Date: Sun, 02 Feb 1997 19:12:18 +0100 From: Paul Bayer <pbayer-AT-ibm.net> Subject: Re: Youth's taste In the past few years I didn't read anymore youth studies. So I cannot prove my arguments by actual research. But since I make daily conversations with young people (workers, students, pupils) and often I get involved in their problems, I dare some remarks. - Many apologies for my long posting. 1 The rise of youth as a social field ======================================Nikos wrote: > After your analysis I understand( if I am wrong please tell me) that > Bourdieu and his theory as developed in ''Distinction'' is not useful > anymore for explaining postmodern phenomena of social taste especially > in the Youth's case since the criterium of class is no more an > important factor as it used to be in the seventies. .... I think, Nikos here you don't consider the social function of youth as a (relatively) autonomous field of social transition between adolescence and adulthood. Specially this field produces the attribuition and redistribuition of young individuals into different social categories such as classes. In order to illustrate this claim, I remember the situation of young people some decades ago. Up to the 60s in Germany the childs of farmers the afternoon (after school) had to do farm-work. Their integration into agricultural work begun when they were 10 years old. The first-born sons after having left the school (which at this time usually resided in the same little village) at an age of 14 remained on the farm, learned farming on another farm or made another useful professional training, in order to take over later the farm of their family. At about 20 years it was time to marry preferably the daughter of another farmer. Only a small minority of farmer childs could make a different carreer. I could give other examples of such former quasi-predetermined curricula vitae. They all had in common (with the exception of bourgeoisie) a sudden change from adolescence to adulthood, often accompanied or introduced by certain initiation rites (like journeymans certificate, engagement, marriage, membership of the regular's table, rally, rifle club etc.). So the individual's attribuition to social classes was more determined and organized by the situation of the parents, and there was less flexibility between different social categories. Today there is a notably delay between physical adolescence and take-over of traditional social roles of adults (job responsability, marriage, upbringing of children etc.). This social hysteresis stretches out social spaces for activities, practices, habitus', tastes, customs which we notify as youth culture and which makes possible sociological questions about eg. "youth's taste". It requires also new accesses to class analysis, traditionally seen as class consciousness or class habitus, because the procedures, which socially engender or initiate these habitus' in individual biographies, have changed and are more complex. Insofar Nikos is right. 1.1 Characteristics of youth's field -------------------------------------- As we all know, there are some empirical facts, which are responsable for this hysteresis. I list the most important ones: - fall of young people's employment, - enlargement of education time (school, university, apprenticeship), - more possibilities for aquirement of cultural capital, promoted by income of parents, social welfare and enlarged educational systems, - risen complexity of work, which requires more learning, - youth unemployment and difficulties of integration into world of work, - longer period for young people to remain among themselves. These facts aren't only quantitative changes, but they induce also different (from the "world of adults") social or individual practices such as learning, studying, playing, experimenting etc. (without the need for immediate or well defined results). 1.2 Organisation of youth's field ---------------------------------- There are certain social institutions, which organize this field, schools, universities, places of training, trainee posts, political and religious youth organisations, public youth centres, happenings, concerts, televison channels, clubs, newsletters, a whole industry which produces special articles .... A remarkable fact is that all or most of these institutions are organized by adults, that they all maintain a certain balance between autonomous, distinct youth activity or conception of youth and on the other side preparation to or integration into other social fields like work, professional sports, political parties, church, urban districts, starting a family. Youth's field therefore is organized as field of transition or as a meta-field between several other fields. It is only conceivable in respect to other social fields, subordinated and dominated by other fields. There is a struggle of young people against this domination, they develop strategies to escape from this domination, to fight against the hegemonical culture. The institutions react with a continous effort to hinder or to integrate these `alternative' youth cultures, new practices, fashionss, music streams, preferences, and so they contribute to modify, to select or to distribute them and to create spaces for them. 2 Symbolical struggles ======================I remember some youth studies in the 80's underlining the tendence of stronger individualization among young people. I agree with this observation insofar as young people today are older and more developed and conscious subjects when they make their first experiences with work, social organisations, public institutions, i.e. with the "world of adults". Therefore often they feel the restrictions or the violence of these fields and have difficulties to integrate themselves. Their reactions and strategies of adaption or rejection seem to be more differenciated and contingent, influenced by more factors and more complex biographic prerequisites. They have to find their own subjective ways to get on with social realities. Sociologists therefore spoke of modern youth as an insecured generation. It has been argued that politically today young people are less critical than the 68 generation. I have the impression, that coming from the youth's field created by the 68 movement and the subsequent politics, young people now have problems to bring together their experiences of autonomy, individuality, liberation of sexuality, pleasures and consumption, artistical activity etc. with the severe reality of final examinations, job search, work, job centres, assemblies, meetings, orders and obedience, which require an individual effort to actively suppress or deny these (their) liberties. They feel these contradictions as alienation and develop subjective strategies to tackle, to resolve or to escape them. The symbolical forms of these struggles, perceived as youth's taste, fashion, habits are the tip of the whole iceberg of different individual or collective practices generated by these contradictions. I see the symbolically distinct habits and tastes of young people as an expression of their feeling, that life could be better. Social sciences should be able to perceive and to speak out these needs and to make proposals how to fulfill them. 3 Individual differences ========================If my observations are right, their should be different levels of involvement of young people into youth culture, depending on their individual biographies, their origin, their gender, on how they live their period of insertion into the `world of adults', the time of education, the understanding by their parents, the number and the quality of individual difficulties and breaks of transition, their level of dependency or autonomy etc. This was observed also by Roger Martinez with his difference between "full" and "normal" partecipants in youth subcultures. A further explanation or investigation of these relations would be very interesting. 4 Further remarks =================I feel the need for a better outlining of youth's field with its different subfields organizing the different practices of transition of young people from adolescence or educational system into job or family responsabilities. Such an investigation could better explain the engenderment of different youth's tastes and give a better framework for youth studies and reciprocal understanding of young people. Studies about the difficulties, young people find during their transition and insertion into work, political field, residential blocks, medical welfare services etc. could explain much about the lacks and problems of these fields and lead to proposals how to modernize them. This generally could be an efficient method of inquiring the problems of these fields. A very interesting subject. It seems that Bourdieu's method of relational thinking leads to long postings, many apologies for that. Best regards, Paul Bayer Munic, Germany ********************************************************************** Contributions: bourdieu-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu Commands: majordomo-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu Requests: bourdieu-approval-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu
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