Ageing in a spectacular 'youth culture': continuity, change and community amongst older goths

This article explores the continuing involvement in youth music and style cultures of older participants through examination of the case study of the goth scene. It does so in the context of a widespread neglect, until recently, of what happens to participants of 'youth cultures' as they move beyond adolescence and also of a growing consensus about the broadening of youth itself as a life course period. Drawing on recent work on older participants in other music and style related groupings, the article uses original qualitative research to examine the developing lives and identities of goths as they become older. Rather than regarding continuing participation as a simple extension of youth, the focus is on the ways participation accompanied and was reconciled with material, domestic and physical elements of developing adult lives. Through reference to the case study, I emphasize the ways the experience of ageing for long-term music and style culture participants can constitute a collective experience.     

Caregiving fathers and the negotiation of crossroads: Journeys of continuity and change

This article addresses the sustainability of extensive paternal involvement in caregiving by applying a temporal approach to understandings of the journeys of primary- and equal-carer fathers and their families. Drawing on a second phase of interviews with UK fathers first spoken to 5 years earlier, we explore continuities and changes in their roles, identities and outlooks as their caregiving journeys progressed and their children became older. Specifically, we explore how fathers and their families negotiated significant moments of change that had the potential to prompt reflection or reorientation, moments that we term caregiving crossroads. Through doing so, we highlight how, in spite of shifts in their arrangements and understandings, the embeddedness of fathers' caregiving routines, bonds and identities had apparently enabled their commitment to counter-normative roles to endure through such crossroads. We also outline, however, how gendered limitations to some aspects of the scope of their caregiving seemed also to persist as their journeys as fathers progressed.     

Targeted harassment,subcultural identity and the embrace of difference: a case study

This paper examines the significance of experiences and understandings of targeted harassment to the identities of youth subcultural participants, through case study research on goths. It does so against a context of considerable recent public discussion about the victimization of alternative subcultures and a surprising scarcity of academic research on the subject. The analysis presented indicates that, although individual direct experiences are diverse, the spectre of harassment can form an ever‐present accompaniment to subcultural life, even for those who have never been seriously targeted. As such, it forms part of what it is to be a subcultural participant and comprises significant common ground with other members. Drawing upon classic and more recent understandings of how subcultural groups respond to broader forms of outside hostility, we show how the shared experience of feeling targeted for harassment tied in with a broader subcultural discourse of being stigmatized by a perceived ‘normal’ society. The role of harassment as part of this, we argue, contributed to the strength with which subcultural identities were felt and to a positive embrace of otherness.     

Effects of Objective and Subjective Income Comparisons on Subjective Wellbeing

This paper aims to investigate the determinants of happiness and life satisfaction in Turkey in recent years. It uses regression analyses based on micro data from two nationally representative household surveys, namely the Turkish Life Satisfaction Survey and the World Values Survey for Turkey, in years 2007 and 2011. The wide variety of data collected by the two surveys enables a comprehensive analysis of the correlates of the outcome variable. Although some of the results are consistent both with the earlier ones in the literature and across the datasets used in this study, some others depend on the time period, the set of control variables and the sample used; thus casting doubt on the strength of the findings. To make a proper comparison and to isolate the differences generated by different samples, the analysis is restricted to the same set of control variables that are defined in the most similar manner. The variables whose estimates have been found to be similar are unemployment status, marital status, relative income, and gender. The differences are observed in the estimates of age, absolute income and education. The conclusion is that the question of what determines happiness is still a valid one that needs to be studied with more and better data. Recommendations are made for ways to improve data quality.     

‘All present and correct?’ Exclusionary inclusion within the English educational system

This paper critically analyses discourses of educational inclusion in England through the lens of Derridean deconstruction. Linking Derrida’s thesis on writing and speech to presence and absence, the paper contends that inclusion acts as a suppléance to previous policies of integration. The paper suggests that, for many teachers, inclusion is grounded upon the forced absence of children rather than upon any notions of equality or justice.     

Spectacular Youth Cultures and Ageing: Beyond Refusing to Grow Up

For decades, research on the subject of music and style subcultures has presented participation in such groups as a temporary manifestation of adolescence. More recently, sociologists have begun to examine the lives and identities of those who remain involved in so‐called ‘youth’ subcultures beyond their teens and early twenties. This article examines the ways such work has begun to illuminate the role of enduring subcultural identities as part of the developing lives of older participants. Such work, I suggest, rejects simplistic understandings of older participation as a refusal to grow up in favour of a detailed focus on the relationships between continuing participation and other aspects of developing adult life, including career, family and the ageing body. Identifying core themes and debates while identifying areas for further work, I argue that this developing field of research addresses one of the primary criticisms of youth cultural research in the past, which is that such research has tended to examine leisure related affiliations in a fixed period of time and in isolation from the rest of participants’ lives.     

Youth cultures and the rest of life: subcultures,post-subcultures and beyond

Recent debate on the conceptualisation of youth cultures has been characterised as an irreconcilable stalemate between materialist defenders of a version of subcultural theory derived from the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS) and post-subcultural theorists who favour more individualised understandings. This article suggests that, beneath this facade lies a more complex and reconcilable debate and that it may be time to move beyond the polarising presence of the CCCS as primary reference point for the discussion. Turning to substance, I go on to examine how enduring areas of disagreement within the debate can be resolved, establishing ways forward with respect to the interplay between spectacular groupings and individual pathways and the contextualisation of youth cultures, including with respect to material and structural factors. I advocate greater emphasis on the study of collective youth cultures as part of broader biographies as a way forward that can draw together these substantive strands and bring together insight from across the subcultures/post-subcultures debate.