Youth cultures and style. Analytical approaches and a methodological proposal

Abstract

Youth cultures are nowadays one of the main social forms among young people, and at the core of youth cultures is style. Variously defined, style is made up of all those elements through which each youth culture, and every individual involved in it, expresses itself and positions itself with regard to other cultural models, by processes of identification, distinction and recognition. Over time, different approaches to the analysis of youth cultures have been developed -on the basis partly of the different empirical phenomena which have been taken into consideration, and partly of the different sensitivities of the scholars -and thus different interpretive perspectives of style have also emerged. The article aims at reconstructing the core elements of the main approaches to style in the study of youth cultures -considering definitions, constitutive elements, and interpretive models -and then, on these bases, at reflecting about a possible methodological path in the concrete study of today's youth cultures' styles.APSTRAKT: Kulture mladih su jedan od glavnih društvenih oblika ispoljavanja mladosti, a u njihovom jezgru je stil. Određivan na različite načine, stil se sastoji od elemenata preko kojih svaka kultura mladih i svaki pojedinac u njih uključen sebe izražava i pozicionira u odnosu na druge kulturne modele, kroz procese identifikacije, razlikovanja i prepoznavanja. Različiti pristupi proučavanju kultura mladih razvili su se tokom vremena, zavisno delimično od različitih empirijskih pojava koje su uzimane u obzir, a delimično zavisno od različitih senzibiliteta istraživača, a sledstveno i različite prespektive tumačenja stila. Cilj članka je da rekonstruiše glavne pristupe stilu u studijama kultura mladih, u odnosu na određenja, konstitutivne elemente i iterpretativne modela, da bi potom na tim 1 carlo.genova@unito.it

Participation with Style. Clothing among Young Activists in Political Groups

“…However, they have been much more widely investigated-and elaborated through analytical interpretive models-in the study of youth cultures, in particular through the concept of style. It is not possible here to consider in depth the evolution of these models and study streams, 14 but at their core is the idea that youth cultures are collectivities of young people who express shared sensibilities, identities, identifications, and social positioning [69]; style is made up of all those material and immaterial elements through which this expression occurs [70]; and clothing is one of the fundamental constitutive elements, as well as one of the most investigated aspects, of style [71][72][73][74][75][76][77][78]. 15 The study of youth activism and the study of youth cultures remain two distinct and substantially independent streams, so that clothing remained largely outside the analytical dimensions in research about youth participation (although, at least since the 1960s, youth cultures have intersected social movements and more in general youth forms of political participation).…”