Peripheral Youth

Abstract

In this introduction, the editors construct a dialogue between a wideranging review of theories and research on global/local relations in youth cultures and the articles published in this Special Issue on aspects of youthful `peripherality'. This field of study, which has become cross-disciplinary, increasingly does justice to local diversities, but has often been led by arguments in social theory that have been `core-centric'. The editors argue for global/local studies, situated in peripheries, that take seriously the meanings young people attach to their cultural practice, extending inquiry to questions of subjectivity and `cultural psychology'. On the basis of the articles in this issue and their own research, the editors suggest the need for significant qualification of the themes of individual lifestyles, the dominance of global consumption patterns, social disembedding and crowd-like behaviour (`neotribes') among young people. They point rather to the continued importance of group strategies, of specific histories of national identities and of markers of identity formed around global/local relations of race/ethnicity, sexuality, class, gender and generation.