Youth Micro-Groups Between Offline and Online: Fulfilment Of Neo-Tribal Metaphor? CANCELLED

The paper proposes a photographic field research (offline and online) about some youth «micro-groups»: traceurs, emopunks, a crew of street artists and dancehall queens. In the contribution I make some considerations about the research technique, I give a brief description of each group, using the photographs and an online inquiry on web pages, myspace, etc. of the considered subjects. Some items allow to articulate a discourse on how the components of these groups realize the characteristics of participatory cultures (Jenkis): young people - thanks to the «forms of individual mass-production» and the «structures for disintermediation and distribution of contents», both allowed by CMC (Castells) - realize practices of «media belonging», «media expressiveness», «problem solving» and «flow sharing». The theoretical contribution considers the link between these groups and the Maffesoli’s theory; can they be considered as realizations of the neotribal metaphor developed for «a contemporary paradox» or «the constant “go and come back process” established between the increasing massification and the development of micro-groups, called “tribes”»? Micro-groups are like «many punctuation marks of the show of contemporary megalopolis». These are part of a discourse that interprets the social bond as tribal, which is expressed in a special way as a «succession of ambiances, feelings, emotions». The visual techniques show that: each micro-group has a privileged place of meeting, both online and offline, where the body has a particular role in terms of physical competition and aesthetics. The “furmit – gegeneinander” is important, instead of «having a goal to be achieved, an economic, political, and social project to be realized» (Maffesoli).

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