Hopeless Youth!

HOPELESS YOUTH! Editors Francisco Martínez and Pille Runnel Hopeless Youth! is a collection of studies exploring what it means to be young today. Young people increasingly create their own identities and solidarities through experiences rather than through political or kin affiliations. It is the youth with the greatest hunger of experiences and cosmopolitan referents. Youngsters are hopeless because do not expect help from anybody and demonstrate scepticism about the future. As shown, contemporary youth is characterised by interim responses and situational thinking, developing particular skills that do not exist in previous generations. Beware that these essays will certainly resonate in your morning, afternoon and late night. Endorsements Hopeless Youth! makes clear that the writing, thinking and doing involved in punk and hip hop culture, flâneurism, dubstep and techno music scenes, skateboarding, dumpster diving and hitchhiking, for example, are central to culture on a more-than-marginal level. This collection of essays is bound to be a staple reference for anyone working with groups and individuals defining places on their own terms. Bradley L. Garrett, University of Southampton 5 Hopeless Youth! Hopeless Youth! is a timely addition to a type of scholarship which is proactive, progressive and provocative. The exclamation mark in the title sums it up for me. In harbouring an array of sharp ideas, unconventional themes, creative forms of dissemination and imaginative collaborations, this collection will have its readers repeatedly thumbing through its pages. Patrick Laviolette, Tallinn University 6 Inequality and unemployment increase while resistance movements against problematic politics gather momentum. There has never been a more interesting time to examine the concept of ‘youth’ and elaborate on its future. The eclectic mix of authors included in Hopeless Youth! make this collection an important milestone in the discussion of the most important generation to come. Daniel Briggs, European University of Madrid 7 Contents Introduction 15 Hopeless, Helpless and Holy Youth – Francisco Martínez Insights 43 The Southbank Controversy: Skateboarding and Urban Youth in London – Iain Borden 50 The Figure of the ‘Chav’ in a London Satellite Town – Elias le Grand 56 Youth Culture No More – Thomas Mader 60 ‘Clubbing’: The Nocturnal Lymph That Flows in the Urban Veins of Europe – Alessandro Testa 64 The Sources of ‘Underground’ in the Berlin House/Techno Scene Economy – Jan Michael Kühn 9 Hopeless Youth! Contents 68 No Bins for the Prissy: Dumpster Divers and Disgust – Aliine Lotman 71 Notes of a Roadsider – Hitchhiking in Eastern Europe – Jürgen Rendl 74 The Politics of Breakdancing – Simon Barker 78 Shifting Identities in Estonian Punk and Hip-hop – Ott Kagovere 84 Urban Ping-pong in Estonia – Risto Kozer 88 Escape to the Amazon – Ivo Tšetõrkin 91 The Age of Comfort Migrants – Gustav Kalm 96 Muutoksii. Second-generation Immigrants’ Movie Workshop in Helsinki – Vesa Peipinen and Panu Lehtovuori 101 Rural Emigration as a Collective Mood in the Interior of Spain – José Martínez Sánchez 104 Feeling Stuck But Eager to Accelerate: Tourism and ‘Cuban Time’ – Valerio Simoni 107 Temporal Marginality – Martin Demant Frederiksen 110 Love in the Time of Low Cost – Caterina Bonora 10 Hopeless Youth Contents 113 Youth and the Subjective Experience of Time – Steve M. J. Janssen Chapters Accelerated youth? 119 1. – Risks and Pleasures in the Youth Activist Scenes in Contemporary Russia. Elena Omelchenko and Anna Zhelnina 141 2. – Young People in Times of Individualisation: From Youth Cultures to Youth Scenes. Mirjana Ule 159 3. – Reassessing Young People’s Liminal Position in Late-modernity. Aurélie Mary 182 4. – Youth Age Groups or Individual Life Courses? – About Differences between Statistical and Youth Affairs Definitions. Ádám Nagy, Levente Székely and Márta Barbarics Apolitical youth? 205 5. – Kristen’s Struggle: Negative Politics, Marginalisation and Multiculture under Neoliberalism. Malcolm James 223 6. – Who Are You Calling Radical? Revisiting ‘Resistance’ in the London Asian Scene. Helen Kim 245 7. – America’s Heroes, Saints and Redeemers: Youth as a Labyrinthine Journey in Nicaragua. Marcos Farias Ferreira 11 Hopeless Youth! Subcultural youth? Contents 266 8. – Old-school Photo Booths and Retromodernity in Berlin. Francisco Martínez 292 9. – Dance and Die: Obsolescence and Embedded Aesthetics of Acceleration. Benjamin Noys 309 10. – Bassweight: Dubstep and the Transnational Space of Hip-Hop. Mike D’Errico 331 11. – Russian Punk in ‘The Biggest Village on Earth’. Ivan Gololobov Remediated youth? 349 12. – Late Modernity and Its Discontented. Bert van den Bergh 377 13. – “It's not just another symbol”: Constructing the Boy London Eagle in a Finnish Lifestyle Blog. Riitta Hänninen and Tommi Kotonen 403 14. – Beautiful Transgressions: Thinking the Flâneur in Late-modern Societies. Francisco Martínez Post Scriptum #Chilling 491 1. – Making of: the Challenges of Exhibition Production Around Town – Pille Runnel 508 2. – Architecture According to Children: Tree House World 526 3. – Urban Youth: Studying ’Hanging Out’ When Everything Is Mediated 12