Youthscapes: The Popular, the National, the Global

by Sunaina Maira (Editor), George Lipsitz (Contributor), Lissa Soep (Editor)

Young people, it seems, are both everywhere and nowhere. The media are crowded with images of youth as deviant or fashionable, personifying a society's anxieties and hopes about its own transformation. However, theories of globalization, nationalism, and citizenship tend to focus on adult actors. Youthscapes sets youth at the heart of globalization by exploring the meanings young people have created for themselves through their engagements with popular cultures, national ideologies, and global markets.

The term "youthscapes" places local youth practices within the context of ongoing shifts in national and global forces. Using this framework, the book revitalizes discussions about youth cultures and social movements, while simultaneously reflecting on the uses of youth as an academic and political category. Tracing young people's movements across physical and imagined spaces, the authors examine various cases of young people as they participate in social relations; use and invent technology; earn, spend, need, and despise money; comprise target markets while producing their own original media; and create their own understandings of citizenship. The essays examine young Thai women working in the transnational beauty industry, former child soldiers in Sierra Leone, Latino youth using graphic art in political organizing, a Sri Lankan refugee's fan relationship with Jackie Chan, and Somali high school students in the United States and Canada. Drawing on methodologies and frameworks from multiple fields, such as anthropology, sociology, and film studies, the volume is useful to those studying and teaching issues of youth culture, popular culture, globalization, social movements, education, and media.

By focusing on the intersection between globalization studies and youth culture, the authors offer a vital contribution to the development of a new, interdisciplinary approach to youth culture studies.

296 pages, Paperback

First published November 28, 2004

Reviews

[Mary · Rating 3 out of 5]

Feh. The problem with cultural studies stuff like this is that the hot topics go out of style just as quickly as the ephemera they latch onto. Hence the tedious examinations of hackers and ravers and something called "riot gurrls," which existed, I think, for five minutes in 1997.

I did see actual ravers the other night, though. In Green Point of all places! With fairy wings and glow sticks and everything!

[Deepthi · Rating 4 out of 5]

As usual, the introduction is the most meaty and interesting part of the book, many of the studies are limited in scope and snapshot of the field at the moment the book was published. Also recommend Becoming New Yorkers for those who would be interested in reading this.

[Zoe]

Very interesting follow up article if you are reading Beah's Long way gone....

And overall a really wonderful colletcion of thought provoking, post modernist essays on gobalization and youth.