Peripheral Youth: Relations of identity and power in global/ local context

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 crossdisciplinary,
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.