particular groups of young
people, as either deferring the future or planning for the future (see, for
example, Anderson et al. 2005, Brannen and Nilsen 2007). Instead, their
investments in study can feel as if they are never enough to guaran-
tee job security, promotion, or possibly even a job; the time dedicated
to relationships, and, if and when the time comes, to raising children,
can never seem enough to guarantee a relationship will last, or to make
sure that a partner’s or children’s emotional health will not be affected
negatively.
These conditions push toward breaking point the notions of life
course planning and the idea of a transition to adulthood characterized
by finalized long-term commitments. This has led some to argue that
between the youth of the baby boomers and today we have witnessed
the emergence of a ‘new youth’ (Leccardi and Ruspini 2006) and a ‘new
adulthood’ (Dwyer and Wyn 2001). Within this framework, it is difficult
to see young people’s transitions as delayed or even emerging. If judged
on the criteria of what adulthood meant for the baby boomers, and the
criteria that have been embedded in modern developmental psychol-

ogy and much youth policy, a ‘finished’ adult identity in this sense will
continue to evade many of the new generation throughout their lives
(Woodman and Wyn 2015).
As well as reshaping their temporal orientations such that it can be
hard to imagine how commitments will unfold across the life course,
the temporal structures of late modernity impact on the everyday
lives of young people such that their cultural practices and the types
of relationships they can form are also reshaped. A young person
today may have a large network of acquaintances and friends, par-
ticularly in the age of social media ‘friends’. Yet extended periods of
time together at regular and scheduled intervals – the type of synchro-
nized time that allows a group of friends to attend regularly particular
events together – become more precarious in the face of the complex-
ity of other social and economic commitments in a desynchronized
world.
The growing domination of the short term over the long term is not
the consequence of people no longer caring about the future as such,
but that often only the short-term horizon of action makes sense. Rosa
(2013) uses the metaphor of trying to run up a slippery slide at a chil-
dren’s playground. If young lives are like this, stopping to deliberately
and cautiously make longer-term plans could be a catastrophic mistake;
first and foremost, the primary action must be to keep running, even if
it only keeps the runner in the same place.
This is not to reduce young people to the status of victims of their
times. Even in the structurally grounded theories of the CCCS, cultures
research has consistently highlighted the creative ways that young peo-
ple respond to and become part of shaping their social contexts. It is
in part through creative practices of consumption, and by reappropri-
ating technology that young people find ways to manage the juggling
act that they face (Lasén 2006, Silverstone 2006). Within the changing
and complex patterns of labor market and educational temporalities,
most young people still appear capable of constructing times-spaces
within which to practice forms of social and cultural engagement.
They also put into practice new ways of constructing biographies, in
tune with the high-speed society in which they live, and give signifi-
cance to new values valorizing flexibility and creativity (Leccardi 2012b).
However, it is important to remember that these new values cannot off-
set the weight of inequalities with which young people have to cope
(primarily of class, ethnicity, place, and, as we now briefly consider,
gender).
Gender, time, and generation
The temporal uncertainty shaping the lives of this generation does not
have the same impact on all young people. For example, there appear to
be gender-related differences in the way young people face this tem-
poral individualization. The transformations that have characterized
women’s biographies starting from the post-Second World War years
have been particularly rapid; in many countries, they have overtaken
men in tertiary education, with related gains in economic indepen-
dence and hence greater possibilities for identities not tied to the private
sphere (Kimmel 2000, Beck-Gernsheim 2002). However, this transfor-
mation of the existential horizons for young women has been only
partly accompanied by a complementary modification of men’s hori-
zons concerning responsibility for the management of family time. As a
result, the complex intertwining of the times of care and of paid work
on an everyday basis still remains a central characteristic of women’s
biographical narratives, for many even when they are young (Bryson
2007).
In a study of young people in Italy, young women but not young
men when asked to anticipate their futures recognized contradictions
between time demands of parenthood and employment, and that they
will likely need to reorganize priorities over time or face potential
burnout (Leccardi and Rampazi 1993). These young women recognize
they will likely face these contradictions but do not see a way in which
they can structurally or personally be solved, but only that it may be
possible to negotiate and manage them in their own lives as they sur-
face. Leccardi and Rampazi (1993) characterize these young women as
hybridizing in individualized forms the codes and demands of ‘pub-
lic’ and ‘intimate’ spheres in a way that most young men do not.
This hybridization does not lead to a stable hierarchy between the two
spheres but to ambivalence. For example, while maternity is increas-
ingly open to choice when considered in isolation, in the context of
other biographical demands, it is hard to find, or control, when is the
‘right’ time for parenthood. Young women today – differently from
previous generations of women – have to face the concrete risk of a
collision between social and biological clocks. As a matter of fact, and
differently from some other biographical decisions, maternity cannot
be postponed indefinitely. The two clocks, the biological and the social,
can easily be out of sync. The anticipation, in the here and now, of prob-
able biographic discontinuity is heightened for young women because
of continuing gendered inequalities.
Conclusion
Youth research has been shaped by two traditions that are built cen-
trally on questions about time, but this temporal foundation is yet
to be fully theorized. Identifying the changing temporal structures of
young lives, in which we argue a generational shift is visible, can help
youth researchers think about these questions and highlight an over-
lapping concern in duration, linearity, and intensity of investment in
‘youth’. In this chapter, we have attempted to untangle seemingly con-
tradictory claims about young people’s temporal orientations, arguing
that while in one sense new opportunities for transitions and cultural
engagement have been opened up by social change, the structures that
would allow young people to make meaningful plans or commitments
over the longer term have weakened.
Unfolding slowly over the long history of modernity was a new pos-
sibility of shaping biographical projects, even if this occurred within
highly constrained limits, and for some generations was interrupted by
catastrophic events, such as the ‘lost generation’ of the First World War.
The contemporary generation appears to be facing conditions that are
dismantling this type of temporal orientation. It is not that young peo-
ple no longer care about their own future or broader shared futures, or
that they no longer wish to build ongoing engagements in youth cul-
tures over time. Instead, for many, it is increasingly difficult to do so. If
young people are to build a future and a sense of belonging, this must be
manifest in different ways to how their parents did so. If their parents
grew up within a socialization model still based on the deferment of
gratifications for concrete future reward, this generation must cope with
an emerging new model based on the continual deferment of choices in
the face of uncertainty. Temporal analysis can help us in understanding
this generational change and its social consequences.
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6
Waiting for the Weekend? Nightlife
Studies and the Convergence of
Youth Transition and Youth
Cultural Analyses
Robert Hollands
Introduction
Over two decades have passed since MacDonald, Banks, and Hollands
(1993: 2) suggested: ‘One of the most significant tasks facing those
involved with the study of youth is to confront the “two traditions” that
have crystallized in research on youth in Britain’ – that of youth cultural
analyses and the study of youth transitions. Over the years, there have
been numerous discussions attempting to either reconcile differences
between these two traditions (see Gayle 1998, Cieslik and Pollack 2002)
or point out the continuing incompatibility of these approaches for the
study of youth (e.g., Cohen and Ainley 2000, Bynner 2001). At the same
time, debates between and within traditions have raged and resulted in
critiques, counter-critiques, and defenses of key concepts like transition,
subculture, post-subculture, and the ‘cultural turn’ (see MacDonald et al.
2001, Roberts 2003, Bennett and Kahn-Harris 2004, Blackman 2006,
Greener and Hollands 2006, Shildrick and MacDonald 2006, Bennett
2011), resulting in a somewhat fragmented youth studies field.
However, recent articles by MacDonald (2011) and Furlong et al.
(2011), rather than focusing on difference and incompatibility between
traditions, suggestively discuss possible points of convergence. Building
on this work, this chapter seeks to demonstrate how some strands of
work concerned with youth and nightlife can also help us think cre-
atively about where, and how, convergences might occur. While this
chapter looks at the specific contribution of nightlife studies (particu-
larly my own work over the past 20 years) in bringing together transition
69
70 Nightlife Studies
issues and youth cultural analyses, I am acutely aware that there is a

wider historical body of work that either has never fit easily within either
paradigm, or has sought to bridge traditions in some way. While I dis-
cuss some of this work early on in the chapter, I have not sought to do
this comprehensively, instead focusing on research on nightlife to make
connections.
The first section of the chapter poses wider questions of what we
mean by convergence, and what we expect to gain from it. This
is followed by a very brief outline of the key historical differences
between the two traditions, and a discussion of a few early attempts
to provide a more integrated approach, before turning to some more
recent discussions of convergence. The second part of the chapter seeks
to demonstrate both how and in what ways my own approach to
studying youth and nightlife (see, for example, Hollands 1995, 2002,
Chatterton and Hollands 2003, though also see Lloyd 2012 and Smith
2014 for some recent discussions) has contributed to our understand-
ing of a wider changing ‘youth condition’, thereby signaling some
salient points of commonality between traditions. In doing so, I specif-
ically focus on the role nightlife has played in structuring and creating
‘extended’ postadolescent work and leisure transitions, identities, and
inequalities in the modern period. The chapter concludes with a dis-
cussion and summary of four potential points of convergence, and
suggests a number of ways in which we might think through these
possibilities.
Bridging the gap? Convergence in youth transition and

youth cultural analyses
Recently, there have been a number of calls for increased dialogue and
convergence between youth transition studies and youth cultural anal-
yses (Furlong et al. 2011, MacDonald 2011). Furthermore, one might
agree that youth studies has advanced substantially as a subdiscipline
both theoretically and empirically over the years, and that the condi-
tions for engagement between the two traditions are more favorable
today. However, it is equally instructive to try and clarify exactly what
might be meant by ‘convergence’ and think through what advantages
might be gained by it. While most youth researchers now readily accept
that there are important links and connections between youth cultures
and transitions, they probably differ widely as to how such connections
should be expressed or made explicit.
Part of this debate concerns the degree to which youth studies can be
seen as a unified body of knowledge. Certainly, there are examples of
Robert Hollands 71
textbooks on youth that have attempted to present much of the litera-

ture under a unifying theory or at least a set of concepts – for example,
Furlong and Cartmel’s (2007) inventive use of risk and individualization
theory to make sense of a wide range of research on young people. At
the same time, this approach is still somewhat different from arguing
that all future studies of young people need to address both transitions
and cultural aspects equally, or be designed specifically with conver-
gence in mind. Additionally, we need to be clear whether we are talking
about theoretical, empirical, or indeed methodological convergence in
the field, three very different things. While theoretical convergence has
been suggested through the advancement of ‘social generation’ theory
(Wyn and Woodman 2006, Furlong et al. 2011), or encouraged through
the use of Bourdieu in the study of youth (Threadgold and Nilan 2009,
France et al. 2013), not everyone is convinced by such theoretical bridg-
ing (e.g., see Robert’s (2007) critique of social generation theory). Finally,
there has been too little discussion of how to overcome methodological
differences between youth cultural ethnographies and more quantita-
tive studies of youth transitions (though see Heath et al. 2009). In a
word, the convergence question is a complex one, having a number of
different facets.
Previous attempts discussing differences between the two traditions
and those seeking in some way to suggest points of convergence all fit
somewhere along this continuum, and one should not expect an easy
resolution here. As Table 6.1 illustrates (in an exaggerated ‘ideal-type’
fashion), there have been a number of ways that youth transition studies
Table 6.1 Youth transition–youth cultural analyses divide (ideal types)
Youth Transition Studies Youth Cultural Analyses
Focus on labor market, Focus on youth cultures, leisure, music, and

educational (and, to a lesser style (subcultural affiliation), later ‘club
extent, household) transitions cultures’, post-subculture
Focus on long-term transitions Focus on subculture as a ‘temporary’
and longitudinal data solution to class problems/postmodern ‘pick
and mix’ culture (agency)
Quantitative methods Qualitative methods (interviewing,
(questionnaires/surveys/existing participant observation/ethnography) or
data sets), policy driven style as ‘text’
Emphasis on structural Initial emphasis on class (CCCS) but
conditions/inequality also more poststructural approaches
emphasizing blurring of identities
Rigorous, ‘real issues’ sociology Interesting, but less scientific sociology?
and youth cultural analyses have historically distinguished themselves

from each other. The first and most marked difference has been their
separate focus on different areas of young people’s lives – that is, with
youth transitions studies looking largely at the labor market and educa-
tion (Roberts 1984, Banks et al. 1992), inequality (Bates and Riseborough
1993), and to a lesser extent the household (Jones and Wallace 1992),
and with youth cultural analyses focusing first on spectacular working-
class youth subcultures (Hall and Jefferson 1976, Hebdige 1979) and
latterly on notions of ‘club culture’ (Redhead 1990) and ‘post’ or ‘after’
subculture (Muggleton 1998, Bennett and Kahn-Harris 2004).1
There were of course notable exceptions early on that sought to cut
across such traditions (e.g., Hollands 1990, Blackman 1995, Willis 1977),
a couple of which we examine in more detail below. However, the main
point here is that many early studies often took place without any real
reference or recognition of the other tradition, and in some extreme
cases, there have been examples of open hostility between approaches
(see Cohen and Ainley 2000).
Part of the explanation of separate traditions here is not just a focus on
different aspects of young people’s lives, but the use of different meth-
ods and modes of data collection. Certainly, early on, some studies of
young people’s labor market and educational transitions admitted rely-
ing heavily on policy-driven, large-scale, quantitative, and longitudinal
data collection or existing data sets (Roberts 1997: 62), while youth
cultural analyses prioritized small-scale, qualitative, and ethnographic
methods (e.g., Hall and Jefferson 1976). As a consequence, youth transi-
tion studies were perceived as taking on a more ‘rigorous’ and scientific
stance, emphasizing the ‘structural’ and unequal character of youth,
while subcultural (and subsequently) post-subcultural studies tended to
emphasize cultural experience, identities, and subjectivities, resulting
in charges of them focusing on ‘minority’ spectacular styles, or stud-
ies lacking any real representative sampling concerning youth cultures
(Bennett 2011: 502 acknowledges this latter weakness). Again, there
have been numerous exceptions to the rule here, particularly more
recently. Furlong and Cartmel’s (2005) combined use of quantitative
and qualitative data in their study of class transitions and experiences
of Higher Education in Scotland is one example, while MacDonald has
consistently produced very rich ethnographic and qualitative studies of
the transitions of ‘poor youth’ (MacDonald et al. 2001, MacDonald and
Marsh 2005).
Looking further back, there are also a number of historical exceptions
to this kind of ‘either/or’ youth research, or what Furlong et al. (2011:
Robert Hollands 73
357) have referred to as a somewhat ‘false binary’ in youth studies. One

of the classic books in the field bringing together the study of youth
transitions and youth cultures in the education sphere is Paul Willis’s
Learning to Labour (1977). Similarly, my own work centering on trainee
identities and transitions into employment through the Youth Training
Scheme (see Hollands 1990) was equally concerned with the relation-
ship between youth cultures and transitions studies. Drawing on Cohen
and Bates’s (1984) work concerned with the changing nature of ‘cul-
tural apprenticeships’, and looking at a range of institutional sites such
as a changing work environment (the rise of the service industries and
decline of manual labor), education and training experiences, the home
and neighborhood, politics, and leisure and youth culture, my work
empirically posited the active creation of a range of new and fragmented
identities and transitions among the young working class.
Another concrete example of a youth scholar working across tradi-
tions has been an impressive body of research produced by MacDonald,
where he has inventively combined a concern with employment, edu-
cation, unemployment, and ‘poor youth transitions’ with an emphasis
on youth experience captured through qualitative methods (MacDonald
1997, MacDonald and Marsh 2005). Hence it is no surprise to find
MacDonald and Marsh’s (2005) book on ‘disconnected youth’ contain-
ing a chapter on ‘leisure careers’ and street life. He has also been a
fierce defender of the transitions perspective, arguing that many com-
mentators have misunderstood the tradition and what it has to offer
(Macdonald et al. 2001, MacDonald 2011). While maintaining the
importance of understanding youth transitions, MacDonald (2011: 438)
recently has hinted at a converging approach when he suggests we also
need to look at ‘how youth cultural identities shape and are shaped by
the transitions they make’.
A final example of a contemporary approach to convergence is an arti-
cle by Furlong et al. (2011) arguing for a reconciliation of transition and
cultural perspectives. In making their argument, they point initially to
the changing condition of youth in the contemporary period, and they
go on to make their case for convergence by drawing on three exam-
ples. Interestingly, the examples they use from this late modern context
to illustrate their point derive largely from the transition side of the
equation, with a focus on the educational context, particularly in post-
school education (2011: 362–363) and the changing youth labor market
(2011: 363). The one example of a ‘changing youth condition’ that they
do mention in the article that implies a youth cultural perspective is that
of the changing temporal structures of young people’s lives, resulting in
the timetables and rhythms of their lives becoming more ‘unstable and
fragmented’ (Furlong et al. 2011: 364). The article concludes by going
on to advocate a social generation approach, whereby the false binary
of transitions and cultures are collapsed, and youth is understood ‘in
the context of its historically specific material conditions and subjective
elements’ (2011: 361).
While much of this is highly suggestive, a few words of caution and
friendly critique are in order. Emphasizing that the changing youth
condition emanates largely from transitional sites (education and the
labor market), rather than from equally structural changes in culture
and leisure, can actually work to diminish the importance of youth
cultural analyses. In other words, the emphasis here is perhaps not so
much bridging but subsuming culture into the transition perspective.
For example, changing temporal structures here are seen largely as a
response to changing economic conditions, rather than having their
own ‘effects’ on transitions. As such, there is a tendency here of seeing
youth cultural activity as simply ‘identity’ and ‘agency-based’ reactiv-
ity, dependent on transitional changes, rather than being an active
force, equally determined by changes in consumption practices (see
Chatterton and Hollands 2003). Finally, there are continuing problems
with approaches that overemphasize the ‘newness’ of a changing youth
condition (see Arnett’s 2004 book in this respect), and the playing down
of class by some researchers in the spaces of both employment and
leisure (see Winlow and Hall 2009, who also make this critique).
The contribution of nightlife studies for understanding

changing youth transitions/conditions
If one accepts that convergence between traditions is to be welcomed,

but that it has largely been viewed through a transitions lens (Furlong
et al. 2011: 356), it is incumbent to equally demonstrate how youth
cultural analyses can aid our understanding of both youth transitions
as well as wider changes in the ‘youth condition’. Before outlining four
main ways in which I believe it does this, it is crucial to justify why
nightlife studies, in particular, as an area of youth cultural analyses, has
been chosen to illustrate these linkages.
First, it might be argued that studies of nightlife have generally
focused on a broader section of the youth population (see, for exam-
ple, Hollands 2002, Chatterton and Hollands 2003), than say more
narrowly focused youth subculture studies did with its emphasis on
spectacular styles (Hall and Jefferson 1976, Hebdige 1979), or more
Robert Hollands 75
postmodern approaches looking at particular dance or music styles

(Redhead 1990). Additionally, postmodern inspired studies tended to
emphasize youth musical styles as ‘texts’ and ‘experiences’ rather than
look at the wider political economy context of say clubbing or night-
clubs (for instance, this criticism relates to the work of Malbon 1999).
Second, nightlife has been shown to be a highly significant element
of contemporary youth cultural practice. For instance, in some early
research in Newcastle, I demonstrated this by arguing that a high per-
centage of the 16–24-year-old population drink alcohol and go out on
nights out (around 80% of the age group go on nights out and 98% of
the sample drank alcohol; see Hollands 1995). Finally, there is now a
significant body of research on nightlife to draw upon, including recent
work by Lloyd (2012) and Smith (2014).
My argument is that nightlife studies contribute to our understand-
ing of youth transitions and a changing youth condition in four main
ways: first, they provide important empirical evidence of the changing
social condition of youth, especially in revealing ‘extended postadoles-
cent’ transitions and identities (Hollands 1995; also see Smith 2014).
Second, particular studies (Chatterton and Hollands 2003) remind us
that youth cultural activity and consumption, like transitions, is not just
subjective and freely chosen, but is structured and/or ‘disposed’ by eco-
nomic, political, and social forces. Third, some nightlife studies explore
new forms of leisure-based spatial inequalities and distinctions among
youth (Hollands 2002). Finally, some recent studies show how nightlife
activity and identity are actively influencing wider youth transitions (see
Chatterton and Hollands 2003, Lloyd 2012, Smith 2014).
Nightlife and changing/extended transitions

First, nightlife studies have provided some solid evidence that youth
cultural activity has become part of the new ‘condition of youth’
mentioned by Furlong et al. (2011: 356), particularly with respect to
contributing to ideas about extended transitions and the development
of a new postadolescent condition (see Arnett 2004). As early as the
mid-1990s, Hollands (1995: 1) argued:
Rapid economic and educational change, delayed transitions into

marriage and separate households, declining communities, and the
availability of new and diverse consumption lifestyles, have resulted
in a prolonged or ‘post-adolescent’ phase whereby traditional adult
roles cannot be so easily assumed . . .
While the initial roots of such a shift were seen largely in economic
terms, this early work revealed not just labor market change, but also
the beginning of a cultural transformation toward a postadolescent
state (Hollands 1995). If nightlife and ‘going out’ were becoming less
of a youthful ‘rite of passage’ and more of a permanent postadoles-
cent ‘socializing ritual’, then youth culture was becoming a central
force in interrupting ‘normal’ transitions into adulthood (Chatterton
and Hollands 2001).
This situation was beginning to have some contradictory, yet sig-
nificant, societal effects. For example, one effect here was that this
new postadolescent state allowed at least for the possibility of some
young people to step back and reconsider expected roles and transitions.
While the fragmentation of class identities was part of this, perhaps the
most dramatic shift here concerned a rethinking of traditional gender
identities. Hollands (1995: 85–89) noted the beginnings of a shift in
young women’s nightlife identities, with greater degrees of participa-
tion and importance, but also their role in highlighting the importance
of ‘women-only’ sociality in going out. Later studies have revealed more
dramatic gender transformations in the cultural realm (for instance, see
Harris 2004). This has contrasted somewhat with the literature on young
working-class men, with examples of ‘hyper-masculinity’ displayed
in the nighttime economy (Hollands 1995, Winlow and Hall 2006,
Nayak 2006), not to mention an adherence to more traditional work
and domestic transitions (McDowell 2003). While these two forms of
gendered transitions fit perhaps too neatly into a progressive/regressive
typology (they are clearly more mixed and nuanced for both young
women as well as men), the main point here is that gender identity
has not just been influenced by educational and employment shifts, but
by cultural change in the leisure sphere as well.
The structuring of nightlife activity

A second point of convergence between youth cultural analyses and
transition studies made by some nightlife studies (Chatterton and
Hollands 2003) is their questioning of the ‘agency-structure’ binary,
which has often been mapped onto these two traditions. Just as some
youth researchers have begun to see labor market and educational path-
ways as more complex and fragmented (Furlong et al. 2011), nightlife
researchers have emphasized the increasingly ‘structured’ nature of con-
temporary youth cultural activity and use of urban space (Chatterton
and Hollands 2003). While part of this latter emphasis is a corrective
to post-subculturalist proclamations about postmodern youth culture
Robert Hollands 77
being a ‘pick and mix’ affair (Redhead 1990), it also derives from a grow-
ing corporatization of contemporary leisure and consumption among
young people.
For example, in their study of nightlife in three UK cities (Bristol,
Leeds, and Newcastle), Chatterton and Hollands (2003: 37) note that
around two-thirds of pubs were owned by national/multinational com-
panies, with less than 10% being independently owned. Corporate
branding and theming have also standardized nightlife experiences,
while policing entry through the use of ‘style pickers’ and gentrifica-
tion symbols (Hae 2011) have restricted access and created a socially
differentiated market (see below). As such, these newly created ‘urban
nightscapes’ (corporately created commodified places/spaces) produce
more predictable and highly structured consumption experiences. Con-
trary to the notion that nocturnal youth cultural activity is simply a
matter of personal taste and is freely chosen, Chatterton and Hollands
(2003: 8) argue, paraphrasing Marx: ‘youth make their own nightlife but
not under conditions of their own making’.
Nightlife and leisure inequalities

The structuring of the nightlife economy and the creation of a differen-
tiated market here result in a third area of convergence between research
on youth consumption and studies of youth transitions – and that is a
concern with inequality. My article ‘Divisions in the Dark’ (Hollands
2002) explored the unequal nature of nightlife consumption and ana-
lyzes various class-based distinctions based on looks, argot, clothing,
geography of the city, and types of premises frequented. For example,
note the verbal conflict between working- and middle-class youth on
nights out, as evidenced by the following quote:
They’re all like posh blonde birds who go round in puffa jackets and
things like that. They’ve got rich daddies and you can tell, because
they usually have a Moschino bag or something, and they walk
around with these silly handbags.
(Ben, 20, Leeds)
Similarly, there was also significant evidence of intra-class distinctions

based on style, choice of venue, and use of certain city nightlife spaces,
with upwardly mobile working-class youth distinguishing themselves by
stating: ‘I drink cocktails and I don’t drink in the Bigg Market’ (Julie, 19,
Newcastle). Finally, there were clear examples of the labeling of so-called
ordinary working-class youth consumers as ‘workies’ (‘people who work
9 to 5 . . . and they just want to go out and forget everything’ (Rachel,

19, Newcastle)), and a clear castigation of socially excluded young peo-
ple out in the city such as ‘townies, chavs, and scratters’: ‘They wear Ben
Sherman shirts and they go out and get pissed’ (Simon, 20, Newcastle);
‘ . . . have a shag and have a fight’ (Jane, 21, Newcastle); and ‘Nasty,
horrible creatures of society, who crawl out from under their stone on
Thursday ‘cos it’s dole day’ (Mark, 22, Leeds).
The significance of these examples for showing a convergence
between youth cultural analyses and youth transition studies concerns
the wider issue of how and where social inequalities and distinctions are
now displayed and acted out by young people. Youth inequalities are not
just found in transitional studies of employment and education, but are
also being constructed in the consumption and leisure spheres in the
spaces of the city (see also Bauman 1998), and involve what Bourdieu
(1984), among others, referred to as acts of ‘symbolic violence’. And frag-
mented class and intra-class identities are not just being forged in new
forms of work such as the retail sector, training, higher education, and
unemployment pathways (Reay et al. 2009, Roberts 2011), but are also
constructed at nighttime out on streets, in clubs, and in bars (Hollands
2002). These include representations of poor youth as ‘chavs’ and the
‘young underclass’, with a focus on consumption practices and the
‘appropriate’ use of urban city space now serving ‘as the locus around
which exclusion is configured’ (Hayward and Yar 2006: 17).
Waiting for the weekend?

Finally, recent research has suggested that prolonged involvement in
nightlife activity and nightlife identity is beginning to have an impact
on traditional forms of identity created through work and adulthood. A
branch of this work has focused particularly on the way in which youth
cultural capital might be utilized to carve out a work career (Reitsamer
2011). Other research on the changing relationship between youth iden-
tities, traditional forms of employment, and place are also suggestive
(Winlow and Hall 2009, Lloyd 2012, Smith 2014). For example, Lloyd’s
(2012) recent study of work and leisure identities of call center workers
appears to show that such monotonous postindustrial work is seen by
young people in terms of a ‘comfortable inertia’ or ‘extended present’
and that more of their everyday identity is now gained through con-
sumption. He cites fellow workers as saying: ‘We get paid on the Friday
and I just end up caning it over the weekend. I’m out Friday and Satur-
day night and I just can’t stop myself coz I’ve got money in my pocket’
(Bobby) and ‘when you do work in a call center environment, you do
Robert Hollands 79
tend to slow down the pace you do live and how far do you look into
the future’ (Liam) (Lloyd 2012: 8–11). Smith’s (2014) work also demon-
strates the impact extended leisure lives and identities among young
adults are having on their friendships, relationships, and household and
employment transitions.
Conclusion
The main argument of this chapter has been to suggest that youth
nightlife studies have much to offer in displaying potential links and
syntheses between youth cultural analyses and youth transition studies.
Additionally, it has been argued that the ‘changing social condition of
youth’ is not just limited to economic factors on the transition side,
but also involves an increased structuring of youth cultural activity
in the consumption sphere. This highlights the first possible point of
convergence – that is, as youth transitions have become more frag-
mented and individualized (Furlong et al. 2011), consumption activities,
particularly in the nightlife sphere, have become more structured and
socially divisive (Hollands 2002). In other words, as it is clear that both
transitions and youth cultures have structural and agency aspects, we
should not seek to separate these traditions along this dichotomous axis.
This raises a second point of convergence. If, in fact, there is a con-
vergence of structure and agency across the transition/culture sphere,
then it is equally the case that social divisions and distinctions among
youth are also being played out across both spheres. For example, class
divisions today are not simply ‘productivist’ in nature and limited to the
transitional side of youth experiences, but are also being powerfully con-
structed, enacted, and embodied in the consumption sphere (Bauman
1998). For example, constructions of the poor young working class
are no longer restricted to employment/unemployment, but are also
strongly expressed in the leisure/consumption sphere in terms of issues
of space and embodiment (see Hayward and Yar 2006, Nayak 2006).
Another useful example to illustrate this convergence concerns the
construction of new social divisions within higher education between
working-class, middle-, and upper-middle-class students. A recent PhD
study for instance found that class distinction and social divisions here
were as likely to occur in housing, leisure, consumption, and nightlife
(Mountford 2012) as they were in university classrooms (Reay et al.
2009).
This leads to a third area of convergence brought on by the need for
youth researchers to study transitions and leisure experiences of a wider
range of young people from different social backgrounds, in different

social positions and institutions. In effect, a further convergence of per-
spectives may occur through opening up youth studies to study what
has been called the ‘missing middle’ (MacDonald 2011, Roberts 2011)
and more research on ‘ordinary’ youth (Roberts 2012), so we build up
a much more nuanced and complex picture of how youth is differ-
entiated, rather than just generalizing about youth as a ‘generational
cohort’ (Furlong et al. 2011), or focusing on just the poorest sections of
the young working class (i.e., MacDonald 1997, MacDonald and Marsh
2005).
Finally, this brings us to a fourth point of convergence, and that is the
development of new theoretical paradigms in youth studies. Are there
overarching theoretical frameworks developing that can conceptually
bring together disparate studies of youth transitions and cultures? While
I have already hinted at some of the problems social generation theory
has in recognizing social divisions among youth, it has sought to put
forth some interesting ideas dissolving some of the dichotomies dividing
transitions and cultural analyses (see Wyn and Woodman 2006). Devel-
opments in the application of Bourdieurian theory have also shown
some promise in challenging the structure/agency dichotomy, recon-
ciling the relationship between different institutional sites (or ‘fields’ to
use his terminology), and holding on to the importance of class divi-
sions, while also recognizing their complex formation, maintenance,
and effects (see Threadgold and Nilan 2009, France et al. 2013).
The stage at which we, as a community of youth studies researchers,
can agree on these different points of convergence is crucial, as it is this
that will essentially help us decide how new bridges between traditions
might be formed. The aim of this chapter has been to make a small
contribution to this ongoing debate about not only how we understand
youth, but where we might want youth studies to go in the future.
Note
1. To provide some context to the following discussion here, Redhead (1990)
defined ‘club cultures’ as globally based youth formations grounded in the
media/market niches of contemporary dance music, while Bennett (2011:
494–495) borrows from Muggleton’s (1998) discussion of post-subculture as
a pick-and-mix proliferation of youth styles that have developed in relation
to the media, market, and postmodern sensibilities. However, Bennett (2011)
is also keen to point out that there are a range of positions taken up within
the ‘after-subculture’ debate, and that not all criticisms of the general perspec-
tive apply equally to all studies associated with ‘after’ subculture. A key issue
Robert Hollands 81
here however concerns whether post-subcultural perspectives in general have

in fact widened, rather than narrowed, the gap between youth transition and
youth cultural studies.
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7
Transitions, Cultures,
and Citizenship: Interrogating
and Integrating Youth Studies
in New Times
Anita Harris
Introduction
Current ways of thinking about young people are increasingly focused

on how they achieve self-identity and negotiate new pathways to and
formations of both youth and adulthood, given the de-standardization
of the life course, the radical changes in education and employment,
and the expansion of the domains of culture, leisure, and consumption
(Furlong and Cartmel 2007). Both so-called ‘transitions’ and ‘cultures’
perspectives attend to this question of how young people today achieve
recognition, coherence, and meaning, albeit with different emphases.
This chapter suggests that a focus on youth citizenship, that is, the
ways young people operate and are recognized as competent social and
civic actors, allows us to fruitfully cash out the connections between
these approaches as well as reflect on the limitations of working within
these dominant paradigms. It suggests that framing a research agenda
around the issues that citizenship thinking prompts, such as partic-
ipation, belonging, and recognition, also enables an opening out of
youth studies beyond the intellectual histories and debates of the Global
North and avoids arbitrary designation of different cohorts of youth for
different kinds of research.
There is increasing momentum around the notion that young people
are constructing new civic identities and strategies through individu-
alized and transient participation in creative or leisure practices, taste-
based communities, and the new media and technology landscape. This
chapter explores this perspective in particular, suggesting that there is
84
Anita Harris 85
considerable value in investigating the civic nature of contemporary

youth cultural practice in order to take up the challenge of under-
standing recognition, participation, and belonging in times of risk and
self-making. It suggests however that in order for this thesis to encom-
pass the range and complexity of contemporary youth experience, it
must account for ordinary as well as spectacular youth cultural practices,
the enduring significance of social stratifications, and the complexities
around reconciling new civic practices with enduring models and ideals
of good and efficacious citizenship. Ultimately, it concludes that such
an approach can be productive for youth studies when it enables a con-
ceptual broadening beyond the historically, culturally, and politically
specific British traditions in which the paradigms of transitions/cultures
are embedded.
The term ‘citizenship’ is of course highly contested, but the concept of
youth citizenship has been well established as a potential critical meet-
ing point between analyses of youth cultural and leisure practices and
theorizing about transitions. As Jones and Wallace (1992) argued over 20
years ago, citizenship is a valuable holistic and processual concept that
can draw together different frames of analysis in the sociology of youth.
This chapter builds on their approach, extending the investigation of
young people’s accrual of rights and responsibilities within the tripartite
Marshallian model to examine the substantive dimensions of youth citi-
zenship more deeply. As Isin (2008: 17) notes, recent work in citizenship
studies has moved away from a focus on legal and formal status, rights,
and knowledge toward investigations of ‘routines, rituals, norms and
habits of the everyday through which subjects become citizens’. This
chapter pays particular attention to the broad citizenship processes of
participation, belonging, and recognition. Participation is about engage-
ment in society and constructing a publicly minded self, belonging is
about membership and social and civic bonds, and recognition is about
having one’s competencies and rights acknowledged. Here I draw on the
work of Thomson and colleagues (2004: 237), and others, who suggest
that citizenship should be seen as the activities young people already
engage in (for participation, belonging, and recognition) rather than a
state to be arrived at when economic independence is achieved.
Citizenship, transitions, and cultures
Participation, belonging, recognition, and rights have typically been

seen as part of the conventional transition-to-adulthood story: young
people become effective, active, and legitimate members of society when
86 Interrogating Youth Studies in New Times
they reach certain milestones. In addition, through guided learning

imparted by knowledgeable adults, young people are educated about cit-
izenship for their future adult status. But contemporary theorizing about
youth citizenship is now necessarily situated within a new transitions
framework, which addresses the ways that the socioeconomic forces of
globalization, deindustrialization, risk, and individualization have radi-
cally altered the nature of pathways to adulthood. Young people today
must negotiate the new terrain of a life course that is unpredictable,
insecure, and self-managed, and one in which the conventional mark-
ers of adulthood such as steady employment, independent living, or
parenthood are no longer guaranteed, desired, or achieved in linear and
completed ways.
Diverse and more complex transition patterns are challenging the
conventional notion of a clear-cut entry point to ‘adulthood’ (Wyn
2013: 60). Traditional sources of collective identity such as family, place,
and work have also weakened in relevance (Furlong and Cartmel 2007:
3, Wyn 2013). The shift from industrial to postindustrial society has
changed the nature of work, with the widespread emergence of flexi-
ble and precarious employment in place of a career for life (Wyn 2013:
59). There has been an extension of the period for which youth are
dependent on their families and a reduction in welfare support across
postindustrial societies. This has an impact on young people’s capacity
for economic security, which is a conventional pillar of citizenship, but
more broadly results in an inability to achieve the stability associated
with adulthood in previous generations (Wyn 2013: 61).
Citizenship practices have themselves become individualized projects
operationalized throughout the life course, and are conducted in the
absence of traditional structures of associational and civic life. This is
a result of the fragmentation of traditional civic life, reduced trust in
the political institutions of the nation-state, and an increased empha-
sis on individual choice and action (Putnam 2000, Beck and Beck-
Gernsheim 2001). Under these conditions, young people are becoming
‘self-actualizing citizens’ (Bennett 2003): disengaging from national pol-
itics and turning away from conventional associational life, but person-
alizing and globalizing citizenship by emphasizing their own behavior
in terms of lifestyle and consumption and creating informal networks
for fluid forms of action.
The transitions model is deeply linked to ideas about the sequen-
tial development of citizenship capacity and entitlement. But now
youth researchers are obliged to think about young people’s citizen-
ship differently, disconnecting it from outdated markers of adulthood
Anita Harris 87
that are increasingly elusive, accomplished in nonlinear ways or per-

haps in ways that are ever more class-stratified. Thus, work on tran-
sition is increasingly obliged to grapple with questions of citizenship,
including some of its more abstract aspects: that is, how do young
people in new times achieve recognition, belonging, and participation
when conventional processes, milestones, and institutions that once
facilitated economic independence, recognition of competencies, pub-
lic self-making, collective identification, and civic engagement have
collapsed?
Contemporary theorizing about youth citizenship is also necessar-
ily situated within a new youth cultures environment. Youth researchers
have long seen young people’s engagement in youth cultures and sub-
cultures as forms of belonging, participation (both in boundary work
to form an ‘in-group’ and as political acts of resistance), or efforts for
recognition. However, there has been a tendency to perceive these as
temporary or as rehearsals for more mature or formal kinds of associa-
tional activity that will ensue upon adulthood, as mostly interesting for
their semiotic value, or even sometimes as divorced from the structural
conditions within which they are enacted. What we must grapple with
now, however, is the enduring importance that the domains of culture
and leisure have in the lives of the current generation, and their signif-
icance as a space of civic life and for the achievement of competencies
and coherence.
Style, consumption, and personal expression through image and
lifestyle are increasingly important to young people as more traditional
forms of identification recede and new patterns of transition emerge.
Leisure, popular culture, and spaces of sociality are becoming integral
in creating social belonging. Young people live in an interconnected
world and inhabit global cultures (Nayak and Kehily 2008: 24), and
their identities and cultural practices are strongly influenced by the
global media and the mediated spaces where they can exchange infor-
mation and connect with other youth. It is increasingly argued that as
conventional life-course narratives and indeed possibilities drop away,
meaning is now created in the consumer market. Theorists such as
Best (2009) and Mojola (2014) have argued that it is as consumers
of global and intra-regional popular culture flows that young people
claim membership in the larger community, and achieve a sense of
themselves and are recognized as active and independent citizens. At
the very least, the spaces of culture, media, consumption, and leisure
have become increasingly important to the ways young people are able
to express themselves, to take social action, and to enact community,
especially in light of the changing structures and meanings of those

more conventional citizenship markers such as work.
The concept of citizenship can enable links between knowledge about
the complexity of transition and the expansion of the domains of
culture, consumption, and leisure, facilitating understanding of the
achievement of an efficacious, coherent self in late modern times.
Looking at young people’s transitions and cultures through the lens
of citizenship can facilitate insights into the ways young people are
newly enacting display of competencies, social action, identification
with community, and public self-making. How are youth researchers
doing this work through notions of participation, belonging, and
recognition?
Bridging transitions and cultures: Participation
Some current youth citizenship research that bridges transitions and

cultures looks at the new ways young people are taking social
action and positioning themselves as participants in political life.
This involves perhaps the most conventional interpretation of citizen-
ship as participatory action, and is about understanding how current
socioeconomic conditions cultivate self-styled, cultural tactics for polit-
ical action and expression. This approach accounts for the emergence
of cultural and individualized strategies for participation in times of
institutional fragmentation, unpredictability, and self-fashioning of the
life course.
For example, Weller (2007) notes that cultural, lifestyle, and inter-
est groups are emerging as new ways for young people to stake their
political and civic identities. The importance of these groups grows
in times when categories such as gender, ethnicity, and class appear
to have fragmented and, in particular, they can no longer mobilize
around work given the volatility of employment and the loss of career
as the foremost basis for identity. There is considerable evidence that
young people are turning away from classic civic and political asso-
ciations and institutions, including unions, community organizations,
and political parties. There is a new biography of citizenship among
this generation, characterized by ‘dynamic identities, open, weak-tie
relationships and more fluid, short-lived commitments in informal per-
meable institutions and associations’ (Vinken 2005: 155). Young people
become involved in individual rather than collective action in transient,
issue-based engagements (Bennett 2003), especially ones that resonate
with ‘life’ or ‘post-materialist’ politics (Giddens 1991). When young
Anita Harris 89
people participate in social and political action, this is increasingly

through ‘emotional, expressive and aesthetic forms of engagements’
(Siurala 2000:4) that involve an intensification of action in the spheres
of culture, consumption, and lifestyle (see Furlong and Guidikova 2001,
Micheletti and Stolle 2008, Pfaff 2009).
There is an argument that as older structures of civic life and col-
lective identification disintegrate, youth cultures take their place. For
example, Pfaff (2009: 183) finds that youth cultures are now serving as
agencies of civic socialization for young people. She documents how
young Germans increasingly learn civic competencies – such as a capac-
ity to engage in debates, gaining knowledge about issues and civic and
political structures and processes, and increasing confidence in express-
ing political goals and opinions – by participating in youth cultures.
Honwana (2012) similarly analyzes the dynamic, creative ‘waithood
subcultures’ of young people across a number of African nations that
articulate into transformative political action. Youth cultures have par-
tially filled the space left empty by the disintegration of older structures
of civic life and formal associational identities.
Capturing the ways that youth cultural life shapes citizenship may
be especially important in understanding emergent participatory strate-
gies of those who have not typically been on the ‘youth cultures’
radar. Informal friendship networks are important sources of support
for immigrant-background Australian youth in establishing participa-
tion (Khoo 2009). There is evidence that the creation of spaces where
‘ethics and aesthetics meet’ (Stephenson 2010: 11) is especially valuable
to minoritized youth. Emerging research shows how young Muslims
in Australia and elsewhere are working within the domains of leisure,
consumption, and socioreligious peer communities, drawing upon cre-
ative skills and aesthetic expressions to articulate social concerns, engage
publicly, achieve recognition, and forge a sense of loose community
and belonging (Harris and Roose 2013, Parker and Nilan 2013). These
practices of citizenship have mostly played out through local, informal
initiatives, such as radio shows, fashion design groups, music and the-
ater activities, sporting events, blogs, and social media and Web-based
activities (Madkhul 2007: 27).
Belonging
Another way youth citizenship approaches link transitions and cultures

is through a focus on new forms of belonging. There is a revival of inter-
est in youth cultures as spaces where alternative forms of belonging
are developed in light of the challenges young people face in achiev-

ing membership in conventional ‘adult’ life. Youth cultures are seen as
sites of belonging where young people can get together and debate social
issues, enact alternative social arrangements, and support one another
(Siurala and Guidikova 2001). For example, Tupuola’s (2006) work shows
how shared engagement in and production of music and taste cul-
tures can forge solidarities among Pasifika youth across New Zealand,
the United States, and the Pacific Islands. Her research illustrates how
young people’s mutual interest in and debates over consuming and pro-
ducing a distinctly Pacific hip-hop creates opportunities for trans-Pacific
community building.
Youth cultures may be ever more important in an environment where
young people are denied the capacity to forge traditional adulthoods,
and yet are increasingly under the purview of the state and scrutinized
for the exhibition of adult responsibility. For example, Riley, Morey, and
Griffin (2010: 48) draw on Maffesoli to argue that cultures such as the
UK electronic dance scene can constitute new participatory ‘spaces of
autonomy’ because they allow participants to determine their own kinds
of values, relationships, and activities without having to engage with
institutions associated with governance. Riley et al. (2010: 49) describe
these as temporary forms of community that orient around the values
of sociality and sovereignty and produce ‘pleasure citizens’.
Other research has looked at youth cultures and belonging in the
context of new media and especially social networking. For example,
boyd (2007) argues that social network sites constitute youthful coun-
terpublics; that is, they are the new sites for belonging and participation
for young people as traditional public spaces for engagement and delib-
eration disappear or are transformed. She suggests that social network
sites are places where young people ‘write themselves and their com-
munity into being’ (2007: 13–14) in view of an audience, and that they
do this online because they have very little access to real public spaces.
While it may be debatable that young people’s social media use reflects
a desire to engage publicly in matters of the common good (boyd 2007:
21), there is an argument to be made that social networks do more than
simply bring youth together momentarily through taste or narcissistic
self-promotion. Hsia and Smales (2011) show how young Indonesian
women working as maids in Taiwan use social media to develop sup-
port networks and construct shared political analyses of their working
conditions. Other research shows how young people’s involvement in
social network sites reveals ‘articulations of connectivity that appear to
be crystalizing over time’ (Robards and Bennett 2011: 314). This suggests
Anita Harris 91
wider, fragmented, and more permanent forms of community than had

previously been imagined.
Recognition
Finally, the notion of citizenship is employed to link transitions and

cultures through investigations of new processes of recognition. Being
recognized as an adult and an entitled citizen has typically meant
demonstrating economic independence, which is imagined to be
achieved and fixed at a particular life stage post-adolescence. But where
does this leave young people today, for whom such economic autonomy
remains precarious, or elusive (Furlong and Cartmel 2007)?
There is now a body of work on the ways young people deal with
the new transition environment by achieving recognition and compe-
tencies through youth cultures. These can create alternative sources of
economic and social capital, including alternative careers, but also help
young people at the margins of the new education and labor markets
cultivate legitimacy. For example, Stauber’s (2010: 130–131) research on
the Goan trance scene shows how it assists young people to manage
‘insecure transitions’, assisting those who are outside formal education
and employment to not give up on work and lifestyle plans. It delivers
what she calls ‘manageability’ by allowing participants to feel they have
creative control over their identities. Most significantly, it allows a sense
of coherence and meaningfulness in a community of others who can
recognize the legitimacy of its members’ endeavors. Similarly, Thomson
and colleagues’ (2004: 228) report from their UK research with young
people alienated from education found that they ‘creatively developed
their leisure identities by engaging in club culture which enabled them
to develop alternative careers, to rework traditional boundaries and
to access cultural and social capital’. This gave their participants the
‘experience of responsibility, competence and recognition’.
These approaches have been very helpful in thinking through how the
study of youth cultures can interlink with transitions research through
the frame of citizenship. They offer insights into the ways leisure and
culture have become important spaces for participation, belonging, and
recognition in the new transitions context. However, they have some
limitations which also must be unpacked if youth studies is to fruitfully
move forward in this synthesizing vein. These include a tendency to
focus on the spectacular, insufficient regard for social stratification, and
an implicit assumption that these practices ought to articulate into ‘real’
civic and political engagement.
Limitations and challenges
In spite of a long-standing critique in youth studies of overemphasis

on the spectacular (see Clark 1981), research into the role of youth cul-
tures in the shift toward new kinds of participatory practice and new
communities still tends to focus on highly visible subcultures such as
hip-hop, dance, heavy metal, punk, riot grrrl, skaters, goths, or gangs.
And yet there is considerable evidence that most young people are not
members of such groups, and, further, that their forms of culture and
leisure practice are also part of the picture of the new citizenship biog-
raphy. There remains space here for more attention to the ‘excluded
middle’ (Nairn et al. 2006): young people who are not necessarily the
most marginalized or the most well resourced, and also those who draw
upon more everyday cultural resources to enact belonging or social
engagement.
There is a case to be made for looking more closely at young people’s
everyday cultures in theorizing citizenship in a new transition context.
For example, Harris and Wyn (2008) have found that young people
do not tend to identify with specific youth cultural groups, and yet
their forms of belonging and participation are shaped by youth culture
resources and peer networks and expressed in everyday, informal ways.
Vromen and Collin (2010) draw on Bang’s concept of ‘everyday mak-
ers’ to investigate ‘ordinary youth’ who are engaged in individualized
or micro-participation enabled by local cultural resources and interests.
They argue that ‘young people see the greatest potential in everyday
issues-based, localized and youth-led processes that are culturally rele-
vant and integrated into young people’s lives’ (Vromen and Collin 2010:
109). Young people’s own intimate networks of friends and family take
on a special importance in cultivating connections, engagement, pos-
sibilities for deliberation, and development of competencies. As Roker
(2008) notes, young people become civically engaged primarily through
family and friends, whether or not they are members of identifiable
subcultural collectives.
Another challenge is a tendency in research bridging youth cultures
and transitions to focus on the more positive practices of recognition,
competence, and belonging that youth cultures facilitate. However,
youth cultures continue to be shaped by, and indeed can entrench
as well as help youth make sense of, structural positioning and class
(im)mobilities. Just as we need to know how dance scenes or online
communities enable young people to build networks, maintain a sense
of coherence, forge alternative careers, and create spaces for expression
Anita Harris 93
and connection, we also need to consider how youth cultural practice

operates for those marginalized from some leisure opportunities, and
some of its less productive outcomes. This involves acknowledging that
‘youthful consumer culture is not equally available to all and that this
has much to do with the material bases, and consequences of, transition’
(Shildrick and MacDonald 2006: 133).
There is now a good body of work investigating socioeconomic con-
straints that prevent some young people from accessing some leisure
activities or cultural identities, which provides a powerful corrective to
tendencies to generalize about young people’s undifferentiated immer-
sion in leisure and consumption opportunities. Nayak (2003) and
Shildrick and MacDonald (2006) have researched local youth cultures in
the UK that provide meaning in the lives of young people who are out-
side both new transitions and the creative solutions some others have
achieved, but that also lock them into poverty, crime, social isolation,
and immobility. In the United States, Nolan and Anyon (2004) suggest
that the growth of a population of under-skilled mainly Black youth
and the rise of the prison industry intersect now with particular youth
cultures in ways that chiefly cultivate young people for incarceration.
Harris’s (2013) research on young people in working-class Australian
neighborhoods shows how some use youth culture to forge a sense of
connection and entitlement to their local place in ways that provision-
ally solve their immediate transition problems, but do little more than
this. Some youth had a strong sense of local belonging and consider-
able power as locally recognized ‘citizens’ (figures who were known,
respected, and sometimes feared by other members of the community,
a status that was often handed down through families that had lived in
the area for several generations). But their position as Bauman’s (1998)
‘locally bound’ meant that their very specific practices of connection,
rights, expression, and ownership were both highly stigmatized exter-
nally and difficult to scale up. These studies indicate that there are many
young people involved in local cultures of the disenfranchised who do
not have the economic or cultural capital to either adjust to new tran-
sitions or create alternative, productive activities for recognition and
participation.
Finally, it is critical to consider youth cultural practices for their
intrinsic value rather than imagining them as always leading to bet-
ter kinds of citizenship. For example, there has been some research on
young people’s use of social network sites or involvement in alterna-
tive communities that suggests that what they learn here can be a kind
of entrée into or rehearsal for more conventional citizenship practice.
These cultures are valued insofar as they can lead to the formation of
collective activities focused on more traditional civic issues and behav-
ior (see Burgess et al. 2006: 2), train young people in the conventions
of deliberative democracy, or help facilitate an interest in public issues.
Similarly, some of the work on the ways youth cultures give young peo-
ple capital or skills that can be transferred into ‘real’ jobs also takes this
‘apprenticeship’ approach.
However, this can betray a kind of teleological thinking that fails
to map on to the new transitions environment. To see young peo-
ple’s acts of participation, belonging, and recognition as ‘rehearsal’
means holding on to a conception of citizenship as a state to be
arrived at or a status to be achieved in the future. To some extent, this
approach remains burdened by some of the limitations of a conven-
tional transition perspective. While new civic practices are accounted
for, a fixed arrival point of adult citizenship, with the conventional
citizenship skill set, remains the imagined outcome. It also involves
making normative assumptions about citizenship that may not sit eas-
ily with the barriers to more traditional kinds of active participation
that exist because of this new transition environment. Indeed, struc-
tural exclusions and precariousness can see young people’s efforts to
use cultural resources to engage in political processes or find a place
in the new labor markets having the reverse, ‘de-citizen-izing’ effect (see
Shearer’s (2012) research on skaters becoming disillusioned activists).
There is also a concern that young people who do not or cannot
articulate their subcultural capital (Thornton 1995) into ‘good partici-
pation’ and good ‘transition management’ are constructed as a problem
population, especially by policy-makers, practitioners, and researchers
focused on at-risk youth, as though this is a matter of personal choice
or capacity, rather than the absence of good ‘real’ jobs, and a robust
public sphere.
Clearly, there is a need to relinquish a desire to only see these as
acts that will lead to better engagement, more formal kinds of recog-
nition, stronger civic bonds, and better job skills. It also means asking
the questions: what if they lead to undesirable places (e.g., into antiso-
cial politics); what if they do not lead anywhere, or, at least, nowhere
that youth studies scholars recognize? There are then some risks youth
researchers have to take to be open to these contingencies. Guidikova
and Siurala (2001: 9–10) have argued that ‘ill-adapted structural con-
ditions of youth transitions . . . unlock peer dynamics and (sub)culture
environments which generate new types of relationships, outlooks and
life expectations, as well as impetus for social action taking “strange”,
Anita Harris 95
unfamiliar ways’. They suggest that youth researchers have to be open

to this unfamiliarity rather than too quickly resorting to comfortable
narratives of transferability.
With these limitations and challenges in mind, what might be the
enduring value of a citizenship approach that foregrounds participation,
belonging, and recognition in the context of thinking about what youth
studies is and what it can do? I would conclude with two key benefits:
first, it can enable youth researchers to ask different kinds of questions
about young people who have been approached in research in rather
rigid ways. Youth studies has sometimes been locked into designat-
ing some young people for transitions research and others for cultures
research, as though grindcore fans do not also need to work, or middle-
class, middle-of-the-road undergraduates do not also engage in cultural
practice. Thinking about practices and possibilities of citizenship rather
than transitions and cultures can only enable more nuanced research
directions.
Second, to think about participation, belonging, and recognition
instead of transitions or cultures allows youth studies to move out-
side of specific intellectual histories and debates that sometimes serve
to unhelpfully delimit what the field is. To perpetuate these frameworks
is to keep youth studies comfortable, familiar, Anglocentric, and indeed
as ‘our’ tradition. It is critical to move toward new directions for the-
orizing that allow greater opening out to more inclusive, less loaded
conceptual frameworks relevant beyond the Global North. Notions of
participation, belonging, and recognition that are embedded in sub-
stantive conceptualizations of citizenship, while not innocent, might
be sufficiently unburdened by specific intellectual histories to spark
this work.
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8
Bourdieurian Cultural Transitions:
Young People Negotiating ‘Fields’
in Their Pathways into
and Out of Crime
Dorothy Bottrell and Alan France
Introduction
In this chapter, we focus on young people’s relationships to crime, show-

ing how pathways into and out of crime need to be understood as
both structural and cultural, being strongly influenced by the ecologi-
cal context in which young people find themselves. In the discussion
that follows, we draw on Bourdieu’s theorization of ‘fields’ as a means
of appreciating the complexity of the ‘ordinary’ everyday life of a group
of young people who have been officially designated as ‘problematic’.
Building on our recent work (France et al. 2012, 2013, 2014), we dis-
cuss how the ‘practical logic’ in terms of the field of ‘local places’ and
‘spaces’ is influential in shaping young people’s encounters with crime
in their neighborhoods. We propose that this ‘local field’ is in fact a
cultural field and a ‘youth field’ that intersects with the field of power
that is operating locally. In this context, we can then understand how
their encounters with crime form a set of cultural trajectories over time.
We propose that Bourdieu’s field theory therefore provides a way of
recognizing young people’s agency while refusing the reductionism of
accounts of dominant policy discourses. It then also helps ‘bridge the
gap’ between structural and cultural accounts of pathways into and out
of crime.
Our theoretical framework is based on young people’s accounts,
and we have sought to show how their perspectives challenge the
99
100 Bourdieurian Cultural Transitions
highly individualized explanations that dominate youth justice pol-

icy in England and other neoliberal states (France et al. 2012). In
these conceptions of the ‘causes’ of youth crime, cultural, social, and
political processes are largely marginalized (Bottrell et al. 2010). Key
explanations incorporated into this approach include rational ‘choice’,
intrapersonal ‘propensities to offend’, susceptibility to ‘delinquent peer
groups’, and ‘criminal careers’ (Farrington 1996). Within a ‘risk and pro-
tection’ framework, such ‘causes’ are taken as measurable social facts
established by developmental science for identifying discrete pro- and
antisocial groups and their successful or failed transitions into adult-
hood. Young people’s ‘pathways into crime’ are therefore perceived and
understood, especially in social policy, as being driven and shaped by
individualized factors over and above structural or cultural influences
(France et al. 2012). As we shall show, this approach fails to connect
or understand the complexity of how ecology in terms of structure and
culture operates in the lives of young people.
Research background
The research informing this chapter was part of the program ‘Pathways
into and Out of Crime’, funded by Economic and Social Research Coun-
cil, UK (Grant no. L330253001), conducted over three years in four sites
that were among the most disadvantaged neighborhoods in England.
The perspectives of 110 participants aged 11–18 were gathered through
life story interviews and case studies. Around half were 14 or 15 years
old, 81 were boys and 29 girls, and 26 were of African-Caribbean or
South Asian descent. All had been subject to one or more of three
interventions: being referred to a youth offending team by a court or
following a final warning penalty, being permanently excluded from
school, or given a statement of special educational need on the basis
of emotional or behavioral difficulties. The interviews concentrated on
young people’s encounters with crime and their life histories with a
focus on their relationships with family, peers, and professionals in com-
munities, youth justice, education, institutional care, and employment
(France et al. 2012). One of the most prominent themes of the interviews
was the ‘ordinariness’ of their lives of which crime was a part. While 56%
of the cohort had incurred formal youth justice interventions, most of
the cohort self-reported low-level offending such as shoplifting, stealing,
and some kind of fighting that had resulted in convictions of assault. But
more importantly, most of the young people encountered crime as wit-
nesses, victims, or offenders, most commonly all three. We have argued,
Dorothy Bottrell and Alan France 101
then, that managing crime in everyday life is a more relevant fram-

ing of the young people’s experience than the narrow focus on youth
offending.
Practical logic in local places
Bourdieu’s approach to the analysis of any field emphasizes practice as

embodied knowledge and action that is inseparable from context and
incorporates social and cultural structures. As structured social forma-
tions or situations, fields are ‘social microcosms’ (Bourdieu 1998: 138)
of the uneven distributions of capital and power, the product of histor-
ical struggles. In broad terms, agents are positioned as dominating or
dominated according to the economic, cultural, and social capital they
accumulate or hold. The field is then the specific space of positioned
competition where struggles over issues, perspectives, values, resources,
and legitimate ways of being and acting play out. In the discussion that
follows, we want to suggest that the concept of practical logic is helpful
in explaining the ‘agency’ of our young people although this needs to be
understood in relation to the ‘fields’ that the young operate in. Work-
ing with Bourdieu’s concepts then helps us not only to elucidate the
interconnectedness of micro and macro forces shaping young people’s
relations to crime but also to contribute to a productive convergence of
cultural and transitions perspectives in youth studies.
Bourdieu (1990) argued that the practical logic that informs the every-
day practice of social actors is a product of the logic of the field and
shapes the practical sense that social actors make of the situation. The
logic of the field is in turn a product of field conditions that gives rise
to specific ‘rules’. The practical sense of ‘how things are’ or how fields
work is informed by the ‘habitus’ or positioned dispositions that develop
over time and with experience of the fields in which everyday practice
is located. Bourdieu’s conceptualization of habitus does not preclude
reflexive decision-making and action. It assumes the intentionality of
social agents and our capacity for conscious deliberation, choice, and
self-analysis (Wacquant 1989: 45, Bourdieu 1999d: 615), though they
are always oriented to the conditions of the field that are the prod-
uct of its history, the state of play in the field, and the positions and
perspectives afforded in the field. However, Bourdieu (1998) proposed
that more often our everyday actions and decisions are not informed by
strategic calculation of costs and benefits. In everyday life, there are rou-
tine choices that do not require deliberation, and such routine decisions
appear spontaneous, ‘without consciousness or will’, based as they are in
‘a second nature’ (1990: 56) or ‘common sense’ (1990: 69). The practical
sense of how to choose or act derives from one’s social position, ‘implicit
or explicit learning’ (1993a: 76) within fields and institutions, including
the significant role of early learning in families that is itself produced
out of the social conditions that shaped parental class-oriented disposi-
tions (1999d: 511). There is, then, a ‘social necessity’ evident in practical
logic as the embodied knowledge of the ‘objective’ world in its divi-
sions of class, gender, and age, shaped by specific fields of practice (1986:
466–469, 1990: 68–69).
Taking local places as a principal field of practice of the young,
crime is a significant component of the logic of the field and a con-
dition structuring their cultural practices. Crime was highlighted in our
young people’s descriptions of the areas where they live, and it entered
their everyday life in the local spaces and places they frequented. They
described their areas as ‘bad’ or ‘rough’, or, as Ian put it, ‘just pretty rub-
bish’ because of the widespread petty vandalism and violent incidents.
James depicted a ‘really hard’ area with reference to the prevalence of
street fights, episodes of ‘riots’, and events such as the petrol bombing
of a primary school. Also common were drug use and dealing, robberies,
and car-related crime – theft, joyriding, street racers doing ‘burnouts’,
cars crashed and burned out or ‘rebirthed’. Whether or not the young
people were involved with the youth justice system, the prevalence
of crime was a constant yardstick for situating their neighborhoods.
This comparative understanding of locale could then also be a basis for
feeling safe despite their attunement to elements of danger in the envi-
ronment. Compared to where he had previously lived, James felt safer
though still vulnerable to victimization:
You won’t get like beaten up as much, so if I was like in ‘Hightown’

right, because Hightown had the fights, and ‘Aden Valley’ they nor-
mally have fights but not all the time, so it’s better to live in Aden
Valley than Hightown.
In the local context of high-crime areas, crime was then normalized

and understood to be ‘the way it is, things happen’, and experiencing
crime as witnesses, victims, and by offending, is then a ‘normal’ part
of growing up for our young people (France et al. 2012). Our partici-
pants often critiqued what they saw as the problems of crime in their
areas and maintained an attitude that is summed up in Amanda’s com-
ment: ‘I don’t think it’s that rough really . . . just normal, normal life
really because I’ve always been brought up there.’
Through regular experience of their local places and spaces, young

people tended to develop a practical sense of what was ‘risky’ or ‘safe’
but also the practical logic that ‘things happen’ in certain places and
spaces. Particular streets, parks, alleyways, and parts of the shopping
precinct were to be avoided as they were associated with dangerous
‘types’, including ‘druggies’ and dealers (Barbara), gangs that are known
to ‘come out with knives and stuff’ (Tim), and previous or recurring
crime or dangerous activity: ‘you can’t go into the park, someone got
raped there last week, so you can’t go in there if it’s dark’ (Adele). There
was then a strong sense that going out together in groups was necessary
for staying safe. Indeed, friends were frequently necessary as ‘backup’
because there were ‘loads of fights out there and people get jumped’
(Tyrone). When Andy was asked how he and his friends spent their time
outside school, his reply suggested how the knowledge of ‘what happens
out there’ produced sensible everyday strategies: ‘play football, go round
each other’s house, do homework with each other. It’s like if I got in a
fight, he’ll join in; if he got into a fight, I’ll join in.’ The logic of the field
then oriented young people’s everyday cultural practices that centered
on ‘hanging out’ with friends.
The field thus operates as a set of conditions for the production of
cultural practices and the production of producers of these practices.
It is not a vague social background but a structured and structur-
ing space ‘where relations of force of a particular type are exerted’
(Bourdieu 1993b: 163–164) that reflect and constitute the ‘logic of
the field’. The young people’s perspectives on fighting are a case in
point and an important one as it was the most common context of
young people’s criminalization. The positions they took were related to
their knowledge of ‘what happens’ on the streets and encounters with
‘gangs’, ‘crews’, and their territory, and from experiences of being ‘bul-
lied’, ‘battered’, ‘robbed’, and fighting to settle interpersonal disputes.
There was a general consensus among our young people that it was
preferable to avoid fighting but that this was not always possible. The
necessity of self-defense or defending friends then became a matter of
principle. Thahmina, for example, incurred a final warning for assault
when she was ‘jumped’ by another girl and retaliated. Despite the legal
consequences, she maintained the view that fighting was necessary:
The police told me that if anyone hits me again, I must stand there
and get beaten up then go to [them]. No, I’m not going to do that.
If someone hits me I’m going to hit them back . . . because if you let
people hit you, they’re going to walk all over you.
Similarly, Donald rejected the ‘anger management’ strategies advised by

a counselor: ‘If someone come up to me now and started whacking me,
there’s no counting to ten about it . . . out on the street it’s every man for
himself, you have to fight, no way about it, you have to.’ That things
can and do happen on the streets was a premise of the range of strategies
adopted. The youngest of the cohort tended to stay close to home. Some
rarely ventured beyond a local park or the street in close vicinity to their
homes. Among the older young people, there was a tacit ‘rule’ of walking
away from confrontations before they escalated. However, there was also
value in becoming a good fighter and gaining a reputation that served
to protect them from having to fight. These strategies only worked in
local places that the young people knew well and where ‘others’ were
known personally or by reputation or could be placed through their
‘street literacies’ that decoded the appearance, location, postures, and
‘looks’ of strangers, so that the most appropriate position could be taken.
Bourdieu argued that every field is a ‘force field’ comprising of com-
petition and struggles for position, capital, identity, recognition, and,
in broad terms, the maintenance or transformation of existing dis-
tributions (1998: 32). Our young people’s practical logic on fighting
exemplifies how agents are driven by the field to seek and compete for
legitimacy or status within the field. Bourdieu likened these practices
to ‘playing the game’ where cultural capital as knowledge, skills, and
credentials for playing became important. In the case of these young
people, local knowledge as cultural capital is important to their nego-
tiation of places and spaces, and being known as a good fighter not
only brought greater freedom from being hassled but it also was a form
of ‘street cred’ that accrued status among appreciative peers (France
et al. 2013). The logic of the field thus orients young people’s cultural
practices as objective and incorporated or embodied structures.
Cultural fields of practice
Bourdieu (2005) argued that agents and their positions are reciprocally
determined by the field. Positions are legitimated or assigned status
according to agents’ capital and power and in the relevance or utility
of these in relation to the productive purposes in the field. At the same
time, the rules are created by agents with influence and power over the
system in the sense that they legitimate the purposes, resources, and
products of the field. In our young people’s accounts, the logic of crime
‘overdetermined’ their everyday practice in local places and spaces, yet
local places and spaces were first and foremost the site of their cultural
purposes, the center of social life with friends and within local youth
networks. The ‘normal stuff’ of local youth culture involved playing
football or just ‘chilling out’, ‘mucking around’, ‘talking’, or ‘walking
around’ the area. Staying in with friends to watch television or listen to
music was also common, though going out was deemed more fun and
promised some excitement in ‘youth-only’ spaces and activity. Things
could happen that alleviated the boredom of ‘nothing to do’. They
were not gravitating to ‘criminal pathways’, though illicit recreation was
assigned legitimacy in terms of local traditions and ‘common culture’ of
ways of ‘having fun’ (France et al. 2012).
Most of the offending recounted by young people occurred in the
course of ‘hanging out’ together and finding something to do. They were
not looking for trouble but it did ‘just happen’, sometimes described by
young people as ‘stupid stuff’ or ‘kids being kids’. For example, shoplift-
ing sweets from the local corner store was a game of dare while petty
vandalism like tagging or egging a neighbor’s window was ‘just a thing,
isn’t it? When you’re little . . . you just muck about and do whatever’
(Tom). Stories were told of walking around the streets ‘finding’ things
that had been dumped like trashed cars or bikes, and these offered some-
thing to do like sitting in the car or seeing what could be salvaged from
a bike. Being resourceful in creating fun could then ‘bring trouble’. Cars
and bikes brought their own street culture, being predominantly a mas-
culine interest, in working on cars, learning to drive, and joyriding. This
was a common working-class tradition and, for many ‘lads’, a rite of
passage that symbolized masculinity and maturity and provided a sense
of belonging through mateship (Stephen and Squires 2003): being ‘just
there’ – ‘it’s like things you have to do on the streets . . . everyone around
the area is always in and out of cars’ (Donald). While aware of the ille-
gality of stealing cars, it was the enjoyment of driving and mobility that
interested them. If taking the risk of being caught was considered, it was
secondary to pleasure (Farrell et al. 2008).
Older young people tended to have more leisure options, and some of
the younger participants went to youth gatherings in particular parks on
Friday or Saturday nights to be part of whatever was going on because
‘everyone would be there’ and could ‘for a couple of hours, you know,
act stupid, not being told off for it’ (Penny). Particular parks and particu-
lar parts of the park were chosen because they afforded some privacy and
were less likely to be patrolled by police. These gatherings often involved
alcohol and other drugs and were where young people satisfied their
curiosity because ‘if you’re a kid, you usually want to try something out’
(Bruce). Sharing the experience in this context was regarded as a safe
way of learning how to be ‘streetwise’, including ‘what’s safe to take’

and ‘how much to drink’ or ‘how much not to drink’ (Barry) as older
peers looked out for the younger ones. That said, many of the young
people’s use of illicit substances was fairly short-lived. They quit after
having a bad experience or because they were more concerned about
being healthy (France et al. 2012). For these young people, going to the
park gatherings was simply to be there with other young people, ‘just
stand there together all of us’ (Barry). Most saw drinking alcohol on the
streets as ‘a mad phase’ (Amanda) that young people go through. In their
view, their activities and strategies were sensible, safe, and legitimate.
In Bourdieu’s terms, the young people’s primary interest in play-
ing, socializing, and having fun underlines the significance of the local
cultural field. One of the dynamics of the cultural field is that there is typ-
ically a group of agents that are interested in particular cultural practice
for its own sake and are not interested in conforming to the orthodoxy
of practice legitimated by dominant agents in the field (Bourdieu 1993b:
40–42). Indeed, the young (in age or as newcomers or novices) have
a significant place in generating new or reworking cultural traditions
(1993a: 104–105). The young may then assume the intrinsic legitimacy
of their practice though it remains contested by those who occupy dom-
inant positions and can exercise power to otherwise define the purposes
and legitimate practices of the field.
The field of power
While the young people gravitate to the dominant youth culture of their
local places, and may accrue status in relation to street conflicts and
pleasures, the cultural field of local places is also a social space where
youth is a dominated position that delimits the legitimacy of young
people’s practices. In local places, young people’s social and cultural
life is thus shaped by a range of other agents’ purposes and interests
in the streetscapes and commercial centers, by young people’s visibil-
ity and alternative uses of public space, and by the place of ‘youth’.
The autonomous principle (intrinsic value of cultural practices) is then
a focus of struggle, of competing purposes, perspectives, and notions of
legitimate ways of being and acting. For the young people, the ‘problem-
atics’ of legitimacy is realized through their position-taking (Bourdieu
2005: 193–199) within the field.
Fields are organized hierarchically and tend to be dominated by com-
mercial and political interests (Bourdieu 1993b: 40–42), according to
the distribution of capital and power within the field and the broader
social space. Two significant dimensions of the relations of power are

the distribution of resources and penalties that are spatially, socially, and
politically determined. Under the dominant logic of neoliberalism, state
distributions and interventions concerning youth and crime are espe-
cially targeted to ‘deprived areas’ or ‘sites of social relegation’ (Bourdieu
1999c: 64). Oriented toward ensuring the effective functioning of the
economic field, the ‘state capital of physical force’ through law enforce-
ment then exerts ‘a determining influence’ on local fields through
‘circumstantial policies’ (Bourdieu 2005: 12–13). For example, national
and international policies of early intervention have from the late 1990s
resulted in a plethora of new criminal penalties and civil orders such as
‘Anti-Social Behaviour Orders’ in the UK to regulate and punish young
people. In high-crime areas, young people are often targeted by police as
a matter of government policy that redefines ‘ordinary’, ‘stupid’, or ‘kid
stuff’ as criminal behavior. Our young people’s stories were filled with
examples of how trivial transgressions like throwing eggs at a neighbor’s
house, trespassing on state land to build a den, or smashing a window
in an argument with a boyfriend resulted in criminal records, while the
most publicly visible ‘offences’ accrued the label of serious offending.
‘Fighting’ was thus transformed to assault and grievous bodily harm,
and young people who were caught several times incurred the identity
of ‘persistent young offender’.
That the young people’s cultural life was centered on ‘hanging out’ on
the streets and local parks was a matter of social necessity that is rela-
tionally produced. There were few alternative places to go and things
to do (that were accessible, affordable, and safe) as youth services, facil-
ities, and organized activities that are provided in some communities
or a matter of private purchase by middle-class families were unavail-
able to most of these young people. These are ‘site effects’ (Bourdieu
1999a: 123) of the relations of social hierarchy and distance that are
spatially ordered according to the hierarchy of local places as ‘a socially
ranked geographical space’ (Bourdieu 1986: 124, emphasis in original).
Site effects are manifest in material form (the architecture, infrastruc-
ture, and physical environment), the distribution of resources (the
kind of goods and services available), and physical and social distance
between places, people, and valued social goods. In officially designated
‘deprived’ areas, the distribution of goods and resources in the broader
social space is a fundamental determinant of working-class young peo-
ple’s cultural options. Many complained about the lack of what was
on offer for young people in their local area and made a connec-
tion between the local area conditions, their management of boredom,
and processes of ‘falling into’ offending. Adrienne (17) sums up this

insight:
They should make something for the kids to do, there ain’t nowt to
do at all . . . you go out on streets like and police stop you and tell you
to move on but there’s nowhere to move on to . . . they wouldn’t be
causing a nuisance if there was somewhere for them to go.
These inequitable distributions orient and structure young people’s prac-

tical logic toward relations of crime while getting cultural legitimacy in
local places as a struggle of dominated and dominating positions in the
field of power. Using the streets as the center of their social life was
an example of how working-class young people make a virtue of neces-
sity (Bourdieu 1999c: 61), though their criminalization was the result of
social and spatial domination and the choices of agents in institutional
and policy positions that are especially powerful.
Cultural trajectories across fields
The notion of cultural trajectory is a useful way of conceptualizing the

young people’s changing attitudes toward crime, offending, local youth
culture, and their futures and for explaining differentiated trajectories.
Bourdieu employed the concept to locate people in social space in
terms of accumulated economic, social, and cultural capital, achieved
over time as advantages or disadvantages accrued across their various
fields of practice. Position-taking within different fields over time then
constitutes but is also more than individual biography as it is realized
through the structuring of the structures of fields, habitus, and the rela-
tive accumulation and use of capital. As ‘practical hypotheses based on
past experience’ (1990: 54), habitus is not only durable but adapts with
regular experience in different fields.
A strong theme of the young people’s accounts was that ‘growing up’
meant taking on responsibility for themselves, and staying out of trou-
ble was a priority along with making the most of their education to
prepare for getting ‘a decent job’ (James). For some of the young peo-
ple, the interventions of police and the agents of youth justice or seeing
other young people ‘get done’ was sufficient reason to look for differ-
ent groups of friends to hang out with or to stay away from local youth
gatherings. This became more feasible for older young people because
over time, the ‘unorthodox’ practice of their early teens could become
legitimized through recognition accrued to age. Going to pubs and
clubs coincided with going to college or getting a job and legitimated

their inclusion in the adult cultural world. The relevance of local fields
of practice is then reframed within a broadening field of possibilities
(Bourdieu 1990: 118).
As our young people begin to focus on their future, certain positions
and position-takings appear unthinkable because they glean the odds of
success relative to their social position and especially access to relevant
cultural capital in the form of credentials. In short, playing particu-
lar kinds of social games is fraught for working-class and marginalized
young people who ‘don’t have all the cards necessary’ (Bourdieu 1999a:
129). In addition to criminal records, most had accumulated poor school
records, the latter indicative of the convoluted educational trajectories
resulting from exclusion and placement in alternative schools. For most
of the young people, education was a ‘last chance’ (Brooklyn) and leads
to hopeful attempts to secure their secondary and college certificates.
Leonard expected that ‘I’ll get a good enough education. I’ll survive. I’ll
get a job and all that but it’s just you probably get a better one from
mainstream school.’
Those among our cohort who had left or were soon to leave school
were positioning themselves for decent jobs but they were also aware
that this could be difficult: ‘I know for a fact I won’t get a job straight-
away’ (James). Some were particularly aware of the downturn in local
industries through their family’s experience: ‘my brother’s lost his
job . . . they’ve laid people off’. Any job is then desirable: ‘I really don’t
like it but it’s money at the end of the day’ (Thahmina). ‘The state of the
instruments of reproduction’ (Bourdieu 1986: 125) thus translates to a
practical logic based in knowledge of their relative positioning in terms
of their history with education and legal systems and prospects in the
labor market. As ‘practical analysts’, the sense of uncertainty about their
future is expressed in caveats about what they might achieve: ‘what hap-
pens happens and what doesn’t doesn’t’ (Alice). Things might go to plan
or ‘tables might turn’ (Emmett), and so it may be better to ‘just take it
as it comes’ and ‘not rely on the future too much’ (Deon).
Most of our young people were aiming to eventually have their own
place to live, a car, a good relationship, but those things seemed a long
way off. Working or looking for work, life was often described as hard,
and for some the ‘stupid stuff’, which many had given up, then became
attractive for occasional relief from the mundane routines. Taking a car
to go for a drive with mates or getting ‘smashed’ at the club was also
a pleasure that then sometimes reiterated the importance of manag-
ing crime as part of everyday life. The immanent necessities of their
cultural, social, and institutional worlds are thus anticipated in young

people’s practical logic, grounded in their experience of the conditions
and power embedded in the fields they traverse and that shape their
trajectories.
Conclusion
Our young people’s accounts suggest that managing crime in everyday

life is intricately tied to their cultural interests, situated and structured
in the field of local places, and shaped by their cultural trajectories. The
field approach provides a way of explaining differentiated trajectories.
The field of possibilities and impossibilities is continually reshaping as
both field and habitus are subject to social change through individual
and collective struggles and the conditions, influences, or forces exerted
between interconnected fields. Relations to crime, cultural interests, and
individual and group cultural identities are then continuously formed
through the integration of economic and cultural structures that are
incorporated as embodied knowledge and shaped through the necessary
struggles for cultural legitimacy in the locality of their neighborhoods.
Decision-making in everyday life is not then a matter of free and ratio-
nal choice but is always delimited by the choices and positions available
in the field. For our young people, these were structured by their prac-
tical logic, their class distinctions, and the history of the field in its
present configurations. Because our young people are situated in ‘precar-
ious positions . . . where social structures “work” ’, they are also ‘therefore
worked over by the contradictions of these structures’ (Bourdieu 1999b:
511).
Working with Bourdieu’s field concepts demands that we look beyond
the immediate fields that constitute young people’s cultural and ‘crim-
inal’ trajectories. As he observed, the particular field and its rela-
tively autonomous spaces ‘functions somewhat like a prism which
refracts every external determination: demographic, economic or polit-
ical events’ (1993b: 164, emphasis in original). The relative autonomy
of the field then trumps the relatively autonomous spaces young people
may find in their local places, and because the field hierarchy is homol-
ogous with societal structures of power and dominance, the dynamics
of the field are more than ‘a universe of personal relations’ (1993b: 163)
and the immediate interactions or relations of the local. Thus, we will
find that local places and spaces are similarly structured and structur-
ing for young people growing up in ‘deprived’ and ‘high-crime’ areas in
similar rich democracies.
We have suggested that the multiple fields and multiple dimensions

and contestations of fields may be conceptualized as a nested system of
material, physical, cultural, and social processes. These processes consti-
tute the practice and perspectives of young people in their contexts,
as historically specific and subject to contemporary forces including
the neoliberal forces constructing inequitable conditions (France et al.
2012). At the same time, looking through the prismatic lens of the field,
we appreciate the agency of the young people and the demand for
change that is implicit and often explicitly articulated in their every-
day practices – the desire for less violence, for healthy bodies and
relationships, and for education and jobs that open up the ‘ordinary’
opportunities experienced by others who are better positioned. What we
see through the perspective of the young in our study is the dominance
of cultural and structural influences that shape their engagement with
crime. In this context, we need to reject simple individualistic models of
‘causes’ of crime in social and crime policy in neoliberal states to recog-
nize both the embedded nature of cultural trajectories that are structured
through and in local place, and spaces that also create and inform the
practical logic that provides the ‘options’ and ‘choices’ available to the
young.
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9
Sexy Selfies of the Transitioning Self
Airi-Alina Allaste and Katrin Tiidenberg1
Introduction
In this chapter we explore the potential of specific online communities

as sites and tools of transition. Our analysis is based on ethnographic
data from an NSFW (Not Safe for Work)2 community on the Tumblr
social media site. Using selfies (photos taken of oneself by oneself, usu-
ally using a smartphone or a webcam and shared on social media), blogs,
and participants’ stories as empirical material, we locate our analysis at
the intersection of the youth transitions and youth culture theories.
Just like on any other blogging platform, there are different kinds
of blogs on Tumblr. However, NSFW blogs have been abundant from
the inception of the site, because of the initial lax policies surround-
ing explicit content. NSFW Tumblr blogs can be thought of in roughly
two categories – the blogs that have original content and the ones that
do not. The first kind often means personal blogs, where authors post
original writing and images, which are often sexy selfies. Tumblr is an
image-heavy platform by design, and selfies in particular tend to gen-
erate popularity and traffic. Our research participants all have personal
blogs that regularly post sexy selfies. Because of the explicit nature of
their content, bloggers almost never use real names and personal infor-
mation. Tattoos, birthmarks, and identifying background elements are
blurred out of images, which are usually headless or at least hide the
face. Throughout the chapter, we use the term ‘community’ because
this is what the participants themselves use. It refers to a discursive
‘affinity space’ (Gee 2005: 225–228) among NSFW self-shooters charac-
terized by mutual and multidirectional connections and a shared desire
for open-minded and tolerant self-expression, which does not censor
out the corporeal or the sexual.
113
114 Sexy Selfies of the Transitioning Self
Through our analysis we claim that explicit blogging and

self-shooting – if happening in a space experienced as safe – can have
an important role in personal transitions. Existing research on online
spaces has shown that they can be a place where to ‘type oneself into
being’ (Sundén 2003: 3) and explore parts of one’s identity and sexual-
ity without fear of social repercussions (Daneback 2006). By providing a
gap between thinking, doing, and being, the Internet offers an interme-
diate step between fantasy and behavior (Ross 2005), allowing people to
explore, experiment, and transgress (Waskul and Martin 2010) widely
accepted norms. Sexual blogs, in particular, can offer a safe space for
discussing desire (Muise 2011) by reducing shame and giving people
back control over sexual information (Wood 2008). Additionally, self-
shooting (taking and sharing selfies) can give new meaning to one’s
embodied identity (Tiidenberg 2014).
Sexual self-exploration – connected to sexual and biological
maturity – is considered an important aspect of transitioning into adult-
hood (see Arnett 2004, Horowitz and Bromnick 2007). While one
might successfully graduate from school without being self-aware of
one’s sexual and gendered self, the ability to find a suitable part-
ner and create a family, which is considered the keystone of adult
well-being (Noller et al. 2001), would probably be easier with this aware-
ness (Montgomery 2005). More so, in a society with high levels of
uncertainty, young people have to reflexively construct their biogra-
phies. As we will explore in more detail below, embodied self-awareness
can contribute to developing and revising one’s biography in general.
Concurrently, we interpret the NSFW self-shooters’ community as an
environment that is supportive of transition.
Contemporary society can be characterized by the process of individu-
alization, increased emphasis on individualized interpretations of social
standing, as well as prolongation of youth (Giddens 1991, Beck and
Beck-Gernsheim 1996, Arnett 2004). The widespread uncertainty and
disruption of the external markers against which to evaluate both self-
hood and adulthood have become uncontrollable. According to some
scholars (Silva 2012), a ‘therapeutic narrative’ takes their place. This nar-
rative gives people agency as it places them in charge of the construction
of their self-projects. Patterns of sociability have also changed; social
networks and social networking sites can offer spaces with alternative
norms that help individuals cope with new situations in the changed
contexts of youth-adult transition. In the following, we explore first
how the community is constructed and perceived by the participants
and then focus on individualized transitions in this community: how
Airi-Alina Allaste and Katrin Tiidenberg 115
self-growth (which we interpret as a form of self-identified transition) is

managed and witnessed.
Theoretical framework: Social generation, community

of trust, and individualized transitions
In keeping with the overarching focus of this book, the approach applied
in this chapter blends elements from the ‘culture’ and ‘transitions’ the-
ories in youth studies. We forego the traditional approach of transition
studies, which privileges the structural factors that shape the transition
patterns and generalize across whole generations. We agree with the per-
spectives that see youth transitions as biographical projects (e.g., Evans
and Furlong 1997), which are characterized by the shift from structured,
linear biographies to more fragmented ‘choice biographies’ (du Bois-
Reymond 1998), driven by knowledgeable agents. We rely on Silva’s
(2012: 519) work, which synthesizes the more psychological, individu-
alistic approaches with the more macro-level explanations by suggesting
that youth now ‘construct seemingly personal markers of adulthood
that are in fact culturally patterned and dependent on social recognition
for validation’.
Furlong et al. (2011: 359) suggest that ‘traditional boundaries around
the biography have broken down and are replaced by a multiplication
of societal rules and guidelines that are partial, changeable and incon-
sistent’. Thus, we approach the ‘social generation’ (Wyn and Woodman
2006; Woodman and Wyn 2015) as a ‘new and distinctive form of con-
sciousness which is produced by changing social conditions’ (Furlong
et al. 2011: 361), taking into consideration the contention that ‘young
people today are growing up in a world that is significantly different,
and is experienced as different, from the world in which their parents
grew up’ (Furlong et al. 2011: 361).
We describe the contemporary social generation via the notion of
‘striptease culture’. There is an important corpus of feminist writing (for
a starting point and an overview, see Gill 2012) that instead calls our
culture sexualized or raunchy, and is suspicious of any claims of possi-
bly positive self-exploration within it. Our approach instead builds on
McNair’s (2002) suggestion that in our striptease culture people are com-
fortable to undertake confessional performances of sexuality – revealing
intimate feelings and their bodies – as well as adopt the position of
voyeuristic spectators. Concurrently, everyday life is digitally saturated
to a significant level. Online spaces, experiences, and communities have
an important role in the discourses available to almost all. Specifically,
‘social media mirror, magnify, and complicate countless aspects of every-

day life, bringing into question practices that are presumed stable and
shedding light on contested social phenomena’ (Baym and boyd 2012:
320). Our focus is on blogging and sharing selfies, both of which have
been shown to be forms of identity exploration, empowerment, therapy,
and basis for community building (Avgitidou 2003, Martin and Spence
2003, McCullagh 2008, Tan 2008, Woods 2008).
However, young people’s experiences and subjectivities, though char-
acterized by many things in common, are by no means coherent
and homogeneous. Analyzing NSFW bloggers, we are aware that self-
expression through erotic photos on explicit blogs is still rather excep-
tional among the wider population. Yet, within a community, people are
expected to follow implicit rules, accepted by others. In order to under-
stand what keeps this community together, we utilize de Laat’s (2008)
work on trust. He has suggested that public diaristic blogging works on
the basis of ‘secondary trust’. According to de Laat (2008), this means
that bloggers assume that their audiences are moved by their display
of intimacies and react accordingly, while those who are not will turn
away. This minimizes abuse, and de Laat calls this ‘self-reinforcing circle
of mutual-admiration’ (de Laat 2008: 62) trust responsiveness.
We see the NSFW self-shooters’ community as a form of socializa-
tion, which allows contemporary young people – whose identity is
neither stable nor given, but a work in progress – to be both individ-
uals and part of the group at the same time. It has been remarked
by others (Davis 2005, Silva 2012) that a therapeutic narrative of
transitioning to adulthood is an interactional accomplishment and
thus needs someone to witness and validate it. In this chapter, then,
we interpret participants’ reflexive self-projects within the community
as witnessed manifestations of individualized transition. The follow-
ing exploration of empirical data will show that something we call
‘self-identified transition’ – achieved through a constant, self-reflexive
search for personalized, yet socially acknowledged individual markers –
may be the way for youth to experience, conceptualize, and internalize
transitions.
Methods
The data used for this chapter are from a larger, ethnographic research
project on NSFW Tumblr bloggers started in August 2011. It includes
individual (2011), follow-up (2013), and focus group interviews (2012)
with the same set of participants. Initial interviews explored the
blogging experience and people’s personal identity, while the follow-up

interviews focused on specific topics (e.g., polyamory) with participants
they were relevant for. The focus groups spotlighted selfies and self-
shooting. For this chapter, we analyzed selfies, textual posts on blogs, as
well as excerpts from individual and group interviews of nine younger
bloggers (aged 21–30 years). We set this age limit to better explore the
blogging experience’s role in processes of transition. Blog excerpts and
images span the time frame from August 2011 to January 2014. Our
participants are female (five), male (three), and transgendered (one)
bloggers from the United States, Australia, Canada, and the UK.
We used thematic narrative analysis and elements of visual narrative
analysis (Riessman 2008) to tell the story of transitioning. Visual nar-
rative analysis is influenced by Gillian Rose’s work (2001), which calls
attention to three specific sites of meaning-making – the story of produc-
tion of images (who, why, and how of the image production), the story
of audiencing (a term proposed by Fiske (1994) referring to audiences
accepting, rejecting, or renegotiating meanings of images), and the story
of the images themselves. While this particular analysis is based on tex-
tual data, we focused on the participants’ stories about images – their
reflections on their self-shooting practices as well as the words they
linked to images (captions). Thus, it is an analysis of stories told in words
about images.
Community of trust
Online interaction is often driven by similarities. For example, people

are mostly Facebook friends with others they are already familiar with
from offline contexts (West et al. 2008). The NSFW self-shooters com-
munity on Tumblr is characterized by similarities too, but more often
in terms of similarities in (sexual) interests or preferences rather than
similarities between socio-demographic characteristics or location. Addi-
tionally, participants report a heightened sense of trust being the social
adhesive in the community. Continual sharing of NSFW selfies means
participants have to believe that trust responsiveness (de Laat 2008) will
work: that is, people visiting their blogs will be sympathetic or turn
away (instead of, for example, trolling or trying to expose them). Images
themselves – as evident in the quote below – work as acts of trust because
of what they portray.
I think it’s also sort of a trust thing . . . kind of a way of saying: ‘this
is me’.
(Marilyn, group interview)
By posting a sexy selfie, though, the blogger becomes dually vulnerable.

First, from the perspective of potential social scorn, explicit sexuality is
not currently accepted as a form of self-expression. Second, it offers one’s
body and appearances up for scrutiny. In this community, however, peo-
ple have the repeated experience of neither of these vulnerabilities being
abused: that is, they know that trust responsiveness works.
[A]s a general rule you don’t . . . sort of . . . you don’t make nega-
tive comments that are going to hurt somebody’s um . . . confidence
about, like their body or . . . especially their body, because I think as a
society we’re very, very hard on that. There’s definitely some underly-
ing rule, I’m not totally sure what it is, I feel like it’s sort of just ‘treat
others the way you want to be treated’. I feel that’s a rule, but it’s also
a rule offline that should be followed, but I feel it is followed much
more on tumblr.
(Jenna, interview 2011)
More importantly, posting images becomes the token of belonging, a

secret handshake of sorts. It indicates that a participant is a part of
this, which is important for relationships and interactions to evolve as
well as serving as evidence that they trust and can be trusted not to
break the tacit rules. Building on that, there is a certain sense of unity
based on trustworthiness itself. In this context of continuing secondary
trust, blogs are ‘safe spaces’ (Muise 2011) for participants. As such, they
become the designated area for aspects of one’s self that are not cultur-
ally validated in their everyday life (i.e., feeling good in one’s body and
appreciating nudity) or on which the participants want to reflect. They
become a ‘work in progress’ space for one’s self. Thoughts and feelings
that one does not (yet) feel comfortable sharing in other communities
and spaces can be voiced there.
I guess here I’m very honest about my thinking, about what’s on my

mind, about what I like and what I don’t like. So in that regard it’s
a lot more open. Whereas on my other blog [an SFW blog that his
friends and family know of], a lot of the times I might want to post
something, but I don’t, because I’m afraid what people might think
about it . . . oftentimes with real-life friends I feel like it can be hard
to go to them about certain things, you might go to somebody else
online.
(Eric, interview 2011)
We argue that these young adults experience the community as open-

minded and operating on the basis of secondary, generalized trust.
Because of that, they can express themselves, experiment, and explore
areas that may be closed off from experimentation in their offline life,
for example, due to responsibilities of a job, children, and so forth.
Managing and witnessing transitions
Most often, self-shooting and blogging brings about, and is a way of

cataloging one’s self-growth. This can be interpreted as a form of indi-
vidually negotiated transition that through the interactive process of
blogging and the validation from audiences becomes both culturally
patterned and socially recognized (Silva 2012). Although lack of self-
confidence was not reported as a driving force behind the participants’
blogs, our informants do notice an increase in confidence.
The way I grew up, the compliments were very scarce, the way I was
raised was that they’ll shoot you down 50 times before they give you
a compliment, and make you feel really crappy about yourself. So I
grew up very insecure and self-loathing. And going off of that, self-
shooting is for me and about me accepting my body and thinking
that I have a decent body and I am pretty and I am beautiful and I
am smart.
(Jenna, interview 2011)
Additionally to boosting confidence, self-shooting and blogging allows

participants to soothe the anxiety that comes from transitions in their
lives. Participants often blog or post and caption images about their
anxieties and do so in highly emotional ways, which, building on the
previously described trust responsiveness, usually garners an outpour
of support. Being able to express negative emotions, fears, and anxi-
eties serves as a self-care tool unavailable for many in their everyday
life. As this self-care is an interactional achievement and relies on the
community’s support, posting selfies functions as a way to practice self-
reflection. Anxious posts are often returned to in order to offer further
information on how it has been resolved. As evident in the following
blog excerpt, there is a certain feeling of accountability toward one’s
audiences:
You know when something just starts feeling insurmountable and

you cringe at the thought of taking the first step because there are
so many subsequent steps and it’s overwhelming? And then, how

when you finally suck it up and take that first step you suddenly feel
like a weight has lifted and it isn’t so bad after all? Well that’s what
happened, and starting tomorrow morning I’ll share all the details.
(Katie, section of a caption of a sexy selfie)
Further, bloggers speak of a heightened sense of being in touch with

one’s self specifically through being more in touch with one’s body. In
contemporary consumer culture, we are taught that bodies are perpetu-
ally in need of fixing, controlling, and managing (Featherstone 2010) –
for our participants, taking and blogging selfies has helped them start
loving their bodies. This is possible because their bodies and anxieties
surrounding them are witnessed (Silva 2012) and the individualized
transitions thus validated. Selfies, then, can be portrayals of transition
in and of themselves. Exposing a body part that one has struggled to
accept, a body that one has changed, or showing off skills, while con-
textualizing them as significant for one’s self-project, can be viewed as
ways of internalizing or celebrating these transitions. We asked our par-
ticipants to select selfies that have been most significant for them over
the years, and most commonly people picked images indicative of tran-
sitions. In the following quote, Marilyn explained that a picture of her
wearing rugby shorts is precious to her, because it marks the first time
she posted an image of her thighs, which she had always struggled to
accept, but has come to love as her own through her experience on
Tumblr:
I think we are inundated with other peoples’ notions of what our

bodies should look like and that is why I cherish a lot of the content
I post on this blog. These images represent moments when I could
finally quiet the society’s voice in my head and I was able to see the
raw sexiness, and beauty of my body.
(Marilyn, personal communication)
Participants spoke of the online experience validating their individual-

ized transitions not only in terms of their bodies, but also in terms of
their sexual identity. Becoming more comfortable with one’s own and
other people’s sexualities is a way for our participants to become proud
of it and free from shame.
I had a pretty religious upbringing and a lot of conflicting messages

about sex and sexuality and that wasn’t necessarily helped by a lot
of . . . you know, my own . . . like fantasy life and the politics that I was
reading, so you know, there was a lot of anxiety there and I couldn’t
figure out how to reconcile it. I also read a lot of really unhelpful
second-wave feminist critiques of porn in the past and internalized a
bit of that criticism. So reading posts by women who were fantasizing
about submission made it easier to accept what was going on in my
own head.
(Xavier, interview 2011)
Finally, participants see their online experience as aiding their transi-

tions through its straightforward educational effect. They mentioned
learning about various sexual lifestyles, but also classical music, lit-
erature, relationships, other countries, social movements, politics,
philosophy, and sociology. More specifically, the blogging practice’s
conscience-raising effect in terms of feminist thinking was often under-
lined. The NSFW blogging community, thus, offers the participants a
place where to manage their anxieties regarding transitioning to adult-
hood, and where to both catalog their self-growth, and, when needed,
digitally backtrack (Roberts 2007), all in a witnessed, validated (Silva
2012) manner within a space functioning on the assumption of trust
(de Laat 2008).
Tracking the transitioning process – Becoming one’s own

witness
Furthermore, the blogs serve as a tool for tracking one’s transitioning as

it goes on. Participants can track self-growth not only in terms of their
bodies, but also in terms of themselves as social creatures, artists, and so
forth, in real time. As shown in the following quote, blogs can offer evi-
dence of growth rather difficult to find in our everyday. We also see how
the trackability of transitions lends itself to more self-reflexivity and
critical self-awareness through participants’ growing ability to recognize
their own progress in their blog archive.
It’s nice to look back and see how I felt and be able to reflect. I’ve
looked back on some stuff from past relationships on the blog and
been able to see some progress, which is really good, I think. It’s
reassuring.
(Nadine, interview 2011)
In addition to retrospective tracking like that above, participants also

use the blog for future-oriented transition tracking. Most typically, this
happens in ‘resolution’- or ‘promise’-type posts, where personal tran-

sitions and practices supporting such transitions are written up in
the hope of archiving them for one’s own use, but also to create a
kind of public accountability as an additional motivator. Silva’s (2012)
work pinpointed youth’s need for witnesses, which would substitute
the normative transition markers the previous generations relied on,
and validate their transition to adulthood. Our work has shown that
online communities, especially those functioning on the basis of trust,
can very well offer that witnessing. However, because of the socio-
technical affordances of blogging – namely archives and interaction
with audiences – it could be asked whether they can be a tool for youth
to become their own witnesses.
Conclusion
Based on our analysis of an NSFW self-shooters’ community on Tumblr,

we suggest that selfies and blogs can be tools and indicators of self-
identified personal transitions. This means that instead of relying on
externally mandated transitioning stages (graduation, marriage), young
people now are in constant search of transitioning markers, processes,
and management tools that can be made meaningful to them person-
ally. Self-shooting and blogging practices are one possible site of such
meaning-making in the digitally saturated world we live in. We sug-
gest that within the safe spaces of trust-based online communities, selfie
sharing can help manage social and personal transitions as well as alle-
viate the anxiety these may bring. For our informants, self-shooting is
often a way of cataloging one’s self-growth and a tool for tracking their
transitioning in terms of both their corporeality and their sense of self
as well as how that fits into the wider social and cultural context. Thus,
we see it as a possible way of reflexive self-management for a social gen-
eration, for whom external markers of youth-adult transitions have lost
significance.
An NSFW self-shooters’ community is not based on similar style or
merely on a shared collective identity. The glue of this fluid, tribe-like
community is trustworthiness and tolerance, which allows participants
to focus on their project of self and reflexively manage it according to
their particular need at a particular time, whether this means revisiting
the basis of their gendered, sexual, embodied identity or their self-
project as an artist or a partner. Reflexivity is a necessary concomitant
of the social environment today since it offers a better survival strategy
than collective identification and affiliation (Rustin and Chamberlayne

2002). We see that reflexive self-monitoring and experimenting is facil-
itated by the safe community, where, on the one hand, sociability is
based on generalized trust (de Laat 2008), while, on the other, it unfolds
online, where one can ‘type oneself into being’ (Sundén 2003) without
actually needing to do or be what one types, thus escaping the potential
social repercussions (Ross 2005, Daneback 2006).
The marginality of the practices discussed in this chapter should
not be overemphasized – the contemporary striptease culture (McNair
2002) has normalized publicly talking about sex and celebrities weekly
post sexy selfies on their Instagram accounts (Rihanna, James Franco).
Sharing erotic photos in a (semi)public sphere is concurrently not expe-
rienced as perverted or marginalized by an increasing number of young
people. Meanwhile, it is rather the intimacy and togetherness created
through the selfie practices – and not the sexuality of the content – that
makes the NSFW community valuable for its participants. Community
of trust is the form of sociability people need while navigating their
‘choice biography projects’ – it is fluid, ‘out there’ for when its needed,
but at the same time does not require constant commitment or invest-
ment. It is separated from participants’ everyday life but at the same
time only ‘one click away’. All one needs to do to be part of this commu-
nity is to respect others and share selfies. While there are no structural
restrictions in place for people who do not follow the implicit rules, abu-
sive behavior is generally met with discursive consequences that exclude
one from the community.
This study contributes to the existing work on blogging and selfies
in connection to expressions and explorations of identity as well as
to the ongoing discussion on youth transition. We have approached
these micro-level phenomena in the context of macro-level structural
factors. As stated before, self-identified transitions within the NSFW
community could be interpreted as one possible way of life manage-
ment as an ‘ongoing project’ (Furlong et al. 2011: 362). Personal and/or
self-identified transitions are socially validated, thus becoming an alter-
native to outside markers, which are no longer relevant. Our participants
all experienced having become more self-aware, in touch with their
selves, bodies, and sexualities and free of shame. Belonging to the
community also widens one’s world by being simply educational, in
particular from a consciousness-raising perspective. Furthermore, the
trackability of transitions lends itself to more critical self-awareness and
resulting self-reflexivity.
Finally, it is perhaps worth emphasizing that this chapter has a

rather narrow scope of a single NSFW community, which limits the
generalizability of the study. That said, however, we do believe the find-
ings of this chapter to be a good indicator of reflexive self-management
techniques in the digitally saturated context of the 21st century. Forms
of online sociability, or sociability suitable for the seamless transition
between online and offline so characteristic of the experience of many
of today’s youth, deserve heightened attention in the realm of youth
studies, particularly from the perspective of transitions.
Notes
1. This chapter is based on empirical work conducted by Tiidenberg; she has
consulted with Allaste during several stages of her study. The chapter is written
jointly by both authors.
2. Not Safe for Work is an acronym widely used on social media to annotate
content that you would not want to have on your screen if your colleagues
could see over your shoulder. Mostly it refers to sexually explicit material. The
NSFW label is used by the researched bloggers themselves and thus adopted
into the terminology of this chapter.
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10
Transitioning to a New Manhood:
Subcultures as Sites of Inclusive
Masculinity
Ross Haenfler
Introduction
Thirty years of scholarship on men and masculinities paint a rather

grim picture of oppressive but insecure men, benefiting from patri-
archy and male privilege but living under a constant ‘burden of proof’,
consistently called upon to demonstrate their manliness and avoid the
slightest hint of femininity (Kimmel 2006). Popular and scholarly con-
cern suggests boys and young men are ‘adrift’, lazy, absorbed in video
games, and underachieving as compared to their female peers (cf. Sax
2007). When they are not bullying their peers or committing crimes on
the streets, they are slacking off in school and failing to transition to
productive adulthood. Despite their theoretical advances, both youth
and masculinity studies have at times inadvertently produced a carica-
ture of misogynist and alienated young men that fails to capture the
increasingly complicated masculinities of the 21st century. Where are
the spaces in which men, especially young men, stretch the confines of
patriarchal masculinity?
This chapter examines youth subcultures as such spaces, and more-
over as spaces that can profoundly impact boys’ transition to adulthood.
Postwar youth subcultures evolved amid larger social transitions, as
economic uncertainty and social revolutions challenged traditional,
patriarchal masculinity. As incubators of generations of young men,
subcultures potentially shape the way youth think about and ‘do’
gender as they transition to adult roles and responsibilities. Draw-
ing upon research of emo, goth, hip-hop, straight edge, and other
scenes, this chapter considers youth subcultures as spaces in which
‘inclusive masculinity’ shapes participants’ transitions to adulthood.
127
128 Subcultures as Sites of Inclusive Masculinity
Rather than succumbing to the ‘crisis of masculinity’, some young

men are seizing the moment to explore new masculinities less bound
to traditional patriarchal norms. As spaces that encourage cultural
resistance and oppositional identities, youth subcultures may foster
inclusive masculinities, less accepting of sexism and homophobia. I
consider inclusive masculinity in three interrelated contexts – rela-
tionships, work, and parenthood – noting the role of subcultures in
men’s transition to adulthood. In the second decade of the 2000s, the-
ories of hegemonic masculinity and of subcultures as hypermasculine
retreats do not capture the complexity and nuance of contemporary
masculinities. While still informative, such theories miss the complex
masculinities present among young, subcultural men.
Hegemonic, orthodox, and inclusive masculinities
Patriarchal culture demands that ‘real’ men demonstrate a variety of

characteristics. Above all, they should provide for their families, be good
husbands and fathers, and perform high-status work. Goffman (1963:
128) nicely summarizes these masculine benchmarks:
In an important sense there is only one complete unblushing male

in America: a young, married, white, urban, northern, heterosexual
Protestant father of college education, fully employed, of good com-
plexion, weight, and height, and a recent record in sports . . . . Any
male who fails to qualify in any of these ways is likely to view
himself – during moments at least – as unworthy, incomplete, and
inferior.
Assertive, athletic, self-assured, independent, and sexually potent, the

perfect ‘unblushing male’ is a combination of David Beckham, Donald
Trump, and Clint Eastwood, ever ready to fight or to fuck, to make the
big business deal or to score the winning goal. Connell (1987) names
this standard hegemonic masculinity, the most valued and sought-after
expressions of masculinity by which all men are measured. Boys learn
hegemonic masculinity early; the ‘boy code’ requires that boys be tough,
competitive, and cool, showing no hint of femininity (Pollack 1999). In
order to successfully transition to manhood, boys must secure stable
employment, marry (a woman), provide a safe and secure home, and
have children, all the while sculpting athletic bodies, remaining sex-
ually assertive, and exhibiting confidence and emotional fortitude. Of
course, no man can ever completely achieve these standards. The result
Ross Haenfler 129
is seemingly pathological masculinity, characterized by misogyny and

violence but also anxiety and self-doubt. Men must constantly prove
their manhood and too often do so by degrading women, gay men, and
less powerful straight men.
Meanwhile, since at least the 1970s if not before, the very structural
foundations of patriarchal masculinity have eroded, leading scholars
to describe a ‘crisis’ of masculinity in which patriarchal masculin-
ity has been so questioned that men are unsure how to be men (cf.
Kimmel 2006). Wages have stagnated, destabilizing men’s breadwinner
role where the global transience of capital has not eliminated good-
paying jobs entirely. Sports and the military have increasingly become
the domain of professionals and more inclusive of women, making the
athlete and warrior archetypes less widely available. Women, people of
color, and queer movements have demanded recognition and rights,
questioning the very legitimacy of patriarchal masculinity. As women
gradually occupy the social, political, and professional roles formerly
monopolized by men, and as gay men become increasingly visible, the
cornerstones of hegemonic manhood weaken.
Unrealistic (and unclear) expectations of masculinity combined with
contemporary economic realities make for difficult transitions from
boyhood to manhood. Michael Kimmel (2008) describes the world of
(mostly white) 16–26-year-olds as ‘guyland’, the liminal space between
boyhood and manhood where guys postpone adult responsibilities
and prolong adolescent fantasies. Guyland sex is casual, and marriage
a distant goal. Guyland work is temporary, more about getting by
than pursuing upward mobility. Guyland fun involves heavy drinking,
watching sports, playing video games, and surfing internet porn. Left
to find their own path to adulthood without much guidance, guys drift
from job to job, relationship to relationship, until they finally ‘slouch’
or ‘drift’ into manhood (Kimmel 2008: 267). Like Peter Pan and his lost
boys, they refuse to grow up – at least for as long as possible.
Early theorists saw postwar subcultures as (masculine) responses to
structural changes, particularly the decline of steady work and associated
working-class cultures (Hebdige 1979). Mods, rockers, skinheads, and
punks all formed ‘cults of masculinity’ (Brake 1985) in which young,
struggling, working-class men could ‘recover’ a sense of manhood, often
through ‘aggro’ performances of masculinity – fighting, heavy drinking,
sexual conquest, and other forms of risk-taking (Willis 1978). Similar,
perhaps, to other male homosocial preserves, subcultures were attempts
to shore up a declining hegemonic masculinity as the foundations of
patriarchal manhood became unsteady.
Even somewhat more contemporary scenes such as hip-hop, extreme

metal, and skateboarding appear to be at a minimum male dominated
and in some cases openly hostile to women. Studying heavy metal,
Krenske and McKay (2000) note the glorification of men’s sexual power,
while Walser (1993) observed processes of ‘female exscription’ by which
women were made invisible in the scene. Likewise, certain hip-hop cul-
tures and genres of rap music such as gangsta rap consistently denigrate
and marginalize women (Rose 2008), while hard-core gamers frequently
invoke sexist, homophobic, and racist epithets in their play while seek-
ing to ‘rape’ – or dominate – their opponents. And while women skate
and become professional skateboarders, in a subcultural sense, skating
remains male centered (Beal 1996).
Many subcultures initially seem to resemble the hypermasculine,
homosocial preserves theorized by Brake, and even well-intentioned
subcultural men may be satisfied that they exceed the ‘going rate’ of
patriarchal manhood; they feel more egalitarian than their fathers or
more conventional men, and that is good enough (Mullaney 2007).
Yet, in addition to being masculinist retreats, subcultures have been
havens for subversive masculinities, sites of genderplay, and gendered
resistance. While the ‘crisis’ of masculinity has produced a backlash, it
has also prompted new masculinities. In a series of studies of fraternity
brothers, male cheerleaders, and both straight and gay athletes in the
United States and the UK, Eric Anderson (2005, 2009) finds the vio-
lent, homophobic, heteromasculinist male in decline. He argues that in
periods of diminishing ‘homohysteria’, traditional, patriarchal, homo-
phobic masculinity is not hegemonic. Instead, conservative ‘orthodox
masculinity’ coexists with (relatively) progressive ‘inclusive masculin-
ity’. This ‘softer’ masculinity allows a greater range of gendered expres-
sion, allows greater emotional and physical intimacy among men, and
is less dependent on dominating women, gay men, and other men with
less power.
If a trend toward less homophobic masculinities can emerge in frater-
nities and college sport, long bastions of heterosexism and homophobia,
how might subculturists be transforming manhood and impacting boys’
transition to adulthood? They may reflect, and even help generate, more
androgynous, accepting, and inclusive masculinities.
Masculine transitions
Subcultures are relatively diffuse groupings having a sense of shared

identity and distinctive, nonnormative ideas, practices, and objects,
Ross Haenfler 131
along with marginalization from and/or resistance to perceived con-

ventional society. Subculturists’ deviance and resistance often occur
along gendered lines as a fundamental means to distinguish themselves
from ‘mainstream’ norms. Many subculturists enhance their outsider
status by contrasting themselves with a perceived ‘jock’1 culture popu-
lated by athletic, successful, popular youth. Most also profess disdain
for the ‘corporate man’, doggedly working at an unfulfilling job in
an effort to gain status, power, and money. In fact, many groupings
display outright opposition to jock masculinity, instead sharing commit-
ments to creativity, individuality, DIY ethics, and a sense that dominant
social norms and paths to adulthood are conformist, stifling, and even
oppressive.
Relationships
The demands of hegemonic masculinity coupled with the ‘crisis’ have
produced a backlash, as men collectively attempt to shore up their
remaining privilege. Ironically, as women increasingly gain political
and economic power, the reactionary response has been the widespread
‘pornification’ of mass culture (e.g., so-called men’s/‘lad’ magazines such
as FHM and Maxim), as if to remind women that despite their newfound
power, their primary value lies in their sexual availability and attrac-
tiveness as perceived through the male gaze. Women have often had
to demand space and recognition in subcultures; Riot Grrrls’ challenge
to punk and indie music serves as an iconic example. Inclusive mas-
culinity suggests not only that men are developing more progressive
attitudes toward queer people but that they develop more egalitarian
relationships with women and their straight male peers. Subcultures
have at various moments been at the forefront of nurturing new
masculinities.
Men (and women) in some scenes have forcefully spoken out against
sexism and actively attempted to foster more inclusive spaces. The
UK anarcho-punk collective Crass included several women, challeng-
ing the entire notion of marriage along with sexual repression on
records such as Penis Envy in the early 1980s. Canadian anarcho-punk
legends Propagandhi mock ‘sexist, racist, homophobes’ and encour-
age resistance to ‘white male capitalist supremacist[s]’ in their song
‘The Only Good Fascist Is a Dead Fascist’. In ‘Refusing to Be a Man’,
they directly criticize heterosexism and rape culture. Electronic dance
music (EDM) and rave scenes can provide women (imperfect) spaces to
experiment with sexuality with less expectation to have sex (McRobbie
1993). Actively asserting their sexuality, goth women challenge ‘passive
femininity’ even if their notion of gender egalitarianism remains rela-

tively narrow (Wilkins 2004). Other subculturists challenge the sexist
and heterosexist strictures of organized religion and political systems.
Muslim punks in the ‘taqwacore’ scene promote gender equality, espous-
ing heretical ideas such as women-led prayer. When religious authorities
in Indonesia’s Aceh Province take punks to reeducation camps for
flaunting Sharia law or when youth in Mexico beat emo kids, they do
so at least in part because these young men fail to enact a proper man-
hood. When subcultural gender transgressions occur in contexts where
the threat of repression is very real, they are even more threatening to
the dominant gender order.
In some cases, men have seemingly adopted supportive roles in
women-dominated scenes: as referees in roller derby, audience mem-
bers in neo-burlesque, and readers of fan fiction. Yet gender rela-
tions remain complex and contradictory. For example, on the one
hand, emo culture – associated with a variety of scenes, but especially
punk, hardcore, and indie rock – allows young men, with their often
androgynous appearance and emotional displays, to disrupt hegemonic
masculinities and gay cultures that fetishize muscular, athletic (straight)
male bodies (Peters 2010). As emo boys ‘cross the borders into queer
maleness they disrupt heteronormative constructions of masculinity’
but they contradict their professed difference and inclusivity by portray-
ing themselves as victims of girls’ romantic whims, ultimately ‘serv[ing]
heteronormative ends’ (Ryalls 2013: 84).
Men’s relationships with other men frequently entail competition,
fear, and emotional distance in service to the ‘not feminine’ imperative
of hegemonic masculinity. While men may seek to ‘prove’ themselves
to women, in actuality they direct their efforts primarily at other men
(or a generalized man); patriarchy in some ways ‘is more about what
goes on among men’ (Johnson 2005: 53, emphasis in original). Although
many men hide behind a hard, emotionless ‘cool pose’, in fact most
boys desire intimate friendships. Studying a diverse array of boys in the
United States, Way (2013: n.p.) finds that
a central dilemma for boys growing up in the United States is how to

get the intimacy they want while still maintaining their manliness.
Boys want to be able to freely express their emotions, including their
feelings of vulnerability; they want others to be sensitive to their feel-
ings without being teased or harassed for having such desires. They
want genuine friendships in which they are free to be themselves
rather than conform to rigid masculine stereotypes.
Ross Haenfler 133
Anderson’s work suggests that ‘heterosexual men ascribing to an “inclu-

sive masculinity” demonstrate emotional and physical homosocial
proximity’ (2009: 8). They value ‘heterofemininity’, expressing emo-
tions coded feminine (Way 2013). Likewise, McCormack’s (2012) study
of English teenage boys shows how young men condemn homophobia,
display emotional openness, and even engage in physical intimacy
previously considered too ‘gay’.
Subcultures at once provide men further proving grounds and spaces
to develop meaningful homosocial relationships. ‘Bronies’ – an inter-
national fandom of mostly young, childless men surrounding the US
animated television series and toy franchise My Little Pony: Friendship
Is Magic (MLP: FIM) – sincerely enjoy a cartoon series meant primarily
for prepubescent girls. Even the fandom’s moniker challenges ‘bro’ cul-
ture: ‘Combining this nomenclature with the effeminate realm of toy
ponies contrasts the hyper-masculine with the “girly” in an intention-
ally ironic way. The word, the identity, and the subculture of “Brony”
employs both irony and sincerity’ (Robertson 2014: 27). Bronies’ motto
is ‘love and tolerance’, a nod to the show’s values but also a refutation of
the relentless, denigrating criticism they receive for their gender trans-
gressions. Conventions such as BronyCon bring fans together, and one
fan group, Bronies for Good, organizes service events under the mis-
sion to ‘[foster] the growth of a global community of caring, socially
conscious individuals’ (http://broniesforgood.org/about-us).
Boys and men involved in a variety of subcultures value their homoso-
cial relationships and the range of emotional expression afforded to
them in their respective scenes. A brony explains the appeal of My Little
Pony (Robertson 2014: 33):
In Western society, men are allowed only emotions of competition,

aggression, and dominance; anything else is mocked as weak or
effeminate. Joy, however, should NOT be linked to gender; it is a
human right. MLP: FIM is a show which allows men to experience
the simple-but-profound emotion of joy in a world that actively tries
to deny them this feeling.
Emo cultures include alt-fashion-conscious, eyeliner-wearing boys

singing about their insecurities and vulnerabilities. In the midst of its
melodic, but often aggressive, music, emo allows young men ‘expres-
sions of heartache, weakness, longing, and loss’ (Williams 2007: 146).
Spaces where boys and men can share a range of emotions are in short
supply; subcultures can serve as those free spaces. Emo boys – straight
and gay – might kiss in public (Peters 2010), even if only to impress girls
(Ryalls 2013). In many scenes, friends become family, young men pro-
fess their ‘brotherhood’, and cooperation and camaraderie between men
interrupt competition and domination.
Other scenes encourage nonnormative masculinities as well.
‘Nerdcore’ hip-hop heads contrast their DIY, sci-fi-infused, geek cul-
ture music with the ultraviolence and sexual conquest of gangsta rap,
maintaining the genre’s braggadocio while disrupting the hypermas-
culine ‘cool pose’ prevalent in commercial hip-hop (Ronald 2012). As
they rap about Star Trek, superheroes, and video games, as they pub-
licly declare their sexual inexperience rather than sexual conquests,
nerd MCs satirize the domination and competition between men so
prevalent in rap music.2 Subcultures can provide objects and activities
around which young men can bond, alternatives to sports or fraternal
organizations somewhat less invested in orthodox masculinity. Emo-
tional closeness can ease boys’ transitions to manhood and contribute
to broader transitions in the meanings of masculinity.
Subcultures have also played a role in interrupting the homophobic
discourse so central to policing the boundaries of hegemonic masculin-
ity, as gay men – coded as feminine – come to represent all the anxieties
of ‘failed’ manhood. Anderson (2009: 8) sees a decline in homophobia
as central to emerging inclusive masculinities, even though ‘inclusive-
acting men may use homophobic discourse but without intent to
degrade homosexuals’. Some subcultures, such as drag, openly challenge
homophobia and/or welcome gay participants (see Taylor 2012), yet
many other youth scenes encourage gender and sexual nonconformity.
Randy ‘Biscuits’ Turner and Gary Floyd of Texas punk bands Big Boys
and The Dicks were openly gay performers during the late 1970s and
1980s, a time of homohysteria fueled by the AIDS crisis. Fellow Texas
punks MDC challenged homophobia with songs such as ‘America So
Straight?’. Floyd recalls, ‘The thing that set Austin apart in 1979 was
that there were always a lot of queers in the scene . . . . The popular bands
in Austin were fronted by openly gay guys’ (Rathe 2012). Meanwhile,
the post-punk artists Morrissey, the Smiths, and the Cure modeled alter-
native masculinities to their many Generation X fans, including those
in punk and goth scenes. Gradually, the notoriously macho hardcore
scene spawned queercore bands Limp Wrist, Tribe 8, Spitboy, and Los
Crudos.
In sum, while impossible to generalize across the diverse array of sub-
cultures, let alone specific scenes, subcultures have provided space for
young men to challenge hegemonic relationships. In fact, participants
Ross Haenfler 135
in some scenes actively fight sexism and misogyny and vociferously sup-
port more inclusive masculinities. Generations of young, subcultural
men have transitioned to adulthood, amid at least some exposure
to antisexist, queer-positive ideas, creating fissures in which inclusive
masculinities, and more inclusive relationships, might blossom.
Work
Orthodox masculinity requires that men engage in either physi-

cally demanding (e.g., construction) or high-status white-collar work.
Defined by his work, the successful man is a powerful attorney or busi-
nessman, working long hours, commanding various subordinates, and
making big money. A job or career represents not only purchasing power
but also stability, responsibility, and legitimacy, traits central to the
breadwinner role. In contrast, subcultures represent hedonistic escapes
from responsibility. Adults and authorities lamented, for example, the
hippies’ and punks’ supposed lack of work ethic.
A broad interpretation of inclusive masculinity might suggest that
men both welcome women and gay men as partners in the workplace
and refuse to be defined by their career and breadwinning capabilities.
Many subcultures question the status-seeking, competitive, and bread-
winning roles so central to patriarchal masculinity. Japanese subcul-
tures, for instance, often reject the subservient, overworked ‘salaryman’
archetype (Condry 2006). Crust and anarchist punks likewise abjure the
stability (and perceived conformity) of careers, and Riot Grrrls often
included anticapitalist sentiments. While visions of anarchic utopia may
be naive, subcultures have encouraged men to seek fulfillment beyond
the status and wealth that conventional careers may bring. Still, several
generations of subculturists have aged into their forties, fifties, and even
sixties, and most of them work.
Subcultural participation does not necessarily undermine career
opportunities and may in fact lead to meaningful work, as subcultural
capital (e.g., scene connections, tattoos, insider knowledge) helps fos-
ter DIY or subcultural careers. Some subculturists create careers within a
scene, running record labels or promoting shows (Tsitos 2012). Dozens
of skaters have forged professional lives based not only in compe-
tition but also in skateboard, clothing, and shoe companies. Other
subculturists choose flexible careers that will not overly impinge on
their scene participation or work part-time at scene-related jobs, creating
hybrid conventional/subcultural careers, for example, by playing music
on the side (Haenfler 2011). Bennett (2013: 107) found that aging punks
‘were not resigned to accepting the “nine-to-five” routine characteristics

of many conventional occupations’, choosing social work, jobs at which
they could listen to music, or work reflective of their punk values over
more lucrative and stable careers.
In an era of global competition and, in many places, soaring edu-
cation costs, DIY scene experience may prove valuable in conventional
careers as well. Many participants develop DIY dispositions – tolerance
for risk, confidence, self-reliance, and adaptability – crucial to success in
many careers. DIY experiences such as booking shows, organizing tours,
designing band websites, and running record labels provide manage-
ment, organization, marketing, and job-specific proficiencies (Haenfler
2014).
In short, subcultures may prepare young men for work and career
rather than serving as retreats from ‘real’ responsibilities, while also
questioning the breadwinner imperative. Instead of inhibiting transi-
tion to work or career (and thus adulthood), participation may enable
subculturists to fashion meaningful DIY or hybrid conventional/scene
careers. In increasingly fluid and competitive labor markets, subcultural
skills and networks may prove especially valuable to young men even as
they reform the role of work in masculine identities.
Parenting and mentoring
While patriarchal masculinity may once have required that men liter-
ally be patriarchs, acting as responsible but detached, loving but strict
authority figures, contemporary masculinity has more often been char-
acterized by dads’ absence. Subcultural participation seems especially
incompatible with fatherhood – marriage and parenthood being sym-
bolic of domesticity and conformity – and yet the two are increasingly
intertwined. Jim Lindberg (2007), longtime singer of the punk band
Pennywise, describes the challenges and pleasures of parenting three
daughters in his book Punk Rock Dad; how can he scream ‘Fuck Author-
ity!’ to his audience every night while being an authority figure to his
kids? Other dads openly wrestle with the politics of birth and the strug-
gles of equal parenting in ’zines such as Rad Dad (Moniz and Smith
2011). The Modern Day Dads blog features parenting tips from tattooed
dads, photos of men skateboarding with their babies, and discussions
about raising kind children and limiting work time to be fully present
with family (moderndaydads.com).
Scenes become multigenerational as parents share their subcultural
interests and even include their children in their subcultural pursuits.
Ross Haenfler 137
Older ‘soulies’ – participants in the British northern soul scene – pass

on their music, record collections, and dance moves to their children,
keeping the scene alive across generations (Smith 2012). Taking kids
to gigs and festivals can even help integrate them into the scene.
One hardcore dad helped his then ten-year-old son create an online
’zine, PMA Kid (PMA standing for ‘positive mental attitude’). The site
(www.pmakid.com) features interviews with hardcore and/or straight
edge musicians but also ‘positive’ athletes, actors, and others. The doc-
umentary The Other F Word demonstrates how punk fathers try to avoid
the mistakes their own fathers made and how they balance their non-
conformity with parental authority. My own research on straight edge
revealed how many young men forswore drugs and alcohol in part to
resist their fathers’ abusive tendencies (Haenfler 2006) and many raise
their kids in vegetarian/vegan households. Goth parents sought to pass
on their subcultural ideals even more than their specific gothic interests:
‘most hoped their own association with the subculture, together with
any direct exposure to it their children might have had, would result in
the development of an open-minded, unprejudiced approach towards
people with different cultural backgrounds, appearances and approaches
to life’, including emphasizing ‘the impact of the goth scene on their
children’s attitude towards non-heterosexual approaches to gender and
sexuality’ (Hodkinson 2013: 1084).
Even subculturist men who are not themselves fathers now mentor
their younger counterparts. Older b-boys treat their younger fellows
as sons, teaching them to dance but also fostering life skills (Fogerty
2012). Similarly, older graffiti artists pass on their skills and values to
younger writers (Docuyanan 2000). Aging straight edgers remain drug-
free, at least in part to set a positive example for younger adherents
(Haenfler 2006). Toby Morse of the hardcore punk band H2 O founded
the nonprofit organization One Life One Chance with the mission
to ‘engage and inspire elementary, middle and high school students
to make healthy choices and live a Drug Free life’. Older participants
also benefit from such intergenerational exchanges, keeping abreast of
current trends and being inspired by youth’s creative energy.
Such intergenerational and noninstitutional interaction belies the
‘absent men’ and ‘rugged individualist’ narratives so often used to
describe men. Subculturalists do not necessarily see their participa-
tion as a barrier to parenthood or vice versa. Instead, subcultures may
inform parenting and mentoring choices in meaningful ways. The result
may not be that men equally share child care and housework; fathers
are more likely to remain involved in their scene than are mothers,
sometimes at the expense of their spouse’s involvement (Hodkinson

2013). Yet subcultural experiences and affiliations – including those
that are gender- or sexually transgressive – do color the transition to
fatherhood or mentorship.
Conclusion
The prevailing narrative about young men maintains that they are in
trouble. Not only are they taking longer to ‘grow up’, but their transi-
tion to adulthood is rocky and fraught with peril. Moreover, they exhibit
boorish behavior, or ‘laddishness’, and, worse, too often perpetrate vio-
lence and misogyny. The landscape of subcultural masculinities spans
a spectrum of oppression and resistance; some men ‘escape’ to subcul-
tures as relatively homosocial preserves mirroring, or even exaggerating,
orthodox masculinities. For others, subcultures serve as sites of resis-
tance, spaces to challenge the heterosexist, patriarchal ‘guy code’. Most
fall short of a truly inclusive masculinity. Still, a complete understand-
ing of young men’s transitions to adulthood requires an accounting
of where boys and men are pushing back against heterosexist patri-
archy, including within subcultures. Orthodox masculinities coexist
with inclusive masculinities; they are not separate ‘camps’. Rather, they
co-occur, expressions of each emerging in interaction, hypermasculine
bravado and ritualized violence coexisting with antisexist attitudes and
attempts at inclusivity. While I do not mean to paint subcultures as pro-
gressive, pro-feminist havens, I do mean to recognize the importance of
such young men, heavily influenced by their peers, the boy code, and
patriarchal culture, stretching the boundaries of masculinity at a crucial
juncture in their development. It is past time for researchers to move
beyond describing and theorizing the ‘pathological’ male to reveal the
nuance, the creativity, and the multiplicity of masculinities in his lived
experience.
Subcultures, as microcultures/idiocultures in which people regularly
interact, and as liminal spaces where young men transition to adult-
hood, serve as important communities of meaning, making them ideal
sites for just such investigation. In their inclusive manifestations, they
reflect broader trends toward the inclusive masculinity theorized by
Anderson and McCormack. Counter-hegemonic ideas extend to gender,
including gendered conceptions of relationships, work, and parenthood.
But more than simply reflecting such changes, I argue subcultures have
helped usher in that change. Early hippies, punks, goths, and others
certainly re-created gender inequalities present in the larger culture. But
Ross Haenfler 139
many also democratized and put into practice the urgency of feminist,
queer, and pro-feminist men’s movements, resisted the inevitable back-
lash since the Reagan/Thatcher years, and helped lay the groundwork
for future disruptions of orthodox masculinity. Inclusive subcultural
masculinities do not only emerge in periods of declining homohysteria;
they also help create such periods.
In a sense, subculturists’ transitions to adulthood are not so ter-
ribly different from their more conventional peers. Many eventually
hold jobs and frequently become parents. Yet they often embrace
these responsibilities in unconventional ways, bringing their subcultural
values and experiences to bear. I caution that we avoid observing mas-
culinity only in the most spectacular elements or performative moments
of a scene – moshing at a show, wearing a subcultural uniform, taking
drugs, getting tattoos. Equally important are subculturists’ daily lived
experiences, when subcultural affiliations may be less visible, may be
less (or more!) salient, but may still profoundly impact relationships,
work, and parenthood. In the case of men, specifically, studying transi-
tions means not only attending to youths’ experience of moving toward
adulthood, but also examining how the very terrain in which boys make
the transition to men has changed. Boys are transitioning to adult-
hood in the midst of larger transitions in masculinities. When young
athletes, fraternity brothers, and various subculturists enact inclusive
masculinities, they expose and widen the fissures in patriarchal mas-
culinity. They demonstrate that hegemony is never total, and weakens
as people withdraw their consent.
Notes
1. ‘Jock’ is a colloquial term for athlete, referring to ‘jock strap’, the undergar-
ment worn by many male athletes to support their genitals. While some
athletes self-identify as jocks, others use the term pejoratively, signifying
arrogance, violence, stupidity, and shallowness.
2. As further evidence of the contradictions in contemporary masculinities,
nerdcore rappers may valorize new masculinities while engaging in ‘ironic
racism’ as they parody rap cultures associated with blackness and brownness.
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11
Youth Political Subjectivity in the
Global South: Crossing Conceptual
Boundaries in Less Examined
Contexts
Darcie Vandegrift
Introduction
Increasingly, youth studies scholars challenge the accuracy of previously

assumed boundaries, collapsing the imagined tidy division between
youth/adulthood, or culture/politics (Coe and Vandegrift, 2015. Addi-
tionally, as other contributors to this volume have noted (Chapters 2
and 3), the field requires more careful bridging to connect social struc-
ture to the meanings and practices young people create in making a
life).
This chapter expands these efforts through focus on the context
of how young people in the Global South engage with and under-
stand politics. The terms ‘Global South’ and ‘Global North’, although
broad, highlight the impacts of relational differences in the distribu-
tion of economic, political, and social resources across nations and
regions. I focus on youth political subjectivity, how young people expe-
rience themselves as political beings who feel entitled to have voice,
belonging, and influence in producing the nation and related social rela-
tionships. I examine these issues through data drawn from my research
on Venezuela and throughout Latin America.
Three notable features of Venezuelan youth political subjectivity
frame potential questions for bridging the gap between culture and
structure in youth studies. First, the Venezuelan state has shifted toward
a new understanding of youth as active citizens. Second, diverse tem-
poralities of the Global South shape how young people navigate youth
142
Darcie Vandegrift 143
incorporation as citizens, balancing the coexistence of coexisting, simul-

taneous social organizations of time. Third, young people in the Global
South create, assert, and understand citizenship and political practice
in ways that collapse boundaries between the politics of the spectacular
and those of the everyday, using global repertoires, consumption, and
play in constructing political subjectivities. I conclude with suggestions
in support of a global social generations approach, drawing from a wider
frame of spaces and places, helping us to better understand both Global
South youth as well as their Global North contemporaries.
The decentering of the industrialized Global North as the ‘normal’
or ‘natural’ social organization of time and space considers youth lives
outside of predefined normative transitions to citizenship, employment,
and family (Comaroff and Comaroff 2006). It joins recent work that
brackets as historically specific to the mid-20th century the theorization
of youth as a developmental stage on pathways to adult roles of citi-
zenship, work, and family (Wyn and Woodman 2006: 498). In turn, we
can understand Global North youth experiences as locally specific rather
than falsely universal, just as recent scholarship has urged us to see the
historical peculiarities of baby boomer youth experience.
Imagining youth in the Global South: From assuming

categories to formulating questions
In representing the lives of young people in Latin America, their vulner-

ability (Reguillo 2003) and exclusion (Faletto 1986) are often empha-
sized, as well as spectacular moments in which youth spark political
upheaval (Díaz Alba 2013) or engage in/fall victim to violence (World
Bank 2011). Often, the topic of the Global South in youth studies is
approached primarily in terms of ‘tradition’ or ‘values’, frames usually
not used to talk about Global North youth. While these topics merit
attention, they are not the only ways, or indeed, the primary ways,
that young people accomplish political subjectivity, which at the core is
imaginative work to practice citizenship. Youth political subjectivity in
Latin America is less connected to institutional forms of doing politics,
social class or party affiliation, and increasingly understood by youth as
a social project embedded in subjective action and everyday experience
(Alvarado and Vommaro 2010).
The histories and contexts shaping youth subjectivities in the Global
South are heterogeneous, sharing with youth in the Global North a
fresh contact (Mannheim 1952) with global flows of ideas, cultural
commodities, and capital, a multitude of nonnormative trajectories for
144 Youth Political Subjectivity in the Global South
citizenship (Chapter 7), and identity projects. As part of creating polit-

ical identities, urban Global South subjects are sometimes (but not
always – see Nilan 2011) required to choose or create a biography in
ways that obscure how social class and other structural factors limit
choice (Furlong and Cartmel 2007). Youth navigate these conditions
differently in Latin America and elsewhere in the Global South. Their
lives in societies are shaped by relational historical and contemporary
conditions: colonization, structurally disadvantageous economic rela-
tionships to Global North states, post-authoritarian governments, and
marginalizing incorporation in neoliberal markets. The middle class is
expanding throughout Global South nations (Pezzini 2012). Some youth
comprise its first generation while others are the first generation to look
in from the outside at widespread expansion of prosperity without being
included in it. Local experiences of social inequality – doubly relational
in that they happen across nation-states and across social class – exist
for youth in Global North societies, too.
Venezuelan context
Venezuelan young adults grew up amid competing claims about citi-

zenship and belonging. Hugo Chávez was elected president in 1999.
Through a set of reforms and sociopolitical shifts often referred to by
supporters as the proceso (process) or the Bolivarian revolution, the state
enacted increasingly expansive, voter-approved but highly controversial
reforms, ranging from aggressive de-privatization of industry to massive
expansion of higher education (Ellner 2008). In this way, Venezuelan
society has embarked on an intensive and highly conflictive political,
economic, and social change. State policies and discourses emphasize
the inclusion of the poor and working classes in grassroots decision-
making and citizen participation and the expansion of explicitly rev-
olutionary education from preschool to university. In my research on
young adult political subjectivity during radical political transformation
in Venezuela, I found that youth participated in projects that defined
for them their participation as citizens. These practices would scarcely
be recognized by transitions literatures as political engagement: mural-
painting and filmmaking brigades, literacy projects, and state-subsidized
computer repair cooperatives, among many others.
During the same period, global and national private media, adver-
tising, and supporters of the previous political order advanced
market-based and liberal democratic citizenship identities. Furthermore,
neoliberal pressures as well as celebration of capitalism had reach into
Venezuela through media, debt agreements, and global trade (Fernandes

2010). The privatization and individualization of risk, shrinking expen-
ditures on state safety nets, and increasing deregulation of the market
continue as a central cultural logic transmitted through private media
outlets (Fernandes 2010). In my interview data, I heard opposition to the
Chávez government from young Venezuelans whose previous conceptu-
alizations of citizenship had been challenged. Young adults, mostly but
not exclusively from middle and upper classes, took a central role in con-
testing Chávez’s policies, which I will discuss in the next section. Very
young pro-government activists worked to create new, more horizontal
processes of engaging in activism (Taft 2010).
As a result of these changes, many taken-for-granted terms used to talk
about youth political practice were converted into topics for society-
wide inquiry. Rather than assuming the relatively fixed if pessimistic
context of the liberal democracy, politics in Venezuela is very much
an ongoing question: what should society look like? Who are its legiti-
mate citizens? Similar fluid conceptualizations of national identity and
subjectivity have been noted elsewhere in, for example, Nepal (Liechty
2003) and Iran (Khosravi 2008). Youth have become primary actors
in creating the answers to these questions. In doing so, the state has
been forced to understand youth not as future citizens, but as polit-
ical actors in the here and now. Young activists across the political
spectrum and the state have diverged from typical state marginaliza-
tion or controlling approaches to youth (Alvarado and Vommaro 2010:
12), a reesult of both youth activism and Venezuelan state projects
emphasizing inclusion.
Global South states, the futurity bias, and the social

organization of citizenship
Venezuelan state policies currently describe youth as central economic

and political actors forming part of national economic and political
projects. At the same time, young people actively construct new ways of
doing politics and asserting citizenship. This did not happen ‘naturally’,
but through struggle and engagement between youth political actors
and the state. In much of the liberal democratic Global North, edu-
cational, religious, economic, and civic institutions imagine youth as
citizens-in-training (White and Wyn 2004, Harris 2009, Gordon 2010).
The futurity bias – the idea that young people only count as future polit-
ical subjects rather than presently important to the realization of social
and political change – is a powerful discourse in ‘civic deficit’ literatures
claiming a crisis in youth political socialization (see, for instance, United

Nations 2007).
State framing of youth only as a group in need of protection, a vul-
nerable category without agency, is another manifestation of this bias.
This framing was evident at the beginning of the Chávez administration.
Youth were seen as a primary population of citizens in need of protec-
tion. In the Venezuelan Constitution (1999) ratified soon after Chávez’s
election, Article 78 described the state’s responsibility to children and
adolescents as one of ‘progressive incorporation into active citizen-
ship’. Parents, teachers, and the state were charged to act on youth’s
behalf, taking into account their ‘best interests’ (Article 78). Chávez
extended higher education opportunities in both traditional universities
and Bolivarian universities to marginalized populations. Between 2000
and 2005, enrollment increased 50% to 1.4 million Venezuelans, includ-
ing intensive incorporation of the lowest three socioeconomic quintiles
(García Guadilla et al. 2006).
Chávez and his successor, Nicolás Maduro, have clashed with oppo-
sitional sectors of university students. In 2007 and 2008, student
movements focused on liberal democratic demands such as free speech,
reduced state regulation of media, and university autonomy. Students
emerged as a central anti-Chávez interest group, more trusted in pub-
lic opinion polls than opposition political parties or anti-Chávez media
(Notitarde el Vie 2010). The student movement, disproportionately
led by affluent youth, received international attention and funding
from the US Department of State. In many parts of the Global South,
young adults have become responsible for social reproduction (Jeffrey
2010); for anti-Chávez political strategists and media, young adults were
charged with nothing less than the political rebirth of Venezuelan liberal
democracy. Suddenly, the potential for leaving behind the disillusion-
ment with failed political parties rested on the energy and legitimacy
of an ‘untainted’ generation of political actors. In 2012, three of the six
major candidates for the opposition unity party (MUD in Spanish) were
under 42 years old.
In the university student protests, the state encountered two chal-
lenges to the narrative of revolutionary inclusiveness. First, counter to
the earlier constitutional framing, young people no longer saw them-
selves as under the tutelage of the state, but as citizens making demands
as political actors. Second, this particular group of student activists
asserted a liberal democratic model over a revolutionary one. This pro-
vided one of the few well-framed public refutations of the state social
projects that advocated grassroots collective democracy and inclusion
of marginalized sectors in governance (Smilde and Hellinger 2011).
Partly in response to the centrality of university students in the oppo-

sition to the state, government framing of youth has shifted over the
past 15 years. Rather than repressing or ignoring youth opposition, the
chavista state sought to publicize both the ways in which they included
youth into national projects and how opposition youth were not the
legitimate youth political subjects. Pro-Chávez students gave widely
circulated public testimony about support for the president. The gov-
ernment responded by encouraging self-advocacy of youth interests to
the state. This is notable for both the divestment from the citizen-in-
formation approach to youth incorporation and also the emphasis on
youth as citizens rather than as workers. The state’s Institute for Youth
Popular Power declared in 2010 that the top priority for youth was to
promote ‘Chávez’s capacity to break the image construed for years that
presented youth as a danger or immature subject, incapable of being part
of the construction of the nation, vindicating youth subjectivity as cre-
ative and full of possibility’ (IPPJ 2011). By 2011, the state had formed
a cabinet-level Ministry of Youth, whose first principle was the ‘pro-
tagonistic inclusion’ of young people as ‘political subjects’ who ensure
the transformation of their own life and society’s transformation (MPPJ
2013).
As the shifts indicate, youth in Venezuela demanded inclusion as citi-
zens. But the state also made the strategic decision to heed this demand,
not the least because it sought to delegitimize a powerful opponent,
its youth opposition. In placing closer attention on political subjectivity
through attention to the Global South, the sheer demographics of youth
deserve increased awareness. Not only do most of the world’s youth –
about 85% – live in the Global South, but a large proportion of Global
South national populations are young. This has led states throughout
the Global South to prioritize youth as an interest group. For example,
the historical centrality of educated youth in political upheaval, such
as Tiananmen Square uprisings, have led high-ranking officials to name
job creation for young graduates an ‘unprecedented challenge’ and the
nation’s top priority (Bradsher 2013, Sharma 2013).
This does not indicate some automatic linkage between demographic
pyramids and political subjectivity. A particular kind of future-oriented
social order is required for youth to be seen as agents – welcoming or
threatening – who rework and reimagine society (Cole 2004). States
imagine youth through multiple means: how politicians talk about
youth, how constitutions frame young citizens, how budgets are allo-
cated, and how job creation is prioritized. The Venezuelan government’s
framing of young people often uses the term protagonistic (active agents
whose human development and participation is central to the success of
the nation-state). This blends the state’s earliest messages about political
inclusion of marginalized populations with responses to pressure from
students who vehemently oppose the government. Youth studies can
draw from this case increased attention to questions about under what
historical conditions are youth more likely to be able to claim politi-
cal subjectivities as a social generation that becomes a ‘generation in
actuality’ (Mannheim 1952: 304), that is, a social cohort able to act as
protagonistic citizens.
Diverse temporal modalities
Social generation analysis shifts the field of vision from seeing youth
as primarily future adults to how youth shape the social world (and are
shaped by it) in a particular context. The close attention to subjectiv-
ity and history denaturalizes and resocializes the passage of time for
individuals, groups, and societies. Within the Global North, the shifting
work of identity construction and relationships between the individual
and society in late modernity (Beck 1992, Giddens 1991) are central to
considering youth lives – how they navigate risk, use a framework of
choice to understand life chances, foster relationships, and, overall, cre-
ate a life within a particular historical moment understood as late or
postmodernity.
Scholars from the Global South have roundly critiqued the assump-
tion that all societies mimic the West’s development trajectory – or that
they should (Appadurai 1996, García Canclini 2001). The social orga-
nization of Latin American societies is not a process of ‘ramping up to
postmodernity’ (Lull 1995: 262). It is often theorized as a simultane-
ous overlap of the premodern, the modern, and the postmodern (García
Canclini 2005). Youth organize work, study, and political activities amid
these multiple temporal velocities (Martín-Barbero 2002). The strategic
emphasis of indigenous, municipal, or regional identities, and cultural
artifacts (such as clothing, music, or food) creates a space for asserting
rights and demanding recognition. These constitute a new way in which
young people participate as citizens (Vasquez and Vommaro 2009).
The importance of territorial and ethnic identities often is becoming
more, not less, central to how youth participate in politics, challenging
European theories about identity and modernity.
Yet North and South cannot be understood as dichonomous.
Martín-Barbero’s (2002) framing that Latin America’s post-1960s
youth experience time and sociality differently from previous gener-
ations resonates with English-language social generations theories. In
resocializing time, Latin American scholars note that youth interact and
make meaning with diverse temporal modalitites. The postmodern is
present; as part of a global social generation, they share with many
contemporaries the shifting temporalities created through mobile and
Internet communication technologies and shifting organization of work
lives. The modern and premodern coexist in complicated urban settings.
The Venezuelan city requires intensive time and energy to navigate. In
some cases, crime and violence make mobility completely impossible
for some youth. As a result, the time frames for work, leisure, family life,
and education occur on trajectories shaped by these ‘problems of the
city’ (Martín-Barbero 2006).
The visceral reality of alternate temporalities is evident in the experi-
ence of Andean Venezuelan university students. They attend a campus
that provides social welfare benefits (free tuition and meal allowance)
while finding bathrooms locked for days because of a lack of running
water. Interrupted classes due to tear gas and street protests are weekly,
sometimes daily, occurrences. The protests disrupt the semester because
the city’s transportation arteries remain from colonial eras. As I read
on my social media feeds when protests are active in Venezuela, stu-
dents and institutions can communicate these closures via Twitter and
Facebook on the country’s improving cell phone service. Hampered
physical mobility contrasts with the extensive reach of global culture,
as well as intimate associations with friends over SMS or Facebook. The
smartphone is a crucial tool for practicing politics and flirting with
classmates across town.
The construction of youth subjectivity within diverse temporal
modalities – the making of lives within societies simultaneously pre-
modern, modern, and postmodern – creates new questions for theoriz-
ing social generations. For example, cities are sources of new imaginative
work and of ongoing hardship (Hansen 2008, Main 2012). What hap-
pens as these diverse temporal modalities ‘travel’, with youth on the
move across national borders (the Venezuelan diaspora in Spain and
Florida, Central American children fleeing gang violence, and univer-
sity students to Global North cities are just a few examples)? How do
youth engage with diverse social organizations of time when creat-
ing political subjectivity across borders? Do youth in the Global North
live in more diverse timescapes than imagined – and if not, what are
the particular implications of a ‘unitemporal’ experience? How do we
understand the common ways across national contexts that Internet
and mobile technologies have rearranged the social organization of
time for youth?
Culture, leisure, and consumption as vocabulary for

constructing identities
How are the lives of ‘ordinary young people’ if we decenter the Global
North (see review in Woodman 2013)? One way to explore this ques-
tion is through how youth construct political subjectivity through play
and consumption. Youth politics in Latin America are increasingly
enacted as a social project embedded in subjective action and everyday
experience (Vasquez and Vommaro 2009). How do youth imagine and
seek inclusion as political subjects? Young people in the Global South
build vocabularies through global and national cultural commodities
to express dissent (Maira and Seop 2005), sexuality (Rofel 2007), cit-
izenship (Edmonds 2000), and other social goods limited to them in
avenues traditionally defined as political and social. Reflexive work is
embedded in intensive conversations about imperialism, colonization,
and insertion into globality (Lukose 2005), accomplished through con-
sumption of music, clothing, websites, and other things. It is also, of
course, a way of creating distinctions and class stratification (see review
contextualized in Brazil (O’Dougherty 2002: 11) and Nepal (Liechty
2003)).
In the following paragraphs, two examples from youth with very dif-
ferent views on politics in Venezuela illustrate how youth used leisure –
music-playing and consumption – to imagine subjectivity. These youth,
Andrés and Merlys, were not self-defined activists. They did not belong
to political parties. However, both drew from vocabularies and gram-
mars found in global culture and commodities to think about and
articulate their desires as citizens (García Canclini 2001). Andrés, who
was 20 the first time I interviewed him, explained that his participation
in a heavy metal band was in support of Chávez’s revolution:
Since I like music, I can support many more people [in developing
revolutionary consciousness]. I don’t imagine myself in an office,
being an assistant to the governor, because I believe you can create
consciousness in the street, with the people. Not in an office with
a tie. I am interested in singers and groups of the people who have
something to say. Who have a revolutionary message. Through our
music . . . we are moving towards consciousness-raising.
Andrés’s passion to make music tied in with his support of the Bolivarian
political project. Composing original Spanish-language compositions in
the style of Metallica, he drew from an ostensibly US cultural form –
metal music – hybridized with Latin American musical traditions to

imagine a relationship to fellow citizens and the nation (Nilan and Feixa
2006). It is notable that Andrés himself saw his music as political par-
ticipation. Political subjectivity lay beyond voting or joining a party. In
fact, such activities were not effective to ‘create consciousness’. His band
and his efforts to circulate ‘revolutionary music’ represented for him a
deeper political participation.
In a second example, online consumption of pirated music pro-
vided both alternative imaginaries and frameworks, and an inspiration
for constructing political subjectivity. Twenty-four-year-old Merlys con-
stituted part of the anxious middle class – aspiring, skeptical, and
precariously situated. A language student and future professional inter-
preter, she staunchly opposed both ‘Chávez’s shit’ and ‘the control of
the empire’ (the United States). She professed a hatred for politics, rebuk-
ing the state’s intensive efforts to reorient the nation and infuse politics
into every aspect of daily life. In this context, Merlys’s apathy itself was
a political position.
Merlys frequently listened to English-language music, engaging with
a global imagined modernity projected in her preteen favorite, the
Backstreet Boys, or more recently in the dystopic lyrics of Bright Eyes.
Merlys enjoyed punk music, but rarely attended concerts or clubs; she
painted her nails black, put Lincoln Park pins on her backpack, and
enjoyed listening in the private spaces of her room and home.
These intimate practices offered an escape from the frustrations of life,
political and personal:
This music. That’s just how I feel sometimes. That it all goes to the
devil. I just don’t care. I just don’t want to deal with what’s happening
in Venezuela anymore. Do you understand? I am sick of the fighting.
I am sick of the delays in the University. I just want to say [said in
English] ‘fuck, this is shit!’
Music offered an escape and an active rejection of politics, asserting

the idea that the citizen’s most heartfelt desire was to be left alone in
a society where things just worked.
While other youth in Venezuela’s Chávez generation actively opposed
or supported the government, Merlys enacted her belonging as a
global political subject through intensive engagement with online
cultures and an accompanying hacker citizenship that embraced hori-
zontal, autonomous, and no-cost circulation of cultural commodities.
In January 2012, she closely followed the news of the pending SOPA
Figure 11.1 Internet meme using Mafalda, 2012

Source: Creative commons license by derechoaleer.org.
(Stop Online Piracy Act) in the United States. As she checked Facebook
and news sites on her aunt’s computer, she searched updates about
the campaign to stop SOPA. Her profile picture for a few days was of
the Argentine cartoon Mafalda (Figure 11.1), a cartoon character who
argues with her mother to avoid eating soup (sopa in Spanish). Merlys’
online postings advocated for music’s ‘liberation’ from both state and
market control. The line between cultural consumption for pleasure
and political commentary blurred and shifted. The music, images, and
other cultural artifacts used for leisure and citizenship, such as the
Mafalda meme pictured here, were rapidly appropriated, modified, and
discarded.
Online interactions blur the distinctions between leisure and politics.
Is posting a selfie a kind of play? Is it a political statement? In youth
sociality online, new grammars of participation emerge that defy cate-
gorization as exclusively cultural play or attempts to reorder the political
organization of Venezuela. National political issues and identities are
constructed across national borders, as when youth use globally circu-
lating grammars of the hashtag and the selfie. In 2012 and 2013, two
groups of Venezuelans intensively used YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook
to circulate competing messages communicated through the globally
familiar interactive grammar. The photos resemble each other despite
opposing messages. An individual posts a self-created photograph hold-
ing a sign with a short phrase proceeded by a hashtag. During 2012,
the youth art collective Trinchera Creativa assembled over 300 photos
in which individuals or small groups from Venezuelan locales and from

around the world posed with a paper marked #yosoyChávez.1 In this
way, each expressed solidarity with the state and pan-Latin American
identity (through the Spanish phrase ‘I am Chávez’) while wishing
well to Chávez as he faced the late stages of cancer. Those who par-
ticipated, the majority young, discursively claimed interchangeability
between the dying president and those self-capturing a picture with
the phrase. Opponents to the government engaged this practice three
months later during a spate of protests against the government in
Venezuela. They spoke from a different location, with the overwhelming
support of global media, Venezuelans in exile, the Catholic Church, and
North American and European states. They used the same hashtag gram-
mar, but in English: #ImYourVoiceVenezuela and #PrayforVenezuela.
These can be found by searching images online using the hashtag mes-
sages. In the act of posting, liking, and circulating images holding signs
with the hashtags, youth produced and consumed political information,
seamlessly combining culture and politics.
Consumption, play, and cultural circulation are tools for projects of
building political subjectivity, mingling seemingly private spaces of the
home and the body with local spaces of the city. Social theorist García
Canclini (2001) argues that using commodities is a purposive activ-
ity through which social actors reason out their intentions as citizens
and subjects. To consume is to participate in an ‘arena of compet-
ing claims for what society produces and the ways of using it’ (García
Canclini 2001: 39). Through communities of consumption and leisure,
it becomes possible to articulate desires for ‘the right to participate in
the remaking of the system, that is, to redefine the very arrangement
in which we desire to be included’ (García Canclini 2001: 154–155).
Increasingly available to Global South youth through Internet cafes and
mobile technologies, global cultural forms as a medium create hybrid
(Nilan and Feixa 2006), alternative vocabularies for fashioning political
subjectivity to imagine citizenship.
Conclusion: Social generations in the Global South
As youth studies pays closer attention to the ways time and space shape
youth lives, the field can close the gap between transitions and cul-
tural approaches through analysis of what young people think as well
as what they do (Wyn and Woodman 2006: 507). Young people con-
tend with multiple complexities that cannot be captured with linear
assumptions about time, culture, or development ‘trajectories’. Social
generation analysis can document patterns across contexts while taking

seriously differences based on space, time, and social divisions. The per-
spective theorizes youth generations as both ‘distinctive and enduring’
(Wyn and Woodman 2006: 495).
Global South youth political subjectivity cannot be successfully theo-
rized solely from the specificity of Global North societies (Connell 2007).
In turn, Global North youth studies has much to gain from scholar-
ship from and about the Global South through a consideration of how
localities are exceptional and particular. The political practices of youth
themselves are deeply embedded in cultural practice. The politics of
the everyday, of meaning-making and culture, become central in how
they express and pursue politics. These are shared by youth globally. My
hope in this chapter is to encourage movement away from the assumed
boundaries between cultural practice and structural change, boundaries
that youth themselves do not delineate when they talk about, post
online about, and create politics (Coe and Vandegrift 2015). The new
questions that arise from increased dialogue between research on Global
South and Global North youth offer possibilities of better understanding
the complexity of youth lives around the world in the 21st century.
Note
1. These can be seen compiled in a video created by Trinchera Creativa at their
YouTube channel, www.youtube.com/user/TrincheraCreativa.
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12
Applying Theoretical Paradigms
to Indonesian Youth in Reflexive
Modernity
Steven Threadgold and Pam Nilan
Introduction
There is considerable anxiety and tension in the current generation

of Indonesian youth about the future. They grapple in the particu-
larly harsh ‘precariat’ of insecure work. Traditional expectations and
fixed life roles have been unsettled to a great extent in urban areas
by democratization and rapid economic growth. Moreover, while some
young Indonesians are still engaged in political struggle (Azca et al.
2011), most are not. They are actively engaged in building the successful
‘entrepreneurial self’ in late modernity, seeing themselves as responsi-
ble for shaping their personal future and managing the risks they face
(Parker and Nilan 2013). However, this process is not identical to what
takes place in the West.
The life trajectories of contemporary youth in non-Western coun-
tries challenge contemporary Western-derived theorizing about youth
transitions. First, the implicit concept of Western adulthood itself –
independence from family of origin – most often lacks relevance in
Indonesia. Second, compared to most Western countries, Indonesia has
no welfare system. These examples call into question the apparent uni-
versality of changes for youth in reflexive modernity. It is therefore
necessary to select judiciously from the theoretical pantheon of youth
studies when engaging in analysis of non-Western youth phenomena.
With this in mind, Connell’s (2007) ‘Southern theory’ critique of
how the Northern hemisphere dominates sociology points to a set of
concerns to be addressed by youth sociologists. New theoretical devel-
opments in the specific field of youth sociology are also driven by ideas
157
158 Applying Theoretical Paradigms to Indonesian Youth
from the Northern metropole. We agree with Connell’s concerns here,

but maintain that we can develop our own antipodean interpretation
of ‘Northern’ theories that brings to them a ‘Southern’ perspective. An
increased dialogue between Northern and Southern theorists is essential.
But we contend that what is needed are fluid and portable concepts that
can break national borders, thereby escaping to some extent the prob-
lems of ‘methodological nationalism’ (Beck 2007) in youth research. It
is important not to use theoretical concepts in a dogmatic way, but flex-
ibly. In Sketch for a Self-Analysis (2008: 112), Bourdieu speaks of a need
for what he calls ‘sympraxy’, where he invites not blind appropriation
of his work, but active interpretation to be used as a companion, to
inspire, transform, and create; not disciples, but fellow travelers (see Ball
2006). It is in this spirit that we draw upon the work of selected theo-
rists from the Northern metropole, not just to understand the lives of
Indonesian young people, but to interrogate the ongoing vitality of the
ideas themselves.
Theory in youth sociology
In previous work, we have used Bourdieu to help understand the

changes described in the reflexive modernity paradigm, and, impor-
tantly, the continuities for Australian youth (Threadgold and Nilan
2009). We have argued that reflexivity has to be understood through
the lens of cultural capital: like language, everyone is doing it, but some
have the means to use it better than others. In research on devout
Muslim youth in Indonesia’s engagements with Western forms of pop-
ular culture, Nilan (2006) showed that there was a reflexively selective
synthesis between positive aspects of Western culture that are retained
and inappropriate aspects that are jettisoned. In a subsequent study of
young Balinese recruited into the global cruise ship industry, we used
the Bourdieurian notion of symbolic violence to analyze the contradic-
tory experiences endured by the recruits. There was a vast difference
between the dreams sold to the young people in the recruitment pro-
cess and the reality of cruise ship work. As one participant, 28-year-old
Agung, stated: ‘For ordinary people, working on a cruise ship seems
exciting, full of promise. But the reality is quite the opposite. Liv-
ing on the ship for months is like living in hell’ (Artini et al. 2011).
In these instances of ‘enforced cosmopolitanization’ (Beck 2006: 338),
young Balinese were purposefully recruited for their ‘global cultural
capitals’ (see Woodman and Threadgold 2015), deemed necessary for
serving Western consumers on cruises. These included relatively liberal
religious beliefs, English-language proficiency, appropriate height and
Steven Threadgold and Pam Nilan 159
weight, high academic achievement, and, ideally, singing, dancing, or

beauty treatment skills. Notably, while in a sense they chose to work on
cruise ships, this was a constrained and shaped choice at best given their
socioeconomic circumstances.
As the example illustrates, a continuing ‘problem’ in youth sociology
is how to address continuity and change (Woodman and Wyn 2015). We
argue that using and bringing together theoretical frameworks can pro-
vide us with tools of interpretation that move beyond that traditional
binary and enhance the sociological imaginaries we use to understand
the lives of young people. First, we identify some contemporary debates.
The history of youth sociology is littered with dichotomous debates
(see Kelly 2015). For instance, Woodman (2009) called on youth schol-
ars to cease using the work of Ulrich Beck as a foil to defend structural
concerns over ‘agency’ representing free choice. He argued this left
youth sociology in a state where the ‘middle ground’ is incapable of
addressing complex youth social problems in global reflexive modernity.
Roberts (2010) responded by claiming that Woodman misrepresents
‘choice biography’ and that Beck is guilty of the charges laid against
him in terms of promoting agency over structure. Threadgold’s (2011)
intervention called for moving beyond the false dichotomy created
between Bourdieu and Beck in youth sociology, while Farrugia (2012,
2013) provided a working model for how this could be achieved.
Exchanges like this are healthy for a research field because they cre-
ate a common lexicon and way of seeing social problems and thereby
improve understanding. They are unhealthy when they get bogged
down in ‘quote wars’ (Woodman 2010) and ego jostling. Recently,
Woodman and Threadgold (2015) have together attempted to move
beyond ‘middle ground’ debates with a ‘glass half full’ reading of both
theorists’ work to show potentialities for understanding cross-border
inequalities.
In this chapter, we make a similar argument for using theoreti-
cal synthesis to analyze the choices young people are faced with in
their day-to-day lives. When outlining his notion of habitus, Bourdieu
uses the terminology ‘generative principle of regulated improvisations’
(Bourdieu 1977: 78). Critical reading of habitus, and of Bourdieu’s
work in general, has fixed more on the ‘regulated’ aspect and less on
‘improvisations’ to the point where ‘determinism’ has become a nor-
mative, oft-repeated critique. Recently, some Bourdieu scholars have
explicitly rejected the ‘determinism’ critique, decisively positioning
improvisation, reflexivity, and freedom as central to his theory of
practice. For instance, Hilgers (2009) convincingly argues that from
an epistemological perspective, habitus is not deterministic. He notes
Bourdieu’s acknowledgement of ‘the production of an infinite num-

ber of behaviors from a limited number of principles’, and that one’s
habitus is under ‘permanent mutation’. Bourdieu (2000: 162) himself
has described what he calls ‘blips’ in the habitus, ‘critical moments
where it misfires or is out of phase’, creating the possibility of reflection
and reinvention.
Some engage a Deleuzian perspective in an attempt to move beyond
object/subject and structure/agency divides. For example, Coffey and
Farrugia (2013) highlight the vitality of concepts from Bourdieu and
Deleuze to address the continuing concern over the ‘black box’ prob-
lem of how ‘agency’ is used in youth sociology. They draw upon the
productive notion of habitus, with its structured improvisations and
embodied potentiality. Their analysis extends to Deleuze’s metaphor
of the fold. ‘Folding produces the effects of subjectification, and the
relations of folding (and of subjectification) are processual rather than
passive or determined’ (Coffey and Farrugia 2014: 470). This is a very
useful synthesis because it emphasizes how young people’s subjectivi-
ties are experienced and worked upon with a future-oriented impetus.
Young people can be considered as subjects in motion, where ‘social
gravity is nothing other than the forces experienced by the social subject
moving along its trajectory as it is exerting the force of its own presence
on other subjects’ (Hage 2011: 85). Hage argues that when people have
invested in their lives by taking a specific social path (what Bourdieu
calls illusio), ‘the subject becomes aware of the “gravity” of the situa-
tion, at the same time as society’s social forces of gravity pull him or her
to become an internalized part of that society’ (Hage 2011: 85). He/she
is thereby engaged in what Deleuze and Guattari (1987: 307) refer to as
a ‘conjugated becoming’ that is emphatically social. Thus, social gravity
is a multilayered concept that seeks to move beyond object/subject or
structure/agency binaries and is therefore most useful for understanding
youth transitions and young people’s choices in late modernity, in both
Western and non-Western contexts.
Applying a social gravity understanding of Indonesian

cruise ship work
‘Gravity’ has the double meaning of serious and a downward pull. It

infers the ‘seriousness’ of life when a young person decides to invest
themselves in a certain field and also the magnetic metaphor of field
where people are pushed and pulled by forces beyond their control.
Thought of in this way, the moment a young Indonesian makes the
choice to train as a global cruise ship worker, the intent reinforces and
multiplies the power of the social gravity in the field.
For example, a trainee said, ‘I want to work on a cruise ship to have
an overseas experience, to learn about everything in the world’ (Wawan,
20, barman, Bangli, July 13, 2012). In other words he has a romantic
vision of world travel. However, reality quickly sinks in, as the words of
another young worker make clear, ‘I’m very tired here today. My section
is full of Europeans: stupid, lazy and arrogant. I might add that their
dinner menu is far away from the word enjoyable so they’re emotional
right now: “Hey we made personal sacrifices to travel on this boat” and
so on’ (male blogger, 2010). One young waiter summed up the benefits
and the downside: ‘the good thing is, we can get more money. We can
enjoy it when we are on board, so sometimes we are overnight in Venice,
so we go out. But the bad thing is we need to work hard . . . so maybe
sleep for only 3 or 4 hours, and then we have to work again’ (Gede, 23,
Assistant Waiter, Singaraja, July 14, 2012). But the financial outcomes
prove less lucrative than imagined: ‘although cruise ship work builds
up money, when you get back to the village you are still poor, basically
going backwards’ (male blogger, 2010).
Unpacking this, we can see that these young Indonesians decided
not to work locally but invest their time and money in the interna-
tional labor field of cruise ship work. Once indentured to the recruiting
agent and anchored by heavy debt for training and visas (see Artini
et al. 2011 for more detail on this process), the social gravity of their
conditions pulls them inexorably into sequential contracts, which not
only exhaust them but fail to provide the original imagined outcome of
wealth and prosperity back home. The seriousness (gravity) of their situ-
ation was reflected by one young man who was determined his brother
would follow a different path: ‘I would never recommend my younger
brother work on a cruise ship. I do not want [him] to have experiences
like me’ (Gede, 23 Assistant Waiter, Singaraja, July 14, 2012). As the
example demonstrates, the multifaceted concept of social gravity moves
beyond emphasis on structure or agency by showing how choices create
trajectories which gather momentum, leaving the young person ori-
ented toward future investment in the field, despite ambivalent or even
deleterious outcomes.
Conversely, unlike the Indonesian cruise ship workers, young people
in Asia who are from privileged backgrounds may experience certain
fields in terms of what Bourdieu called ‘social weightlessness’ (Bourdieu
2000: 13–14). For instance, Kenway and Koh (2013), using Bourdieurian
concepts for understanding border-crossing configurations, show how
socially advantaged Singapore students immersed in elite schools

develop ‘transnational capitals’. They experience their schooling and
post-school careers as a ‘social paradise’ (Kenway and Koh 2013), where
the ‘alchemy’ of habitus (Bourdieu 1977: 192–195) works its magic. For
those who do not enter the transnational field from a privileged back-
ground, even though they possess some valued capitals such as young
Indonesian cruise ship workers, their experiences are much more likely
to be endured as forms of symbolic violence and social closure. For our
purposes here, the underutilized notion of ‘social gravity’ can help illu-
minate the way decisions are made by very different constituencies of
young people in Asia.
Indonesian street youth culture as assemblage

When it comes to practices associated with youth cultures, it is also cru-
cial to move beyond the structure/agency debate. The work of Deleuze
and Guattari invites such a journey. For example, while habitus is just
as important a consideration as it is for decision-making in youth tran-
sitions, it cannot stand alone. In the view of Wacquant (2011: 91),
‘habitus . . . like every concept, is not an answer to a research ques-
tion but rather an organized manner of asking questions about the
social world’. Thus, the concept of self and identity can be read not
as fixed but a ‘constant becoming’ (Deleuze and Guattari 1987: 307).
Such a perspective can equip youth sociologists with an armory to
grasp the future-oriented practices young people engage and fold into
themselves at the present time no matter where they are, transcend-
ing the local-global dichotomy to some extent. Thus, once a practice
is ‘folded’ through repetition into nonlinear processes of subjectivity, it
becomes part of a reservoir for a subsequent social action to draw upon.
In Bourdieu’s terms, it is then a modified generative disposition in the
constitution of habitus.
Subculture as a concept has attracted heated debate in youth research
(Bennett 2000, Shildrick and MacDonald 2006). So recently, some youth
researchers have been exploring specific youth cultures using the con-
cept of assemblage drawn from the work of Deleuze and Guattari (see
Hickey-Moody and Kenway 2012, Lesko and Talburt 2012). We believe
the concept has much to offer for the nuanced analysis of non-Western
youth cultures.
The word ‘assemblage’ is a translated term. Deleuze and Guattari
(1980) originally used the French word agencement in their work,
not assemblage. The word assemblage/assemblage (in both French and
English) means a heterogeneous array of elements mixed together.
Agencement though connotes the arrangement or putting together of

something. ‘One would speak of the arrangement of parts of a body or
machine; one might talk of fixing (fitting or affixing) two or more parts
together; and one might use the term [agencement] for both the act of
fixing and the arrangement itself’ (Phillips 2006: 108). In comparison to
a term like ‘hybridity’, which connotes the blending of two unequal
elements (Nilan 2012), assemblage (agencement) infers the temporary
connection of disparate elements in a non-dualistic, nonhierarchical
arrangement; thus, processes of improvisation are foregrounded.
According to Deleuze and Guattari (1987), any assemblage shows a
territorial – or normalizing – tendency that anchors the consistency
and identity of the assemblage over time. But there is also a de-
territorialization tendency that erodes and fragments the consistency
and identity of the assemblage: its social meaning, relevance, and via-
bility. These ‘lines’ of territoriality and de-territorialization (Deleuze and
Guattari 1987: 556) may restrict or expand meaning possibilities and
trace the parameters of power relations in a dynamic configuration.
Connections between elements may intensify and harden (territorial-
ization) or weaken and allow de-territorialization, leading to fragmen-
tation, even migration. Elements are linked in a process of continuous
‘becoming’: a temporary compositional unity, to which identifying ideas
are affixed. The making of statements (discourses) relevant to these ideas
bestows unity and homogeneity on the assemblage, while simultane-
ously threatening to undo that same unity by taking things apart and
dividing things up in the moment of description. A cutting edge is
a sharp vector of de-territorialization within the assemblage, causing
relations among component parts of the temporary unity to rapidly
destabilize. This kind of analysis is especially productive for grasping
how new youth-oriented social movements such as environmentalism
transform according to internal factionalism and sudden changes in
external conditions.
The conceptual framework of assemblage is also useful for considering
non-Western youth cultures because it avoids both the thorny definition
of subculture, and the seemingly inevitable cultural polarities of global
versus local, Western versus indigenous, Global North versus Global
South, and so on. It is not that these aspects are irrelevant. It is just
that the usual ways of discussing them loop back into a binary framing
(such as hybridity), which fails to adequately render the complexity of
youth creativity and dynamic experience in local settings.
Treating a youth culture as a dynamic, creative assemblage works
productively with how some European sociologists have understood
the contemporary constitution of youth sociality. For example, Michel

Maffesoli argues for youth social existence taking place in fragmented
tribal groupings characterized by puissance – the ‘energy and vital force
of the people’ (Maffesoli 1996: 1) – a complex and unpredictable
Dionysian sociality that tends to change and transformation. Alberto
Melucci (1996: 13) emphasizes the ‘changeability and transience’ of
being young. He finds contemporary youth cultures to be dynamic,
operating ‘largely at the level of symbol and meaning’ (Melucci 1989:
75). This kind of framing allows recognition of the significance of music
in youth cultures. De Nora (2004) identifies popular music as a dynamic
medium for the making of identity in diverse social activities, implying
it matters less where the music came from originally and more how it
is taken up or challenged in an improvisational way at key points in a
youth culture assemblage.
For considering Indonesian youth cultures, Deleuze and Guattari’s
notion of assemblage captures the dynamic process of ‘becoming’ in
which many cultural elements are (re)assembled and interact to form
a non-centered multiplicity. In the sense of transition, young people
are ‘becoming’ adult – ‘self is only a threshold, a door, a becoming’
(Deleuze and Guattari 1987: 275). Here, the authoritative position of
‘majority’ (adult) and the less territorially aligned, more creative posi-
tion of ‘minoritarian becoming’ (youth) are relationally contrasted.
Deleuze and Guattari (1987: 105) insist on the transformative potency of
minoritarian becomings. The concept of youth as a conjugated becom-
ing therefore encodes the possibility of developing new forms of life and
different modes of existence. This is similar to the dynamic, creative
youth culture potency identified by both Melucci (1996) and Maffesoli
(1996).
Basra and street musician culture

Street musician culture in the Indonesian city of Solo shows how the
concept of assemblage can be productively applied to Indonesian youth
sociality. Groups of young homeless men busking for small donations
are a common sight at urban intersections in Indonesian cities (Beazley
2003). They are pengamen, literally ‘singing beggars’ (Richter 2012: 54).
As Beazley points out, the different groups of young men identify them-
selves with the places where they sleep, eat, and hang out together. In
this sense, they construct the ‘symbolic walls’ of a home within the
urban space that implicitly excludes them (Beazley 2003: 473). This is
the assemblage for our purposes here.
Data reported below were collected in Solo in December 2009 from a

key informant – Basra. He was a trained musician who had dropped out
of university to work with pengamen on composing and playing music
of the streets, which he described as having ‘raw power’. From field-
work observations, Solo street buskers have hairstyles and clothing styles
that define them as punk, reggae, hard-core industrial, or metalcore.
Their appearance is ragged and dirty, foregrounding their poverty, but
also potentially locating them in the alternative music scene, a thriving
concern in contemporary Indonesia.
Basra made a number of descriptive statements about the local Solo
pengamen that help us picture them as an assemblage:
I can say honestly that the other guys in the street community
are considered as a guy’s own brothers . . . guys who share my inter-
ests . . . . When pengamen are alone their thinking brings them back
to their unstable past. So they live together on the street with few
controls over what they do. They enjoy it, they feel free . . . . It’s a
music community . . . . We are just ordinary people. Street kids from
elsewhere often engage in street singing and hang about with us. It
goes on a lot . . . . Street busking is not a controlled thing. The main
factor is everyday street life. The activities of chatting and playing
music just go on regularly.
(translated from Indonesian)
The comments above build a picture of Solo street musician culture

as a temporary compositional unity. Identifying (territorializing) ideas
are affixed to that fleeting compositional unity: a ‘home’ place to
gather, hanging about, chatting, and playing music. As a youth culture
assemblage, they are bonded together in sharing income, food, drink,
cigarettes, alcohol, drugs, and musical instruments. The ethic of mutual
obligation links these elements. So far the territorializing tendency of
this assemblage has been emphasized.
However, de-territorializing trends are never very far away. Basra also
said:
Pengamen are all pretty knowledgeable about the issues they face in
life on the streets. You could say that the law of the streets is that
whoever is strong will win . . . . They drink alcohol and use drugs but
not all of them . . . they have some views about being cool, such as the
attitude ‘I just don’t care’ [cuek]. That gives them prestige [gengsi] in
the scene . . .
There are allusions here to violence, to drugs and alcohol, and to a status
hierarchy in which not caring about anything is highly valued. These
elements have much potential to cause tension and division among
the street musicians and thus are possible vectors of de-territorialization
(group fragmentation). Later, Basra spoke specifically about what hap-
pened if someone was too much out of control:
If he does not control himself with his friends they will soon know
what kind of character he has. Finally, we are all there together with
our group, but he is not there. So yes sometimes there are people like
that but if they are like that we do not take them into our music
community.
Thus, the device of exclusion of a member is in one sense a forced de-

territorialization, yet in another is a re-territorialization that conserves
the assemblage, more closely binding the remaining members.
Finally, there is the becoming-youth ‘minoritarian’ aspect of creativ-
ity (Deleuze and Guattari 1987: 105). Basra chose to join the street
musicians and live their life because he was attracted by the potency
(puissance) of their music:
When I hung out with the street musicians. I just went along with
them. I think I really wasn’t where they were at but I wrote it down
that way in my music . . . . That was how we worked at our music,
from the personal view of ‘yo I’m so bored’ etc. Anger, defeat, dis-
may written down in the form of songs. We worked on paper, we all
worked on the songs and we found a place for ourselves in the music
scene.
The story Basra tells here is one of improvisation and transformation.

After writing a number of songs about life on the street, some pengamen
formed a band with Basra. They played at some indie music venues and
festivals and were celebrated for their authenticity as a genuine voice of
the streets: ‘our band gets admired because we create our own artistic
work’. Sources of income appeared.
As a form of re-territoralization of the assemblage toward the informal
economy section of the labor market, such a shift can be read as a ‘line
of flight’ (Deleuze and Guattari 1987: 98) that altered the assemblage
of the street musicians. In the end, they moved off the street and into
a shared house. They now get paid gigs, record CDs, and print T-shirts
with their own artwork. Yet, ‘even now we will put on a show for dona-
tions’ (Basra). In other words, they periodically reengage the territory
of the pengamen practice that was the source of their original composi-
tional unity, thus restoring it for a brief time before moving back to their
new collective lifestyle as indie musicians.
According to Richter (2012: 148), street music in Yogyakarta1 is
usually ‘western-influenced folk-rock music with social and political
commentary’. This is similar in Solo, and indicates how the musical
aspect of the pengamen assemblage was indeed composed of culturally
‘decoded fragments’ (Deleuze and Guattari 1987: 556). As such, Basra,
a kind of privileged insider, took the musical element of their collec-
tive praxis and amplified it into the realm of commodity within the
local field of indie music. In a sense, the street musicians themselves
followed this same trajectory out of the original pengamen assemblage.
They migrated into a new minoritarian space and place of ‘becoming-
musician’.
The value of assemblage as a conceptual framework for analyzing
non-Western youth cultures lies in its emphasis on ‘becoming’ as a
counterfoil to fixed categories of youth and adult, and Western and
non-Western. Such conceptual categories impose a normalizing linear
or binary structure on interpretive exploration of relevant youth culture
phenomena. In a place like Indonesia, it is simply unwise to assume
that things work more or less like they do in English-speaking coun-
tries. As youth researchers, we need to keep an open mind, and consider
conceptual frameworks that offer frameworks for youth culture analy-
sis that are less fascinated with the socioeconomic significance of how
young people relate to content and more concerned with creativity, with
acceleration and rupture.
Conclusion
The discussion and examples we have provided above demonstrate

the productive use of theoretical concepts derived from the Northern
metropole to consider youth phenomena that lie beyond it. We argue
that in reflexive modernity, the application of effective theoretical syn-
thesis can help youth sociologists grasp youth transitions and youth
cultures. In particular, we are able to engage in a deep way with impro-
visational and social gravity aspects of habitus as a fluid and dynamic
constitution of self in social formations.
Historically, studies of youth transitions have focused on whether
or not certain young people were on the pathway to adulthood. Yet
‘becoming adults for the young has, in late modernity, become far more
risky’ (France 2008: 502), and the process itself has become so com-
plex and elongated that the very notions of adulthood and growing
up themselves need to be rethought, in both the Global North and

South.
Broadly speaking, in the contemporary global ‘precariat’, youth
becoming is constant. There is no fixed entry point to adulthood where
young people cease to face youth choices and problems and suddenly
engage in adult choices and problems. Youth cultures are now techno-
logically mediated in ways that mean they can be accessed even into
old age. Thus, popular music tastes no longer start and end in a tight
temporal sense limited to adolescence. The new president of Indonesia
remains a keen fan of heavy metal music. He cherishes and still some-
times plays a bass guitar given to him by Robert Trujillo of the band
Metallica. In sum, notions such as becoming, improvisations, social
gravity, and assemblage offer significant points of analytical synthe-
sis for youth sociologists. Moreover, it is as important as it ever was
not to unwittingly create yet more agency/structure dichotomies in our
accounts. For youth sociologists concerned with inequality, whether at
a local, regional, national, or international level, thinking about habitus
as an envelope of constant becoming is useful for thinking about the
‘choices’ and risks young people face today.
Note
1. A neighboring city less than 100 km from Solo.
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13
Toward a Different Youth Studies:
Youth-and-Researchers as Affective
Assemblages
Susan Talburt and Nancy Lesko
Introduction
Youth move us, fascinate us, exert a pull on us (Stewart 2007). Images
and narratives of youth affect us. We are affected by the form of moral
panics around gangstas, bullies, pregnant teens, tattooed and pierced
bodies. And we are affected by celebrations of youth, such as the girl
power of Malala,1 the Pakistani girl shot by a member of the Taliban
for her advocacy of education for girls; environmentalists; DREAMers,2
the immigrant youth in the USA who would be given documented status
with the ‘DREAM Act’; and Occupiers. Amid familiar panics and celebra-
tions, the recent global economic crisis has created a pervasive unease
about the state of youth as they face chronic unemployment and debt.
In an epoch of austerity and precarity, the promise of good life is increas-
ingly difficult to attain and lives are lived seemingly out of order. Images
of youth protests and riots across the globe mingle with narratives of col-
lege graduates living in their parents’ basements, animating our hopes
and fears.
The ‘affective turn’ in scholarship recognizes that political and cul-
tural analyses cannot focus solely on discourse, representation, and
signification and strives to attend to forces and intensities that engage,
captivate, alienate, and anger us. Affect relates to our capacities to ‘see’
and to act; to be affected is to take up an orientation to an object; affects
focus our attention (Ahmed 2004). Affects are energies with potential
to go in numerous directions, to enhance or diminish capacities to
act (Thrift 2004). In a review of different traditions of affect studies,
171
172 Youth-and-Researchers as Affective Assemblages
Thrift notes that each approach ‘cleaves to an “inhuman” or “tran-

shuman” framework in which individuals are generally understood as
effects of the events to which their body parts respond and in which
they participate’ (2004: 60). Identities, whether of sex, gender, race,
adultness, or youthness, are events rather than properties of individu-
als. These affective pulls and pushes are part of youth studies and have
effects on how youth are conceptualized. We draw on the Deleuzian-
Spinozist affect tradition in beginning to map an alternative approach
to conceptualizing and studying youth, considering how the cultural
politics of precarity reorients affects and ways of seeing the social. Such
a reorientation entails uncertainty:
The concept of the absolutely new raises many anxieties. While it

is clear that newness, creativity, innovation, and progress are all terms
deemed social positives, the more disconcerting notion of unpre-
dictable, disordered, or uncontainable change – the idea of chance, of
indeterminacy, of unforeseeability – that lurks within the very con-
cept of change or newness, seems to unsettle scientific, philosophical,
political, and cultural ideals of stability and control.
(Grosz 1999: 16, emphasis in original)
Surely our ideas of youth – Occupiers, Malala, DREAMers – and of youth

studies as a field share in the anxieties and incitements of the new. Sim-
ilarly, the consideration of new concepts in the study of youth provokes
passion and worries over change and unforeseeability. Youth are simulta-
neously times-and-spaces of self-making (past, present, and future), sites
of expert knowledge construction, and repositories of public feelings. To
claim innovation in the field is to raise concerns on all levels, and we
ask readers to consider their own felt investments in narrating youth in
particular ways.
In the contexts of precarity and austerity, we wish to consider new
possibilities in the terms of value in which life-making activity has been
cast (Berlant 2011b). When youth are recognized and researched in rela-
tion to transitions (extended, completed, truncated, abandoned) and
subcultural affiliations (music, violence, activism, can-do, at risk), only
particular kinds and dimensions of life-making activities are recognized.
Awkward attempts to create sustaining lives are likely to be missed in
researchers’ codings for transitions and subcultural ties and in quick
jumps to abstractions.
Recognizing that the field of youth studies is at an impasse, researchers
have suggested reconceptualizing youth’s lives beyond the field’s two
Susan Talburt and Nancy Lesko 173
dominant traditions, iterations of subcultural theory (e.g., Bennett and

Kahn-Harris 2004) and, what Julie McLeod (2010: 251) calls ‘another
stubborn fixture in youth research’, transitions. Assuming age as fact,
or age as intrinsically meaningful, with chronological markers carry-
ing a fixed set of meanings, each research strand constitutes youth as
inherently different: research places subcultural practices in a space-
time orientation of generational difference and spectacular, rebellious
places; transitions research positions generational difference as a step
in the advancement to ordinary lives, evaluating orderly development
(and disorderly exceptions) over time as youth move from educa-
tional and leisure spaces to the workplace, home, and family (see Tait
2000: 48, 105).
We turn to two contemporary movements, Occupy Wall Street (OWS)
in the United States and the Indignados in Spain, in which youth
and adults respond to conditions of precarity by occupying public
space. These movements offer an opportunity to theorize youth as
assemblages, in which the subject ‘is not an “entity” or thing or a rela-
tion between mind (interior) and body (exterior); instead, it must be
understood as a series of flows, energies, movements, capacities, a series
of fragments or segments capable of being linked together in ways other
than those which congeal it into an identity’ (Grosz 1993: 175). Our goal
is to offer youth studies new concepts to evoke youth that do not reify
the developing mind or body as defined by age as fact. Colebrook (2002:
15) explains that concepts are more than labels; rather, ‘they produce
an orientation or a direction for thinking’. This Deleuzian stance takes
theorizing beyond the realm of representation and marks its role as that
of active creation ‘to re-orient our thinking’ (Colebrook 2002: 20). We
argue that this creative thinking is necessarily affective. First, we set the
affective scene of austerity and precarity.
Austerity, precarity, and affective languages
Capitalism’s failures – economic recession, privatization, downsizing,

shrinkages of state resources, increasing income inequality, housing
foreclosures, the loss of retirement savings to burst credit bubbles, rising
unemployment, massive student debt, and few jobs waiting for col-
lege graduates – are lived as individual and collective everyday dramas.
Global politics of austerity create an ongoing sense of crisis, an atmo-
sphere Berlant (2011b: 10) describes as ‘crisis ordinariness’, in which
crisis is not exceptional but systemic, comprised of ‘the ordinary as
a zone of convergence of many histories, where people manage the
incoherence of lives that proceed in the face of threats to the good life
they imagine’. With the loss of fantasies of job security, upward mobility,
social and economic equality, and protections of welfare states, precarity
can no longer be spatialized as ‘over there’, someone else’s ‘bad luck’,
‘bad choices’, or ‘bad behavior’; rather, precarious lives are everywhere,
crossing socioeconomic classes, generations, and geographies, part of
the affective atmosphere of contemporary life under advanced capital-
ism. Precarity resonates, whether in narratives of the eviction of the
elderly pensioner or the neologized label ‘ni-ni (neither work nor stud-
ies) that summarize[s] the humiliation of the lost generation of Spain’s
young’ (Robinson 2011: para. 6). The multiple resonances of precarity
make it impossible to ‘pose a normative understanding of precarity’;
rather, precarity constitutes a felt ‘acknowledgement of dependency,
needs, exposure, and vulnerability’, a ‘relational condition of social
being’ (Puar in Puar 2012: 163–165). Comprised of a ‘relation between
its materiality in class and political terms [and] its appearances as an
affect’ (Berlant in Puar 2012: 166), precarity is not a state or a thing but
an emergent process that ‘exposes our sociality, the fragile and necessary
dimensions of our interdependency’ (Butler in Puar 2012: 170).3
Stewart (2011: 1) suggests that we ask ‘how precarity as a thing takes
particular form, how it pulls some collection of forces, situations, sen-
sibilities, and materialities into alignment, how it becomes nervously
generative as a something’. Following from Stewart, we suggest that
precarity works as an emergent form that engenders new registers of
feeling, thinking, speaking, and acting. Berlant offers the example of a
‘recession grimace’, a new social mask hovering between a frown, smile,
and tightened lip as an embodied gesture that responds to new impasses
(2011b: 196). As optimistic narratives of correct individual and national
development and progress are disrupted, ‘the new affective languages
of the contemporary global economy in Europe and the United States –
languages of anxiety, contingency, and precarity – . . . take up the space
that sacrifice, upward mobility, and meritocracy used to occupy’ (Berlant
2011b: 19). This loss of certainty produces new affects of failure, risk,
shame, disappointment, indignation, resistance, and optimism, reori-
enting youth, adults, and youth studies alike. The impasse created by
changing material and affective conditions functions as a ‘stretched-
out present’ (Berlant 2011b: 5), ‘a state of both stuckness and potential’
(Cvetkovich 2012: 21), in which young people and youth studies seek
to understand what is possible in trying to live a life. Thus, rather
than contain youth as a subcultural protest movement or as engaged
in a prolonged developmental trajectory (see, for example, Tanner and
Arnett (2009) and Arnett (2011) on ‘emerging adulthood’), we ask how

youth studies can create other imaginaries of youth, sociality, politics,
accomplishments, successes, and resistances (see Halberstam 2011). This
moment of precarity allows us to examine how ‘[m]odes of attention
attuned to how things are hanging together or falling apart or wearing
out can be seen as circuits of reaction to precarity’ (Stewart 2011: 9).
Occupy Wall Street and the Indignados’ 15-M
[I]t’s ‘an attitude’.

Gloria Benito, of the Indignados4
The politics of precarity and austerity have given rise to protests, demon-
strations, and performative street actions globally, to the extent that
seasons have been assigned to regions and nations: the European Sum-
mer, the Arab Spring, the American Fall, and the Chilean Winter. In a
story entitled ‘Voice of the Future’, which includes the 2011 UK stu-
dent protests and the riots, Nigerian youth protests, demonstrations in
Tahrir Square, the Chilean student movement, and Venezuelan hip-hop
artists, the journalist Jody McIntyre (2012: 13) proclaims that ‘we are
living in a time of revolution and reaction, with young people often
taking the lead’. Add to these anti-austerity and student protests in
Canada, Colombia, Greece, Italy, and Mexico, and youth are positioned
in a popular imaginary as at once spectacular and ordinary, mobiliz-
ing dramatic protests to make visible the everyday effects of the false
promises of government and capital. While there are interesting diver-
gences, convergences, and collaborations among these movements, we
focus on two: the Indignados in Spain and Occupy Wall Street (OWS) in
the United States.5 We begin with descriptions of the movements’ tactics
and actions, moving to consider how youth studies might reassemble to
create more capacious understandings of its subjects of study.
Occupy Wall Street (OWS) at once fascinated and bewildered main-
stream media, who could not fit it into given models: ‘With its noisy
drum circle, meandering parades of bandanna-clad youth and dis-
dain for centralized leadership, the Occupy Wall Street encampment
sometimes has the ragtag look of a group that is making things up
as it goes along and discovering its own purpose along the way’
(Caruso 2011: para. 1). Echoing other movements globally, Occupy Wall
Street’s decision-making body was the General Assembly, ‘a horizontal,
autonomous, leaderless, modified-consensus-based system with roots in
anarchist thought’ (Schneider 2011: para. 2). The General Assembly
coordinated with working groups and committees dealing with prag-

matics of the encampment (sanitation, food, media, direct action, and
so on) and discussion of issues (disability rights, debt, death penalty abo-
lition, militarization, healthcare, immigration policy, and so on). ‘By
rejecting leadership continuity’, Gitlin (2012: 103) writes, ‘the move-
ment remained in motion, mobile, able to adapt to new circumstances’.
Rather than focusing on concrete demands, or legislative and policy
goals, Occupy ‘opted to make their demand the occupation itself – and
the direct democracy taking place there – which in turn may or may not
come up with some specific demand’ (Schneider 2011: para. 4). Occupy
built a citizens’ movement that assembled labor and community groups,
university faculty, students, and activists. This ‘non-teleological notion
of direction, movement, and process’ (Grosz 1993: 170) enabled tempo-
rary networks and linkages to assemble. Although the lack of demands
confused pundits and politicians, Occupy refused the closure of the
concrete, or predetermined. Mark Bray, of the Press Working Group,
sought to explain to CNN Money that ‘OWS was seeking a conver-
sation about the state of the country, not presenting a finite list of
goals. “Making a list of three or four demands”, he asserted, “would
have ended the conversation before it started” ’ (Writers for the 99%,
2011: 81).
Some four months prior to Occupy, in a context of massive unem-
ployment, increasing poverty and inequality, austerity measures, and
privatization, Spain’s Indignados took over Madrid’s Puerta del Sol. This
is Spain’s iconic ‘kilometer zero’, a central downtown square and gather-
ing place that marks the initiation of roadways that radiate throughout
Spain. The Indignados set up acampadas (campouts) in public squares
in 60 cities throughout the country to protest welfare cuts, corporate
greed, and the government’s collusion with the interests of capital. As
exuberantly described by Blitzer (2012: 27):
On May 15, 2011, a day since known as 15-M, tens of thousands

of young Spaniards swarmed into the streets . . . . Several protestors
wearing tuxedos and top hats in imitation of fat-cat bankers tossed
monopoly money into the crowds and puffed on gnarled, unlit
cigars. Whole families arrived, drawn to the spectacle of rollicking
civic engagement; parents proudly urged their children to applaud.
Until then, Spain’s ‘lost’ or ‘defrauded generation’, as it is known,
had existed in the public imagination as a set of unemployment
statistics. Now, faces and voices were attaching themselves to the
numbers.
Like Occupy and many of the protests worldwide, young people’s

demands for democracy came to include trade union members,
pensioners, unemployed people, people losing their housing, faculty,
and teachers, mobilizing hundreds of thousands in ongoing protests
as ‘more people are making the journey from private sadness to public
indignation’ (Ainger 2013: para. 2).
The Indignados’ manifesto begins simply:
We are ordinary people. We are like you . . . . We are all concerned and
angry about the political, economic, and social outlook which we
see around us: corruption among politicians, businessmen, bankers,
leaving us helpless, without a voice. The situation has become nor-
mal, a daily suffering, without hope. But if we join forces, we can
change it.
(Democracia n.d.: para. 1)
Huffington (2011) has argued that the Indignados and Occupy move-
ments are ‘about more than political and economic goals. They are
bigger than that. They are about changing civil society – about creating
a new relationship not just between the people and their government,
but among the people themselves’ (para. 16). Following Taussig (2013:
39), we suggest that these movements constitute ‘an attitude, a mood,
an atmosphere’. Protestors’ invocation of ordinariness, commonality,
and deception politicized the individualizing shame of personal failure
(unemployment, bankruptcy, eviction), whether through personal nar-
ratives at Occupy’s ‘debtors’ mic’ or the Indignados’ analyses of policy
on ‘private’ lives.
‘The most striking feature of the Occupy movement remains this pal-
pable sense that something meaningful has happened’, writes Harcourt
(2013: 68). Taussig describes OWS as ‘circumstances of dissolving norms,
effervescent atmosphere, invention and reinvention’ (2013: 4). Danny,
a student of Taussig’s, likened visiting Zuccotti Park, the site of OWS, to
going to the movies and getting into the trance of that other reality:
‘I would be hypnotized and turned into someone else’ – into multi-
ple selves associated with different activities and tasks (Taussig 2013:
4). These descriptions echo Raymond Williams’ (1977) idea of ‘struc-
tures of feeling’ – a sense of what is to come before it happens. The
actors’ articulated affects point to emerging relations and connections
in which ‘bodies [are] no longer understood in terms of their form, or
even in terms of the substance of which they are composed, but in terms
of their capacities to affect and be affected’ (Patton 1994: 158–159).
Stephane Grueso, a participant in and filmmaker of 15-M, described

the people who came together as a ‘new’ coalition of people who had
not previously been activists. Although the media branded them as
extreme leftist youth, Grueso countered, ‘We are just people’. 15-M
began reporting on itself because of such distorted coverage. Although
no longer visible in the Madrid square, Grueso reported, ‘We are every-
where’ and working via 104 ongoing neighborhood assemblies that
meet and talk each week about both big and small politics and con-
nect on the Web (Democracy Now 2012). Grueso’s descriptions of 15-M
refuse heroic images but invoke the ordinary and the exceptional, invis-
ible as activists but collectively diligent. According to Berlant, ‘Deleuze
and Guattari exhort people to . . . deterritorialize from the normal by dig-
ging a hole in sense like a dog or a mole’ (2011b: 48). Refusing reductive
terms, Grueso dug a hole in normative constructions of activists and of
activism. Activism so ordinary that it becomes extraordinary is enacted
weekly in neighborhoods and on the Internet without mass meetings by
‘just people’.
We draw from these structures of feeling of Occupy and 15-M to con-
sider alternative approaches to youth, thinking beyond the expected,
the normative, the wishes for guarantees, optimism, or stable knowledge
(Lesko and Talburt 2012).
Youth as ensembles of speed and intensity
Scholarship that documents the nexus-like ‘flows’, ‘liquidity’, or ‘net-

works’ of contemporary lives contests the imagination of spaces
(whether classrooms, computer games, sport fields, or Zuccotti Park)
as uniform, as background, as ‘dead’ spaces. ‘Interpreting beyond the
appearance of solidity’ (Lefebvre 1991: 92) enables us to consider how
a particular locale is not an isolated container, but positioned in a
nexus of relations to other locales. We follow Massey’s (1998: 124–125)
thinking that space is ‘organized . . . through a vast complexity of inter-
connections’ and that ‘the social relations which constitute space are
not organized into scales so much as into constellations of temporary
coherence’ (emphasis in original). Occupiers and Indignados were not
demonstrating for a particular demand, ‘but creating space where lead-
ers and ideas could emerge’ (Gitlin 2012: 4). Even as Zuccotti Park and
Puerta del Sol appear to be the central spaces of action, they have been
variously ‘described as a swarm, a network, sets of horizontal affilia-
tions, an instantiation of the multitude, and a claim of the commons’
(Reimer 2012: 5). Critiquing researchers’ assumption that classrooms
are bounded containers, Leander, Phillips, and Taylor (2010: 334) ask,
‘What if we loosened their boundaries as “sites” and instead exam-
ined their simultaneous relations to other places-in-the-making, and
to the movement of culture crisscrossing them?’ How are some school
spaces sleepy and ponderous and others quick and energizing? If the
spaces in which youth live are interpreted beyond the appearance of
solidity or flatness, then ‘transhuman’ youth are also open to a similar
reimagining as a nexus of intensities of affect, bodies, movements, and
language.
Using Deleuzian language and ideas, we conceive of youth (and youth
researchers) in terms of speed and intensity: longitude of a body is the set
of relations of speed and slowness, of momentum and rest, between
particles that compose it, and latitude is the set of affects and their
intensities that occupy a body at each moment (Thrift 2004: 63).
The longitudes and latitudes together constitute Nature, the plane

of immanence or consistency, which is always variable and is con-
stantly being altered, composed and recomposed by individuals and
collectivities.
(Deleuze cited in Thrift 2004: 63)
Julian Henriques (2010) offers extensive illustrations of youthful expe-

riences as speed/slowness + intensities in his study of Jamaican dance
halls and the vibratory transmission of affect through music and dance
frequencies and their intensities. Henriques examines the ‘vibeyness’
of dance halls as affective assemblages. Through patterning (regular
intervals of beats, for example) that is slower and faster, collective and
corporeal intensities are created, sustained, or diminished. Intensities
are produced through repetitions, at distinctive paces, amplifications,
and timbres (the ‘color’ or distinctive qualities of sound).
Part of the longitude, or pace, of the Occupy movement was
the slowed temporalities of events, ‘seiz[ing] certain spaces in order
to . . . slow down time long enough to have extended, horizontal,
consensus-based conversations about issues both large and small’
(Alessandrini n.d.: para. 15). Slowed times involved consideration of
posters, drumming, and bike riding for electricity. With electric ampli-
fiers outlawed, Occupiers improvised a ‘human mic’, in which ‘anyone
could speak, each spoken phrase or short sentence being repeated by
as much of the crowd as could hear it’ (Gitlin 2012: 25). Like the
Indignados’ twinkling (hand gestures), Occupiers echoed phrases and
twinkled. Although the process was slow and often awkward, many
argued that the calls and responses, and the slowness, created chan-
nels of communication in which interlocutors engaged speakers’ words
(Gitlin 2012: 78). As one General Assembly (GA) facilitator described the
first night of the use of the human mic: ‘[P]eople hadn’t done it before,
but immediately picked up on it. It creates an atmosphere of active lis-
tening and participation. As soon as we started the people’s mic, the vibe
and energy totally changed’ (Writers for the 99% 2011: 18). With ‘the
steady, rhythmic cadence that the people’s mic demands’ (25), Writers
for the 99% (2011: 26) describe,
Those who spoke at the GA often did so with barely suppressed

emotion. Hearing one’s words echoing off the bankers’ towers sur-
rounding the park as they were repeated, sometimes up to three
times, by expanding concentric circles of the crowd, was evidently
an experience both strange and profoundly moving.
These examples suggest that slowed events could be affectively intense

with heightened attention and attunement. The steady, rhythmic repe-
titions were patterned intensities.
While the slowness had its affects, Occupy also buzzed with the cross-
cutting flows and connections with other places, events, and attitudes.
Todd Gitlin (2012: 51) portrays the latitude, or affective intensities, of
Occupy overlapping and spreading in multiple ways around the nation
and the globe:
A hard core of a few thousand activists, who occupied (camped, agi-

tated, and so on) more or less full-time, had stirred tens and hundreds
of thousands of others to play other essential parts: to donate money,
granola bars, muffins, and apples, and order pizzas for delivery from
local joints . . . ; to help with legal and medical and public relations
expertise; to shut down their big-bank accounts and make political
demands either explicitly or implicitly; to join the big marches . . . ;
and, in a thousand ways, find, or create, a piece of the movement for
themselves.
We read the archives of OWS and the Indignados along with Deleuzian-
Spinozist affective theory in order to suggest a different map of these two
‘youth movements’. Rather than heroic activists, ‘just people’ convened
in face-to-face spaces and in thousands of events large and small. Berlant
would say that Occupiers dug a hole in the normative idea of activism
and changed the terms upon which lives can be valued.
Affective assemblages
When researchers are ‘moved’ by youth, it may be ‘in the dual sense
of emotionally engaged and repositioned with respect to the world’
(Thrailkill 2006: 366, cited in Thrift 2010: 296, emphasis in original).
Occupy and 15-M, viewed here as youthful phenomena, affect us. We
use this affectivity to reposition ourselves as researchers to wonder
(MacLure 2013) about the passion and engagement of these movements
and spaces and the nexus of relations and affects that charge them. In
turn, we wonder about how affects, flows, and structures-in-the-making
might help us reexperience and rethink youth and the work of youth
studies.
We believe that conceptions of youth orient scholarship and politics,
and our concepts also value particular affective struggles for life-making
and world-making. Historically, youth’s lurchings toward identity have
been understood as necessary precursors to independence and auton-
omy (Medovoi 2005). But in times of austerity and precarity, when
dependency is no longer a devalued relation, youth urgencies and
idealizations must be reimagined:
[T]he new social movements are not presuming prosperity, prop-

erty, accumulation, and kinship as the grounds for making a life.
Reinventing work and care, they’re also attempting to change the
affective resonance around dependency. In neoliberal normativity, to
be dependent is to be non-sovereign; but in the era of austerity, it is
the first step to solidarity.
(Berlant in McCabe 2011: para. 19)
Resonance around dependency, typically attached to youth as a charac-

teristic, pulled youth and adults alike to occupy, or camp, and to create
interdependencies that went beyond the occupied spaces to neighbor-
hood councils and local movements. Thus, the ‘youth’ described by
media representations of the protests became ‘a floating signifier that
indexed a subject position as much as a chronological age’ (Reimer 2012:
2). With this assembling of affects, age ceased to be a fact.
The concept of the assemblage, in which the parts that connect to
function together never form a whole but comprise a processual sys-
tem of ‘mobile fragments’ (Colebrook 2002: 5), interruptions, and flows,
helps us to create a concept that we argue is less solid, more porous
than age- and place-based notions of youth and adults. An assemblage is
affective and labile, enabling youth studies to connect to the vicissitudes
of the present, ‘looking at life as it appears in the flow of time and

becoming, rather than determining life from some already determined
fixed viewpoint’ (Colebrook 2002: 6). Brennan (2004) argues that the
transmission of affect is ‘social in origin but biological and physical in
effect’ (3), thus situating affect as a ‘physiological shift accompanying a
judgment’ (5), understood as an orientation or an attitude. Her under-
standing of affect breaks down distinctions between mind and body, the
individual and the environment, and the subject and the object, youth
studies and youth, emphasizing ‘affective connections’ (Brennan 2004:
19) flowing through trans- and nonhuman interactions as integral to
constituting capacities to act. As youth studies lets go of its ‘organising
viewpoint’ (Colebrook 2002: 32) to engage the movements of ‘youth’,
it itself moves, detaching from seemingly old concepts and images to
create new connections with youth.
The de-territorialization of youth studies that we propose here moves
against the normative affective attachments of researchers to particu-
lar imaginaries of youth. Although the changing patterns of connection
and action suggested by de-territoralization can always undergo a re-
territorialization that imposes patterns of connection (Massumi 1992:
51), these movements and captures are part of ongoing processes of
change and difference. Emphasizing the altering effects of precarity and
austerity on youths’ present and future lives, we have plumbed the
affective intensities of two contemporary youth movements to sketch
new possibilities for orientations toward youth. The positionalities,
rather than identities or ages, of the Occupiers and the Indignados were
a nexus of attitudes and currents including anticorruption, reclaiming
of a public commons, being fed up with the divide between the rich and
the poor, and the refusal of politics as usual. Conceived as ensembles of
speed and intensities, as event flows of bodies, material, language, and
popular culture, these youth movements have neither essence nor any-
thing more than a temporary stability. They have the possibilities and
limitations of the flows and networks, which they affect and are affected
by and which are endlessly assembled and reassembled. These youth still
move us, while at the same time we remain attuned to the life-shaping
and field-shaping speeds and intensities in which we are all caught up.
Notes
1. In 2012, Malala Yousafzai, a 15-year-old Pakistani girl, was shot in the head by
a member of the Taliban. It is believed that her advocacy for girls’ education
sparked the assault. Malala recovered and has become an international symbol
of resilience and can-do girlhood. For example, the UN initiated an advocacy
campaign entitled ‘Stand Up for Malala’, and TIME magazine featured Malala
on its cover and listed her as one of the 100 most influential people in 2012.
She was also the co-recipient of the 2014 Nobel Peace Prize.
2. DREAMers are immigrant youth who would be placed on a path to docu-
mented status with the DREAM Act (Development, Relief, and Education for
Alien Minors), a proposed law to provide conditional permanent residency
to certain immigrants of good moral character, who graduate from US high
schools, arrived in the United States as minors, and lived in the country con-
tinuously for at least five years. If they completed two years in the military or
two years at a four-year college, DREAMers would obtain temporary residency
for a six-year period and be eligible for permanent residency. As of November
2013, 14 states have versions of the DREAM Act, which deals with tuition
prices and financial aid for state universities.
3. One might think here of Berlant’s (2011b: 95) ‘slow death’, or ‘the physi-
cal wearing out of a population in a way that points to its deterioration as
a defining condition of its experience and historical existence’ in which ‘life
building and the attrition of human life are indistinguishable’ (96). See also
Cacho (2012: 6) on precarious lives lived as ‘social death’, in which subjects are
‘ineligible for personhood’ due to their construction as undeserving, illegiti-
mate, or immoral within racialized, sexualized, spatialized, and neoliberalized
logics of the state.
4. Quoted by BBC News Europe (15 May 2012), viewed November 22, 2013,
<http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-18070246>.
5. The Occupy movement in the United States has not been monolithic in its
goals or tactics. For the sake of space, we focus here on New York City’s Occupy
Wall Street.
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14
Transitions, Cultures, and the
Future of Youth Research
Introduction
Running through the chapters in this book has been an engagement

and interrogation of the so-called ‘twin tracks’ of youth studies (Cohen
2003), a conceptual binary of youth culture and youth transitions.
While the claims that this divide limits youth studies have a long his-
tory, the division is becoming even more difficult to sustain in recent
times. This, as it has been collectively shown by the contributing
authors, is largely down the shifting nature of youth itself as both a
socioeconomic and cultural category.
The markers of the end of ‘youth’, whether conceptualized in terms
of transitions or cultures, are harder to distinguish. It is difficult to iden-
tify when people cease to face the challenges and opportunities that are
associated with youth, and engagement with ‘youthful’ forms of culture
does not come to a sudden stop as adult responsibilities arise, partic-
ularly in our technologically and digitally mediated present. If youth
studies is separated by these ‘twin tracks’, youth scholars can easily slip
from necessarily pursuing a bounded research question to coming to see
‘youth’ too simplistically: either defined as a transition or defined by
culture. Such a divide also facilitates a simplistic partitioning of young
people, with some designated as the focus of transitions research, such
as those ‘at risk’ of faulty transitions, while others are studied exclusively
through the lens of a cultural perspective, for example those engaging
in spectacular or dangerous practices. This creates a strangely segmented
and misleading view of young lives; one in which music fans appear not
to need an income, or where those transitioning from secondary school
to university appear to have no cultural lives outside this transition (see
Chapter 7).
186
Beyond a shared engagement with the challenge of working beyond

or across this dualism in youth studies, a number of possibilities for
youth studies resonate through the different chapters of this collec-
tion: the importance of attending to time and place, and relatedly to
the ‘ordinary’ or everyday experiences of young lives, of understand-
ing inequality in the context of change, and finally of experimenting
with concepts and approaches to the study of youth. We take up these
possibilities in this short, final chapter.
Time, place, and the everyday
In different ways, the contributors to this collection all suggest that

accounts of youth transitions and cultures will be at their best when
embedded in the broader conceptualization of the times and spaces of
young lives. Time and space have different registers, which appear in
different parts of this collection. These temporal registers include the
time of long-running social processes by which social formations and
subjectivities have emerged, the qualitative shifts that can mark out one
generation from the next, and the way biographical investments in one
sphere, for example in education or in work, impact on the time avail-
able for other things a young person might value. The spatial registers
include the way that generational patterns or long-standing inequalities
differ across space among contemporaries, and the way some spaces are
turned into places of significance for and by young people, including
a place to ‘belong’, or become places to challenge these inequalities, to
resist, and to experiment with new forms of politics. Several chapters
in this collection have highlighted the new political assemblages that
young people are creating, using space in creative ways to assemble bod-
ies, expressions, aspects of popular culture, and the materiality of objects
and places in new ways.
By attending to the times and places of young lives, and relatedly
to processes of belonging, the significance of the ‘everyday’ and seem-
ingly mundane elements of young people’s lives also comes into focus
(see Chapters 3 and 7). A central point to emerge from this book – and
one that has also been pivotal in the broader field of social research –
is that social structures and cultural forms do not exist separately from
each other but are connected within a continual process of coproduc-
tion (see Chapter 2). This coproduction occurs in ‘everyday’ practices,
as Chaney (2002), Bennett (2005), and others have argued, thus becom-
ing a space for collective engagement with and negotiation of social
conflict and concomitant forms of oppression. For example, as Chapter
188 Transitions, Cultures, and Future of Youth Research
10 highlights, even as they come to engage in the ordinary practices

of earning a salary or parenting, many ‘subculturalists’ engage in these
practices in ways that resonate with their unconventional ‘subcultural’
values.
The resulting forms of cultural life that emerge from these processes
of coproduction are, thus, not merely a by-product or reflection of the
socioeconomic status quo, but rather an engaged, reflexive, and highly
localized series of responses to structural circumstances as these are
experienced by individuals on a micro-social scale. Indeed, this col-
lection is not the first to recognize this, or to see its implications for
working across the cultures/transitions division in youth studies. Some
of the most enduring studies in youth research have highlighted this
co-constitution, including in the late 1970s Willis’s (1977) ethnograph-
ically informed study Learning to Labour. This classic study provided a
lucid account of the structural and cultural interplay shaping young
people’s attitudes to school and education and recreating subjectivities
suited to their future on the factory floor.
Yet even Willis’s compelling and influential picture of the culture of
school life for working-class ‘lads’ largely neglects their broader cultural
and social lives beyond school. Increasingly, scholars are recognizing
the interplay of different spheres of life, including employment, edu-
cation, family life, and peer relationships both inside and outside of
school (Richards 1998, Henderson et al. 2007). The chapters in this col-
lection serve to illustrate that young people’s lives as cultural beings are
inseparable from the ways that they experience and respond to factors
dictating the broader terrains of their everyday lives.
A range of similar connections can – and need – to be made between
‘culture’ and ‘structure’ in relation to issues of work and employment.
Thus, a concept like ‘unemployed’ may function as a category for
quantifying the number of young people outside the labor market but
looking for work, but it cannot hope to map the hopes and aspirations
of such young people. Their cultural engagements – including what they
listen to, read, watch, and create – also play a part in shaping the every-
day milieu of these young people and help them produce narratives of
how they are, and/or how they would like to be and what they do.
Change, difference, and inequality
Many of the chapters in this book (including Chapters 9 and 5) empha-

size qualitative shifts in the dynamics shaping the experience of youth,
arguing for using the concept of social generations to facilitate bridging
the transitions-cultures binary. Other contributors – particularly in
Chapters 6, 8, and 11 – highlight that in using such concepts of social

change, it is important to exercise caution with our generalizations, to
recognize the differences among young people. One of the implications
is that there needs to be a greater focus on the lives of ‘ordinary’ young
people, not only the most specular, and not only on the most deprived
or well resourced (Bennett 2011, Roberts and MacDonald 2013). Another
is that youth studies must continue to identify the divisions that sep-
arate young people’s experience, by class, gender, race, and place, for
example.
In recent times, the cultures track of youth research has been seen as of
primary value for highlighting change as young people experiment with
various objects of cultural consumption. By contrast, the transitions
track has been regarded as having more value for emphasizing the way
that inequalities are reproduced and, thus, for identifying patterns and
mechanisms that remain constant despite change. In the ways that the
contributors to this collection have challenged the divide between tran-
sitions and cultures approaches, they have also highlighted alternative,
productive ways to think about the impact of social change on inequal-
ity that does not partition continuity and inequality on one side and
change and new opportunities on the other. Recognizing that young
people are often a vanguard of new cultural and subjective expressions
and of new economic and political developments is not to deny or
diminish the importance of inequality. Instead, it provides an important
foundation for investigating what inequality looks like in contemporary
conditions (Woodman and Wyn 2015: 165–166).
The intersection of processes through which unequal outcomes are
created – for young men and women, for working, middle-class, and
elite young people, for indigenous and nonindigenous young people,
and for young people in the Global North and South – are becoming
more complex, and sometimes opaque. Young people’s ways of creating
cultural expressions, building adult lives, and redefining attitudes and
values provide a lens on how new institutional forms, and neoliberal or
‘austerity’ economic policy, mark the lives of those who live under them
in profound if unequal ways. The aim of better tracing the intersections
of change and inequality is one of the reasons that it is vital to revisit
the conceptual orthodoxies that have shaped youth studies in recent
decades.
The future of youth studies
This book should not be seen as a call to abandon existing approaches

to youth studies and to start again, with a wholly new conceptual
190 Transitions, Cultures, and Future of Youth Research
repertoire. We do not wish to preempt what will only become visible

later, or provide a proscription on how youth studies needs to proceed.
Yet, even if the specific features of the next developments in youth
research will only become visible over time, the chapters in this collec-
tion together highlight that questions of transitions and culture will best
be considered and addressed in tandem rather than as being regarded as
separate and/or opposing aspects of academic knowledge about youth.
The contributors to this book pursue different conceptual strategies
for doing so. This includes rethinking what is meant by the concepts of
culture in Chapter 4 and transitions in Chapter 3. Others suggest draw-
ing on or returning to existing, if undervalued alternatives for thinking
about youth, for example through notions of citizenship or generations.
Others rework in imaginative ways the theoretical resources already
widely used in youth studies, such as Bourdieu, or draw on conceptual
approaches that are more recently coming to the attention of youth
scholars. Driving this conceptual innovation and reinvention is the
empirical challenge we face: a complex, changing, and unequal world.
What unites the various concepts our contributors have drawn upon –
including Bourdieu’s ‘field and habitus’ approach, Deleuze’s material
semiotics, Elias’ richly historical approach to tracking of the long-run
processes that have come to structure social life, and Mannheim’s con-
cept of social generations – is an attempt to work across and even
dissolve simplistic dualisms, between objects and subjects, structures
and agents, and transitions and cultures. So, for example, Chapters 13
and 12 draw on Deleuze’s ontology of life as a process of becoming to
highlight that the seemingly static or ‘captured’ patterns of social life
and inequality are part of ongoing processes of difference and resis-
tance, putting these concepts to work to assemble accounts of young
people’s action in diverse places, particularly Spain, the United States,
and Indonesia.
The economic and social changes that have driven the blurring of
boundaries that once defined youth studies are, if anything, accelerating
(see Chapter 5). The coming decades are likely to be both interesting and
challenging times for youth researchers as new theoretical and empirical
ground will need to be broken in order to comprehend the large-scale
transformations occurring around and in direct relation to youth.
References
Bennett A (2005) Culture and Everyday Life, London: Sage.
Bennett A (2011) The continuing importance of the ‘cultural’ in the study of
youth, Youth Studies Australia, 30 (3): 27–33.
Chaney D (2002) Cultural Change and Everyday Life, Basingstoke: Palgrave

Macmillan.
Cohen P (2003) Mods and shockers: Youth cultural studies in Britain, In A
Bennett, M Cieslik, & S Miles (eds), Researching Youth, Basingstoke: Palgrave
Macmillan (29–51).
Henderson S, Holland J, McGrellis S, Sharpe S, Thomson R, with Grigoriou T
(2007) Inventing Adulthoods: A Biographical Approach to Youth Transitions,
London: Sage.
Richards C (1998) Teen Spirits: Music and Identity in Media Education, London: UCL
Press.
Roberts S & MacDonald R (2013) The marginalised mainstream: Making sense of
the ‘missing middle’ of youth studies, Sociological Research Online, 18 (1), 21,
<http://www.socresonline.org.uk/18/1/21.html>.
Index
activism, 145, 178, 180 subcultures, 4, 44, 59, 60, 72, 76, 77,
student movements, 146, 149 129
adolescence working class, 4, 49, 77, 105, 107,
extended, 58 108, 109
‘new adulthood’, 64 climate change, 36–8
postadolescence, 75–6 Coleman, J., 17
adulthood communication technologies, 29, 64,
emerging adulthood, 3, 58 149, 153, 186
as relational to youth, 3 social networking sites, 48, 90, 114;
agency, 7, 20, 22, 99, 160 identity, 114, 116, 117, 122;
bounded agency, 7 political engagement, 152;
aging, 50, 51, 135–6, 137 trust, 116, 117, 118
Anderson, E., 130, 133, 134 Connell, R., 128, 157–8
Arnett, J., 3, 58 consumption, 47, 64, 77, 78, 79, 87,
assemblages, 162–8, 173, 181 89, 150, 151, 153
at-risk youth, 19, 34 continuity, 12, 24, 30, 159
and change, 24, 30, 159
baby boomer generation, 62, 63–4 crime, 99–104, 107, 108, 110
Bauman, Z., 61, 62, 93 Cuervo, H. and Wyn, J., 32–3
Beck, U., 23, 159 cultural capital, 104, 109, 158
Beck, U. and Beck-Gernsheim, E., 30 cultural perspective, 1, 3, 4, 6, 25, 33,
Bennett, A., 21, 48, 135–6 34, 42, 43, 44–5, 47, 48, 51–2, 71,
Bennett, A. and Rogers, I., 49 72, 87, 88, 90, 91, 92, 105, 162,
Berlant, L., 173, 174, 180 164, 167, 188, 189, 190
biographical approach, 6, 22, 51, 115 aging, 6, 50, 59, 168, 186
Birmingham Centre for class, 22, 23, 44–5
Contemporary Cultural Studies consumption, 64, 76–7, 89, 93, 120,
(CCCS), 3–4, 17, 34, 44, 59 151
Blackman, S., 47 global cultures, 87, 89, 149, 150,
Bourdieu, P., 30, 78, 80, 99, 101, 104, 158, 163, 164, 167
106, 108, 110, 158, 159–60, 161–2 inequality, 77–8, 93
Brown, P. and Greggs, M., 50 life-course approach, 6
missing/excluded middle, 80, 92, 95
Canclini, G., 153 mundane practices, 9, 42–3, 45, 48,
Chatterton, P. and Hollands, R., 49, 77 51–2,
‘choice biography’, 22, 58, 123, 159 nightlife, 70, 74–5, 76
citizenship, 84, 85, 86–8, 89, 91, 92, nighttime economy, 20, 49, 50, 76,
93, 94, 95, 143, 144, 145–6, 153 77, 78, 79
Clarke, J., 46 race, 21
class, 21–2, 23, 60, 78, 79, 102, 144 strip-tease culture, 115, 123
individualization, 22 time, 56, 59
middle class, 38, 77 see also subcultures
192
Index 193
Deleuze, G., 160, 179 youth cultures, 127, 137

Deleuze, G. and Guattari, F., 160, 162, youth transitions, 122
163, 164 generational change, 5
du Bois-Reymond, M., 50–1 Giddens, A., 23, 47, 61
global generations, 8, 143
economic growth, 157 Global North, 142, 143, 145, 148,
education, 18, 32 154
alienation from, 91 Global South, 142–4, 147, 154
employment, 18
higher education, 72 habitus, 30, 101, 108, 110, 159–60,
increase/expansion, 146 162, 167, 168, 190
inequalities, 109 Hage, G., 160
rural young people, 33 Hall, T. Coffey, A. and Lashua, B., 35
trajectories to employment, 32, 34 Hall, S. and Jefferson, T., 44
Elias, N., 17, 24, 25, 26, 61, 62 health, 48, 63, 106, 111, 137
employment, 33, 73 Hebdige, D., 44, 46
changing patterns of, 86 Hollands, R., 20–1, 49, 75, 76
the ‘precariat’, 24, 157, 168 homeless young people, 35, 164
‘entrepreneurial self’, 157
identity, 6, 29, 31, 32, 37, 48, 49, 63,
Farrugia, D., 35, 159 78, 88, 114, 116, 122, 133, 162,
fields, 80, 100, 101, 102, 106, 107, 163, 164
108, 110, 111, 161 individualization, 22, 25, 61–2, 114
see also place class, 22
flexibility, 64 the ‘entrepreneurial self’, 157
flexible worker, 86, 135 inequality, 30
Fowler, D., 43 labour market, 34
Furlong, A. and Cartmel, F., 71, 72 risks, 34
Furlong, A. Woodman, D. and Wyn, J., ‘structured individualization’, 7
34, 69, 72, 73, 75, 115 subcultures, 22
future planning, 58, 62, 63 temporal structures, 62, 63, 65
inequality
gender, 37, 114 class, 77
employment, 129, 135 continuity, 30
feminism, 115, 121, 139 global inequality, 144, 168
inequality, 66 patterns of, 12, 189
masculinity, 76, 105, 127–9, 130,
131, 132, 134, 136, 138–9 Kimmel, M., 129
men, 59, 60, 65, 76, 127–39, 164
subcultures, 4, 44, 76, 130, 131, labour market, 24, 34, 35, 43, 91, 94,
132, 137 136, 166
women, 50, 60, 63, 65–6, 76, 129, late modernity, 17, 24, 26, 32, 64, 148,
130, 131 167
generations, 190, 80, 122, 148–9, see also reflexive modernity
154 Leccardi, C., 62
inequality, 24 Leccardi, C. & Ruspini, E., 63
place, 32 leisure, 42, 43, 45, 49, 74, 76–7, 78,
sociology of, 6, 71, 115, 148 79, 85, 87, 91, 92, 93, 105
time, 61, 63, 66, 148, 149, 153–4 subjectivity, 150, 152, 153
194 Index
Life Patterns Research race, 4, 21

Program, 32 recognition, 84, 85, 87, 88, 89, 91, 94,
Lincoln, S., 48 95, 104, 108, 115, 129, 148
Redhead, S., 20
Maffesoli, M., 47, 59, 90, 164 reflexive modernity, 158, 159, 167
Malbon, B., 60, 75 see also late modernity
Mannheim, K., 6, 143 reflexive youth sociology, 30
Marx, K., 4, 77 relationships, 32, 118
Massey, D., 32, 178 changing patterns of, 88
Mcdonald, R., 36 friendships, 131, 132, 133, 134, 135,
McLeod, J., 173 139
McRobbie, A., 17, 46 intergenerational, 137
McRobbie, A. and Garber, J., 48 temporal structures, 63, 64
mental health religious beliefs, 89, 120, 132
‘positive mental attitude’, Robards, B. & Bennett, A., 48
137 Roberts, R., 43
see also health Roberts, S., 159
miles, S., 44–5 Rosa, H., 60, 61, 62, 64
rural youth, 31, 32, 33, 34
moral panic, 44, 171
education, 32, 33
Muggleton, D., 44–5, 80
employment, 32, 33
inequality, 34
Nayak, A., 21, 93
neoliberalism, 3, 21, 35, 37, 39, 100, Sennett, R., 23, 36
107, 111, 144 sexuality, 114, 115, 118, 120, 131, 137
neo-tribes, 59–60, 122 same sex attracted youth, 130, 132,
Nilan, P., 158 133, 134, 135
non-linear transitions, 3, 5, 19, 39, 86, Shildrick, T. and MacDonald, R.,
87, 115 47, 93
see also transitions perspective Silva, J. M., 115, 122
social acceleration, 60, 62
participation, 34, 47, 48, 50, 84, 85, social change, 2, 21, 29, 30, 31, 59, 60,
88–9, 92, 93, 94, 95, 96, 144, 147, 62, 159, 189
151, 152, 180 and continuity, 21, 30, 159, 189
subcultural, 135, 136, 137 social movements, 62, 163, 181
place, 20, 21, 22, 29–30, 31, 32, 33, indignados, 173, 175, 176, 177, 178,
35, 36, 77, 93, 99, 102, 103, 104, 179, 180, 182
106, 107, 108, 110, 164, 165, 167, occupy, 173, 174, 175, 176, 177,
179, 181, 187 178, 179, 180, 181
belonging, 31, 33, 38, 39, 59, 85, 87, social networks, 90, 114
89–90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 95, 123, social reproduction, 17, 19, 22, 146
142, 151 social structures, 6, 8, 19, 22, 23, 50,
rural place, 31, 32 60, 62, 76, 80, 89, 101, 103, 104,
virtual, 114, 121 108, 110, 159, 160
see also fields southern theory, 157
post-subculture, 4, 6, 7, 44, 45, 46, 47, space, 49, 50, 64, 77, 78, 87, 89, 90,
59, 60, 72, 76 91, 92, 99, 101, 102, 103, 104,
precarious labour market, 23, 32, 34, 105, 106, 107, 108, 110, 113, 114,
86, 94, 110, 151, 174 115, 118, 127–8, 129, 131, 133,
Index 195
138, 143, 148, 151, 153, 154, 167, individualization, 62, 116, 120
172, 173, 174, 178, 179, 180, 181, ‘insecure transitions’, 91
187 as a metaphor, 39
exclusion from, 164 new patterns of, 3, 75, 87
see also place non-linear transitions, 5
standing, G., 24 responsibilization, 36
subcultures, 3, 4, 22, 34, 44, 45, 46, of self and society, 30, 31
47, 48, 59, 71, 72, 87, 127 self-identified transitions, 116, 123
class, 4, 22, 44, 59, 60, 72, 76, 77, ‘successful transition’, 35
129 time, 56, 57, 58, 60, 61, 63
critiques, 17, 46, 59, 60
employment, 73, 94, 135, 136
masculinity, 127, 128, 129, 130, unemployment, 19, 34, 78, 171
131, 133, 134, 138 NEET, 34
parenthood, 136, 137–8 urbanisation, 32
subcultural capital, 94, 135 urban youth, 32, 49, 50, 78, 164
women, 48, 76, 130, 131–2
see also cultural perspective Watson, J., 35
subjectivity, 22, 31, 39 welfare state, 86, 157, 174, 176
political subjectivity, 142, 143, 145, Willis, P., 20, 73, 188
147, 149, 150, 151, 153, 154 women, 131, 132
synchronisation, 64 employment, 90, 135
de-synchronisation, 62, 64, 65 homeless women, 35
inclusion of, 129–30
Thornton, S., 50 leisure, 50, 60, 76
Threadgold, S., 159 time, 65
time, 29–30, 56–7, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62,
Woodman, D. and Threadgold, S., 159
63, 64, 65, 66, 73–4, 143, 148–9,
work, see employment
153, 172, 173, 179, 187
generations, 61, 148–9
transitions perspective, 1, 2, 4, 6, 7, 8, youth lifestyles, 21, 42, 47–8, 87, 88
17, 18, 19, 20, 22, 25, 30, 33, 34, class, 22, 23
35, 70, 71, 72, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, youth policy, 33, 34, 35, 36, 64,
79, 80, 85, 86, 88, 93, 94, 95, 113, 99–100, 107, 189
114, 115, 119, 121, 122, 128, 130, youth studies, 2, 16, 39, 56, 59, 95,
138, 139, 143, 153, 164, 167, 172, 173, 181, 182
172–3, 186, 187, 189, 190 bridging the gap, 5, 7, 17, 23, 70,
critique, 19, 157 73, 80, 101, 142, 188
‘failed transition’, 100, 127 future of, 2, 24, 80, 189–90
from education to employment, 3, history of, 3, 22
35, 73, 136 ‘twin tracks’, 1, 2, 3, 5, 16, 23, 186–7

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Youth Cultures, Transitions, and Generations

List of Tables and Figures ix

1 Cultures, Transitions, and Generations: The Case

2 Transitions, Cultures, and Identities: What Is Youth

3 Complex Worlds, Complex Identities: Complexity in

4 ‘Speaking of Youth Culture’: A Critical Analysis of

5 Generations, Transitions, and Culture as Practice: A

6 Waiting for the Weekend? Nightlife Studies and the

7 Transitions, Cultures, and Citizenship: Interrogating

8 Bourdieurian Cultural Transitions: Young People

9 Sexy Selﬁes of the Transitioning Self 113

10 Transitioning to a New Manhood: Subcultures as Sites of

11 Youth Political Subjectivity in the Global South: Crossing

12 Applying Theoretical Paradigms to Indonesian Youth in

13 Toward a Different Youth Studies: Youth-and-Researchers

14 Transitions, Cultures, and the Future of Youth Research 186

6.1 Youth transition–youth cultural analyses divide (ideal

11.1 Internet meme using Mafalda, 2012 152

Foremost, thanks to our contributors for their hard work in produc-

Airi-Alina Allaste is Professor of Sociology and Director of the Institute

Andy Bennett is Professor of Cultural Sociology at Grifﬁth University

Dorothy Bottrell is Senior Lecturer in Social Pedagogy in the College

Alan France is Professor of Sociology at the University of Auckland,

Political Ecology of Youth and Crime (2012, Palgrave Macmillan, with

Andy Furlong is Professor of Social Inclusion and Education and Dean

Ross Haenﬂer is Associate Professor of Sociology at Grinnell College,

Anita Harris is an Australian Research Council Future Fellow and

Robert Hollands is Professor of Sociology at the School of Geography,

Carmen Leccardi is Professor of Cultural Sociology and Director of the

Nancy Lesko is a professor in the Department of Curriculum and Teach-

Pam Nilan is Professor of Sociology at the University of Newcastle,

Susan Talburt is a professor in the Institute for Women’s, Gender, and

Steven Threadgold is Senior Lecturer and Head of Sociology and

Katrin Tiidenberg is Lecturer in Sociology at Tallinn University,

Darcie Vandegrift is Chair of the Department for the Study of Cul-

Rob White is Professor of Criminology at the School of Social Sciences,

Subcultures: Theory, History and the Australian Experience (2nd edition,

Dan Woodman is the TR Ashworth Senior Lecturer and Discipline Chair

Johanna Wyn is Professor of Education and Director of the Youth

Youth studies is made up of many perspectives. While built around

the aim of highlighting young peoples’ creativity and resistance to the

The twin tracks of youth studies

The ‘Birmingham school’ instead looked back to earlier theorizing of

Bridging the gap

Despite a substantive division between the twin tracks of youth stud-

In particular, it seems that the association of adulthood with stability

It is within this context of generational change, new cultural con-

studies of the nighttime economy and youth ‘nightlife’. He suggests

form built on the shared practice of constant personal transition, which

they highlight the ordinary and everyday activism by which young

Blackman S (2005) Youth subcultural theory: A critical engagement with the

Furlong A, Woodman D, & Wyn J (2011) Changing times, changing perspec-

Robards BJ (2012) Leaving MySpace, joining Facebook: ‘Growing up’ on social

In this chapter, I want to reinforce that argument and make an

Before focusing on ways to move thinking forward, I will say something,

identifying who takes part in activities regarded as risky, who truants

1970s, Glen Elder (1974) managed to move us away from a conceptu-

With cultural approaches to youth studies often focusing on expres-

appeal to a range of style communities but not to all. Through this, he

Reﬂecting on the division between cultural and transitions perspec-

of class, as traditionally framed, and were beginning to imagine their

To bring these strands together, to build a ﬁrmer theoretical founda-

By its very nature, youth research has a specialized focus: in itself