Global Youth? ― Hybrid identities, plural worlds

This innovative collection of studies by international youth researchers, critically addresses questions of ‘global’ youth, incorporating material from regions as diverse as Sydney, Tehran, Dakar and Manila, and advancing our knowledge about young people around the globe. Exploring specific local youth cultures whilst mediating global mass media and consumption trends, this book traces subaltern ‘youth landscapes’ and tells subaltern ‘youth stories’ previously invisible in predominantly western youth cultural studies and theorizing. The chapters here serve as a refutation of the colonialist discourse of cultural globalization.

Showcasing previously unpublished youth research from outside the English-speaking world alongside the work of well-known researchers such as Huq and Holden, these accounts of youth cultural practices highlight much that is predictably different, but also a great deal of common ground. This book goes inside creative cultural formation of youth identities to critically examine the global in the local. Bringing together an internationally diverse group of researchers, who describe and analyze youth cultures throughout Europe, the Americas, Asia, Africa and Oceania, this volume presents the first comprehensive review of global youth cultures, practices and identities, and as such is a valuable read for students and researchers of youth studies, cultural studies and sociology.

Pam Nilan is Senior Lecturer in the School of Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of Newcastle, Australia. She is currently writing a book on Australian youth and is conducting research with youth in Indonesia and Fiji.

Carles Feixa is Professor of Anthropology at the University of Lleida, Spain. His recent books include Culturas Juveniles en Espana (Madrid, 2004) and Jovens na America Latina (Sao Paulo, 2004). He is Vice-President of ISA Research Committee 34 – Sociology of Youth.