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

Sociology ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 52 (6) ◽  
pp. 1117-1133 ◽  
Author(s):  
Will Mason

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

2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (5) ◽  
pp. 168-187
Author(s):  
Marluce Evangelista Carvalho Zacariotti

O eixo de atenção deste artigo é o conceito de eXtremo, de Massimo Canevacci, autor, cujas ideias inovadoras, e por que não dizer radicais, têm trazido boas contribuições para pesquisas sobre as juventudes, na interface comunicação/cultura/consumo na contemporaneidade. Trata-se também de uma perspectiva em plena discussão. Porque a temática juventude, destacada em inúmeras pesquisas, estudos, em incontáveis artigos, ensaios e livros que cada vez se proliferam mais, dada a sua crescente relevância, vem sendo abordada sob a perspectiva de vários campos do saber, gerando múltiplas possibilidades de percepção e teorização. Assim, estamos concordando com uma linha de pesquisadores, entre eles Canevacci, que caminham pelo terreno do múltiplo, do plural, envolvendo aspectos sócio-culturais-econômicos-geográficos que falam não de um jovem, mas de jovens; não de uma juventude, mas de juventudes. No limite deste trabalho, ficamos por aqui nesta justificativa para nos dedicar especificamente ao conceito de eXtremo e porque ele se mostra elemento-chave nas discussões que estamos proponho em nossas pesquisas em andamento sobre as juventudes, a cultura na pós-modernidade e os desafios à educação.   PALAVRAS-CHAVE: Juventudes; pós-modernidade; educação.     ABSTRACT The focus of this article is the concept of extreme, from Massimo Canevacci, author, whose innovative ideas, and why not say radicals, have brought good contributions to research on youth, at the interface communication / culture / consumption in the contemporary world.It is also a perspective in full discussion. Because the thematic youth, highlighted in countless researches, studies, countless articles, essays and books that are increasingly proliferating, given their increasing relevance, has been approached from the perspective of several fields of knowledge, generating multiple possibilities of perception and theorizing. Thus, we are agreeing with a line of researchers, among them Canevacci, who walk through the terrain of multiple, plural, involving socio-cultural-economic-geographical aspects that speak not of a young person but of young people; not of a youth but of youth. At the limit of this work, we remain here in this justification to dedicate ourselves specifically to the concept of eXtreme and because it is a key element in the discussions that we are proposing in our ongoing research about youth, culture in postmodernity and the challenges to education.   KEYWORDS: Youth; postmodernity; education.     RESUMEN El eje de atención de este artículo es el concepto de eXtremo, de Massimo Canevacci autor, cuyas ideas innovadoras, y por qué no decir radicales, han traído buenos aportes para investigaciones sobre las juventudes, en el interfaz comunicación/cultura/consumo en la contemporaneidad. Se trata también de una perspectiva en plena discusión. Porque la temática juventud, destacada en innúmeras pesquisas, estudios, en incontables artículos, ensayos y libros que cada vez se proliferan más, dada su creciente relevancia, viene siendo abordada bajo la perspectiva de varios campos del saber, generando múltiples posibilidades de percepción y teorización. Así, estamos concordando con una línea de investigadores, entre ellos Canevacci, que caminan por el terreno del múltiple, del plural, involucrando aspectos socioculturales-económicos-geográficos que hablan no de un joven, pero de jóvenes; no de una juventud, pero de juventudes. En el límite de este trabajo, quedamos por aquí en esta justificativa para nos dedicar específicamente al concepto de eXtremo y porque él se muestra elemento-clave en las discusiones que estamos proponiendo en nuestras investigaciones en andamiento sobre las juventudes, la cultura en la postmodernidad y los desafíos a la educación.   PALABRAS CLAVE: Juventudes; postmodernidad; educación.


2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (Supplement_1) ◽  
pp. 515-516
Author(s):  
Penelope Moyers Cleveland ◽  
Kassidy Beckstein ◽  
Allie Gartner ◽  
Lexy Hay ◽  
Mackenzie King ◽  
...  

Abstract The purpose of this study was to implement an occupational therapy intervention that could be used for telehealth services with an emphasis on participants learning ways to independently choose and sustain engagement in meaningful music activities, known as occupations. The researchers’ aim was to examine how music occupation interventions lower risks of occupational deprivation (i.e., prolonged restriction from participation in necessary or meaningful activities) that could occur due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Eight adults participated who were 65 years or older, lived in the community, and enjoyed music. The researchers used narrative qualitative methodology to analyze pre- and post-intervention focus group data. The participants completed seven intervention sessions designed to increase and sustain music engagement outside of the sessions. The pre-intervention focus group data resulted in an occupational pattern analysis and a single occupational narrative. Triangulation of data post-intervention included the two focus groups and their pattern analyses and narratives, field notes from each intervention session, and documents produced through group completion. The final analysis produced an occupational change pattern analysis and narrative. The focus of the change narrative was on the participant’s management or prevention of occupational deprivation. The researchers identified several common themes involving change in routines and habits to include regular engagement in meaningful music activities, skills for using occupational participation as an important method of coping with COVID-19, and developing new technological skills to access music to replace in-person participation of attending live concerts and shows when deemed unsafe because of potential for virus transmission.


Young ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 28 (3) ◽  
pp. 275-293
Author(s):  
Fiorella Bucci ◽  
Stijn Vanheule

Changes in the forms and cultural meanings of work have gone deep during the last decades, with the transient nature of work becoming the norm rather than the exception. This is impacting particularly on youth employment, as Italy’s case epitomizes. Based on interview and focus group data, our study provides a multidimensional model to read and map the multiple tensions young people experience, at an emotional level, on entering today’s corporations. Our findings show, on the one hand, that young professionals’ expectation of work as a place of social learning and exchange clashes with the corporate focus on assimilating young people into target-oriented environments. On the other hand, both in younger and older workers, we found the experience of labour relationships that struggle to direct themselves towards a creative purpose and a developmental prospect, while tending to collapse emotionally inwards, in a fight for security.


Author(s):  
Matt Henn ◽  
Mark Weinstein ◽  
Dominic Wring

Conventional wisdom holds that young people in Britain are alienated from politics, with some claiming that this reflects a wider crisis of legitimacy that should be met by initiatives to increase citizenship. This article addresses these areas, presenting both panel survey and focus group data from first-time voters. It concludes that, contrary to the findings from many predominantly quantitative studies of political participation, young people are interested in political matters, and do support the democratic process. However, they feel a sense of anticlimax having voted for the first time, and are critical of those who have been elected to positions of political power. If they are a generation apart, this is less to do with apathy, and more to do with their engaged scepticism about ‘formal’ politics in Britain.


Societies ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 64
Author(s):  
Mattias De Backer

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


2017 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 156-172 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elsa Saarikkomäki

Private security increasingly participates in policing, thus changing the field of policing. However, there is a lack of research on how private security is perceived by citizens, and particularly by young people. This article reports on a novel approach to studying procedural justice and trust; it compares young people’s perceptions of public and private policing. Relying on focus group data from Finland, the findings indicated that young people have more trust and confidence in the police than in private security guards. Their perceptions were based on face-to-face encounters (to measure ‘trust’) and on general assumptions (to measure ‘confidence’). Young people perceived the police as more educated, professional, legitimate and respectful than security guards. They also felt that security guards sometimes exceed their legal rights and act unfairly. However, the findings also suggest that security guards have some legitimacy. The study suggests that issues around trust in policing are more complex than prior research indicates and that private security cannot replace police tasks without it affecting perceptions of trust in policing.


2016 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-19
Author(s):  
Ndwakhulu Tshishonga

This article examines the socio-economic implications that the controversial sub-culture of skhothane has on the development or underdevelopment of youth at Ekurhuleni and surrounding townships. It interrogates skhothane within the post-modern expressive youth culture. In the township(s) of Ekurhuleni, skhothane is regarded not only as a controversial sub-culture but also as a lifestyle whereby young people compete in acquiring material goods with the ultimate purpose of destroying them. This practice co-exists alongside youth unemployment and underdevelopment which is exacerbated by poverty, rising unemployment and gross inequalities. The author argues that the practice of skhothane sub-culture does not only undermine the policies and programmes aimed at the socio-economic upliftment of young people, but turns the youth into materialistic consumers. In this article, young people are viewed as victims of post-modern lifestyles who are socialised under an intergenerational culture of poverty and underdevelopment. It uses primary data from selected interviews with skhothane members and general members of local communities and secondary sources from books, accredited journals and newspapers.


2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 205630512110088
Author(s):  
Benjamin N. Jacobsen ◽  
David Beer

As social media platforms have developed over the past decade, they are no longer simply sites for interactions and networked sociality; they also now facilitate backwards glances to previous times, moments, and events. Users’ past content is turned into definable objects that can be scored, rated, and resurfaced as “memories.” There is, then, a need to understand how metrics have come to shape digital and social media memory practices, and how the relationship between memory, data, and metrics can be further understood. This article seeks to outline some of the relations between social media, metrics, and memory. It examines how metrics shape remembrance of the past within social media. Drawing on qualitative interviews as well as focus group data, the article examines the ways in which metrics are implicated in memory making and memory practices. This article explores the effect of social media “likes” on people’s memory attachments and emotional associations with the past. The article then examines how memory features incentivize users to keep remembering through accumulation. It also examines how numerating engagements leads to a sense of competition in how the digital past is approached and experienced. Finally, the article explores the tensions that arise in quantifying people’s engagements with their memories. This article proposes the notion of quantified nostalgia in order to examine how metrics are variously performative in memory making, and how regimes of ordinary measures can figure in the engagement and reconstruction of the digital past in multiple ways.


AERA Open ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 7 ◽  
pp. 233285842110336
Author(s):  
Mandy Savitz-Romer ◽  
Heather T. Rowan-Kenyon ◽  
Tara P. Nicola ◽  
Emily Alexander ◽  
Stephanie Carroll

The unprecedented arrival of COVID-19 upended the lives of American children with rapid shifts to remote and hybrid schooling and reduced access to school-based support. Growing concerns about threats to students’ mental health and decreased numbers of students transitioning to postsecondary education suggest access to school counselors is needed more than ever. Although previous research on school counselors finds they promote positive postsecondary, social emotional, and academic outcomes for students, further studies highlight the organizational constraints, such as an overemphasis on administrative duties and unclear role expectations, that hinder their work. Drawing on survey and focus group data, our mixed methods study documents school counselors’ experiences during the COVID-19 crisis, including the opportunities and constraints facing their practice. Findings suggest there should be a concerted effort to reduce the role ambiguity and conflict in counselors’ roles so they are better able to meet students’ increased needs.


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