Beyond White Pride: Identity,Meaning and Contradiction in the Canadian Skinhead Subculture*

Partant de l'approche culturelle de l'analyse des sous-cultures observées chez les jeunes, cette enquête sur le terrain menée dans une ville de l'Ouest canadien examine les significations que nos sujets accordent à leur appartenance à un sous-groupe de skinheads qui se veut apolitique. Notre étude remet en cause une certaine image que l'on se fait du mouvement skinhead. En dépit des idées reçues qui véhiculent une apparente homogénéité, notre recherche montre que la sous-culture skinhead est à la fois complexe et multidimensionnelle et qu'elle offre à ses membres un choix de modèles de comportements et d'orientations idéologiques, même s'ils sont souvent contradictoires. Notre analyse suggèe aussi que, loin d'être profondément contestataires ou révolutionnaires, les groupes de skinheads peuvent constituer un instrument de reproduction des rapports sociaux, en particulier les rapports entre les sexes, les groupes raciaux et les ethnies. Grounded in a cultural studies approach to youth subcultures and based on participant observation in a Western Canadian city, this study examines the meanings associated with membership for participants in a self-described “non-political” branch of the skinhead subculture. Despite popular images that imply homogeneity, the study shows that the skinhead subculture is both complex and multi-dimensional and that it accommodates, albeit in often contradictory ways, a range of behavioural and ideological opportunities for its members. The study also suggests that, far from being resistant or transformative in any significant way, skinhead groups may represent a vehicle for social reproduction, specifically with respect to gender, race and ethnicity.     

Ctrl+ALT-RIGHT: reinterpreting our knowledge of white supremacy groups through the lens of street gangs

For the last 30 years, gang scholars have explicitly disregarded white youth who are active in groups with overt or implicit ties to neo-Nazi/skinhead or white power ideologies from street gang research. This article argues that this decision to keep these two groups separate stems from a misinterpretation of the realities of these groups and this decision has had a long-standing impact on how researchers, law enforcement and policymakers understand and interact with youth active in these groups. The coining of the term ‘Alt-Right,’ and the re-emergence of white power youth in the international dialogue, underscores how the lack of systematic research severely limits our knowledge about youth involved in gangs with white power leanings. Based on these concerns, this article challenges the current understanding of both skinheads and their troublesome youth groups/gangs. By orienting the limited research on skinhead gangs within key street gang domains, this article draws attention to disconnects in the literature that have influenced how researchers approach the study of skinhead youth. This study’s conclusions support the purposeful inclusion of skinhead youth in future street gang research.     

大学生网络行为的亚文化特征分析

大学生网络行为具有明显的亚文化特征,具体表现为简约、形象、多样和随意的网络语言,从表面看是应对网络交流的技术性、娱乐化反应,实际上蕴含着一种对主流文化的挑战和逃避,对群体认同的追求和构建。大学生喜欢“宅”在网络、热衷“恶搞”经典、沉溺网络游戏,这既是回避主流社会规训、压力和责任的“仪式化解决”方式,也隐含着对新意义的探索和诠释。随着大学生对网络的日渐依赖,已然形成网络亚文化信息圈、交际圈、娱乐圈、舆论圈相互叠加的亚文化镜像。     

Migration, place and class: youth in a rural area

The claims that locality, kinship, and social class are no longer the basis of ties that bind and of limited significance for identity in late modernity, remain seductive, despite their critics. Those who remain rooted are then presented as inhabitants of traditional backwaters, outside the mainstream of social change. This article presents young people's reasons for leaving or remaining in a rural area of Britain, the Scottish Borders. Young people's views about migration and attachment demonstrate a contradictory and more complex pattern than that of detached late–modern migrants and traditional backwater stay–at–homes. These stereotypes have some resonance in local culture, for example in disdain for rootless incomers lacking real sympathy with 'the community' and in the common accusation of the parochial narrow mindedness of locals who have never been elsewhere. However, such stereotypes emerge from complex social class antagonisms and cross–cutting ties to locality. Many young people's ties contradict the classifications these stereotypes imply. There are young out–migrants who are the children of 'rootless' in–migrants, but also, nevertheless, have lasting attachments to the locality of their childhood. Then there are young 'stayers' who are the children of 'born and bred' locals but yet feel serious disaffection from their locality. These 'attached migrants' and 'detached stayers' may not represent settled orientations to their locality of childhood, but they, nevertheless, contradict both certain local stereotypes and Baumanesque 'late modernist' sociological theorising.     

Barbie Zelizer,Ed., Visual Culture and the Holocaust/Matthew Baigell and Milly Heyd,Eds., Complex Identities: Jewish Consciousness and Modern Art

Mass media and the culture it carries have been identified as a key site of conflict in the so-called culture wars, pitting evangelical Christians against mainstream American society. Paradoxically, Evangelicals historically have appropriated the spectrum of forms of popular culture in America and secular commercial practices for evangelizing vehicles and, at the same time, contributed an evangelical voice to that culture. The author argues that Evangelicals' use of media has moved into a new level of sophistication enabling effective entry into the national discourse, partly through dramatic growth of contemporary Christian music. Given this phenomenon, the author examines issues of identity and social forces driving the subculture; he also explores potential influences or effects on the broader secular culture. Using a range of cultural theory, the author argues that the movement toward religious messages in the form of popular music enables the subculture of evangelical Christians to resist against a dominant secular society by taking possession of a cultural form and redefining it as their own, empowering them to effect an influential voice in the cultural discourse of American society.     

抵抗与收编：电视节目低俗化对青少年亚文化影响

时下的电视节目日益被低俗化浪潮所淹没,社会主流文化往往直接干涉青少年媒介接触或担忧负面影响,却较少关注青少年群体理解的低俗化。通过采取焦点小组访谈法,从青少年亚文化角度解读电视节目低俗化,重点探究青少年媒介接触亚文化及电视节目低俗化的影响,发现在初级影响、次级影响、深层影响三个层次的基础上就亚文化而言,两者之间存在着包括收编与妥协的双向作用。     

Should We Stay or Should We Go? Local and National Factionalism in the National Organization for Women

While the National Organization for Women (NOW) has endured over time, it has faced significant internal factionalism. In this article, I ask why some of these factions resulted in schisms, while other factions persisted in NOW over time. This is a critical question for understanding how organizational location and factional collective identities combine to produce different outcomes when internal conflict breaks out. My analysis of interview, archival, and secondary data indicates that organizational location influences factions’ independent collective identities, shaping what they want and their perceptions of opportunities to change their organization. Compared to national level factions, local factions also lack the ability to use NOW’s hierarchical structure to their advantage in their effort to stay. This sheds lights on the distinct patterns of factionalism and schism in formalized groups.     

探讨美国华裔文学中“香蕉人”的文化认同

＂香蕉人＂即华人移民后裔由于受到美国主流文化的影响,他们在不觉中放弃了中国传统文化。但是从小生长在华人父母的文化中间,他们对中国传统文化的继承是不可避免的。然而华人移民后裔属于一个极为特殊的群体,他们既不被中国文化也不为主流文化所接受,只有在两种文化中徘徊,寻求认同。     

Exploring Subcultural Trajectories: Racist Skinhead Disengagement,Desistance, and Countercultural Value Persistence

ABSTRACT

This study analyzes the life histories and subcultural trajectories of people who have at one time but no longer identify as racist skinheads. We find that, on the one hand, people are far more malleable with their subcultural identities than is commonly understood by law enforcement and researchers concerned with criminal desistance, and on the other hand, this does not necessitate a total abdication of stable subcultural identities and values as some recent post-subculture scholars have asserted. Accordingly, we conceptualize the phenomena of subcultural trajectories and discuss the implications of these findings for future scholarship on subcultural participation and desistance as well as for potential public policies to successfully fight racism.     

Non-Professionals in the Human Services,Edited by Charles Grosser,William E. Henry,and James G. Kelly. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass,Inc. Publishers, 1969.288 Pages, $8.50 Hardbound

As social work deals with human deprivation that is often a direct result of racism, social work educators need to be aware that Black students may approach the field with different insights and objectives than white students. Without understanding and appreciation for Black culture, social work educators may perpetuate racist policies and stereotypes of Blacks as clients. University and departmental policies that violate a student's right to grow and to assert a positive Black identity must be challenged. Social work educators should demonstrate a commitment to the development of future Black professionals.     

Double‐edged swords? Collective identity and solidarity in the environment movement1

Perhaps by virtue of its theoretical slipperiness, collective identity is often hailed as an important feature of social movements for the role it plays in unifying activists and organizations, and so helping them to develop shared concerns and engage in collective action. However, this paper argues that collective identity is the result of group rather than movement level processes, and although it can unite activists within a single movement organization, it is not always beneficial for the broader social movement. Although movements consist of networks of activists and organizations that have a broad shared concern, differing collective identities within the movement can actually be quite divisive. Based on case studies of three organizations in the environmental movement, this paper shows that activists who are most committed to an organization with an encompassing collective identity develop a strong sense of solidarity with other activists similarly committed to that organization. The resultant solidarity leads to the construction of a 'we-them' dichotomy between organizations within the same movement, increasing the chances of hostility between organizations and factions within the movement.     

新媒体与青年亚文化的变迁

青年亚文化是通过风格化和另类的符号对主导文化或支配文化进行挑战从而建立的附属性文化方式．体现了青年人特有的反抗、冲突、另类以及身份认同的困惑。新媒体是相对传统媒体而言。在新技术支撑下出现的具有即时性、跨文化等特点,具有匿名交流、张扬个性等虚拟空间特征的媒体形态。新媒体给青年亚文化带来了多元化变迁。在新媒体的语境下,“粉丝团”、“恶搞《新贵妃醉酒》MV”、“火星文”等实例展现了新媒体与青年亚文化变迁之间的关系。     

Social Psychological Processes that Facilitate Sexual Assault within the Fraternity Party Subculture

Rape on the college campus has gained increasing amounts of attention in higher education, mainstream news, and public policy. The prevalence rates of rape are especially high among students who frequent campus parties, such as those hosted by fraternities. Researchers have described this increased risk by focusing on individual attitudes and behaviors of fraternity members or on the organizational norms and practices within the fraternity party subculture. To incorporate these studies into a single theoretical framework, this essay uses a social psychological approach to connect individual‐level attitudes, (sub)culture, and behavior. I describe and apply identity theory and affect control theory, two structural symbolic interactionist theories, to explain why certain men are drawn to high‐risk fraternities and how membership reinforces hostility toward and abuse of women. In doing so, I suggest several avenues for future research that would increase social psychological understanding of the heightened prevalence of sexual victimization within the fraternity party subculture.     

Commonality and Difference in the Movement: an 'Association of Blind Asians' in Leeds

Qualitative research with a group of blind Asian people in Leeds indicated that issues of 'difference' were perceived as more important in mobilising disabled people at a local level than the issues of 'commonality' which characterise the international disability movement. Respondents identified more strongly with their experience of specific impairment and specific cultural identity than with their common experience of disablement. It is argued that such issues are common to other social movements and that the disability movement can learn much from the histories of Black people's movements and the women's movement. In building a successful movement at a local, national and international level, disability alliances will need to challenge racist stereotypes about Black disabled people and their families. They will need to support Black-led groups which organise separately while, at the same time, creating more enabling environments for Black people to participate more fully.     

阿Q精神对“屌丝”青年的社会引力

"屌丝文化"反映出社会变革转型期的时代特征和精神气质,透视、表征了社会心理结构的变迁。"屌丝"称谓放大为自我审视的精神符码,其传播具有庶民叙事的特征,网络亚文化由下而上的"话语革命"方式表达了"话语权"的获取与崛起。"屌丝文化"是自嘲中的解构与身份认同中的建构,它意味着青年草根阶层或弱势群体更多地获得了诠释自己生活的角度与权利。屌丝文化所反映的集体焦虑,折射了社会内在的深层次问题,其代表的自嘲韵味是解构文化中的快感和胜利,这和阿Q精神有着内在传承性,网上的"愤青"往往是现实生活中的"屌丝"。"虐骂"和"求虐"心理是屌丝文化集体喷射的快感。     

From the Margins to the Center

Abstract

How can research data about gender role strain in gay fathers improve clinical work with all men? This article describes a qualitative research study of 25 primarily White, middle to upper middle class gay fathers who had children in the context of a heterosexual marriage, and later established a gay identity. The fathers were interviewed using a semi-structured questionnaire in a focus group format. The data were analyzed using a grounded theory methodology. The narrative data chronicles the men's efforts to integrate their fathering identity and their gay identity. The findings are discussed using the theoretical framework of gender role strain. The authors propose that research on gay fathers has the potential both to challenge stereotypes about gay men and also to expand the fathering role for all men. The authors use clinical examples to illustrate how research findings from minority groups can expand knowledge about mainstream populations.     

The End of Football and Fiesta? Social Insurrection and National Identity in Twenty-First-Century Brazil

ABSTRACT

Carnaval and futebol (football) have both been central to the construction of Brazil in the imagination of global audiences. This includes contributing to stereotypes of Brazil as a country of peaceful, festive, and sensualized people, even though historically Brazilian Carnaval and football have always been sites of social contestation and popular participation in the construction of collective identity. In recent years, Brazil has burst onto the global stage as a key player due to its economic rise, its more proactive international diplomacy, and its venture as the host of major global sport events. Protest and political violence have erupted on the streets of Brazil in a manner quite at odds with the circulating reports on the ‘success story' of Brazil. A combination of the country's increasing global prominence and developments in media and communication technologies of the global era means that global and local audiences have access to more detailed, nuanced, and grounded information about Brazil than has ever been possible before. This moment of intensified visibility has brought Brazil's imagined identity (both within Brazil and within the global imaginary) to a turning point; one where national symbols such as Carnaval and football are declining in relevance. In this article we argue that due to this combination of forces, Carnaval and football, at least in their manufactured forms that are visible to global audiences, no longer have the popular potency within Brazil that they once did, but have rather become what Bakhtin would call ‘mere spectacles’. We consider Carnaval and football within historical and contemporary context drawing upon a variety of sources, including secondary literature and mainstream and alternative media reports.     

Canadian Male Street Skinheads: Street Gang or Street Terrorists?

Des recherches menées sur le comportement violent et la conception politique de skinheads canadiens sans domicile fixe ont démontré que ces derniers sont issus de families où règnent la violence et l'oppression. Ces jeunes hommes ont done tendance à reproduire un comportement dont la violence est exacerbée par la vie scolaire, par le fait d'être sans logis et par l'influence néfaste du groupe de la rue qui prône un comportement agressif. La conception politique incohérente des skinheads puise dans la violence: la structure précaire du groupe et l'oppression qu'ont subies les jeunes sont d'autres facteurs qui viennent entraver la volonté de concevoir une activité politique à long terme.
Research examined the violent behaviour and the political consciousness of Canadian male street skinheads. The results reveal that skinheads are drawn from homes characterized by extreme violence and oppression. These experiences leave these youths vulnerable to violent behaviour. These tendencies are exacerbated by their school experiences, their homelessness, and the group and street norms that support and promote aggressive behaviour. The political consciousness of skinheads is rooted in extreme violence and lacks coherence: this, combined with the structure of the groups and their histories of oppression, serves to inhibit long-term organized political activity.     

It Is Not Old‐Fashioned,It Is Vintage,Vintage Fashion and The Complexities of 21st Century Consumption Practices

This article reviews consumption practices concerning vintage, a fashion style based on used or retro‐style garments. Existing studies connect vintage with authenticity, nostalgia and identity. We explore how the vintage style deploys and comments on consumer culture, bypassing producers by wearing old garments to communicate ‘authentic’ identities. We argue that existing theories on consumption, fashion and subculture cannot fully explain vintage practices. Bypassing the dichotomies and one‐dimensional explanations of these theories, we show that vintage, with its ambivalent relation to both subcultural distinction practices and mainstream consumer culture, serves as a prism through which to examine and understand the complexities and subtleties of 21st century consumption practices.