XIX ISA World Congress of Sociology (July 15-21, 2018)

617

Social Movements and Youth Culture

RC34 Sociology of Youth (host committee)

Language: English

Since the 1990s youth culture has been portrayed as disconnected from ideology and politics, and scholars have described youth cultural scenes, above all, as flexible, fun oriented, short-lived, non-political, and non-rebellious. Some have soon criticized the strong focus on music and style with some emphasizing the implicit political agency of youth cultural activities and others pointing out that young people have to be considered the main actors of social protest around the world. At least since the late nineties when young people formed large protests against the economic and financial global system (Seattle 1999 WTO; Genova 2001 G8 summit) we have to consider a revival of political youth culture. This concerns explicit political protests in which political and economic themes were discussed (e.g. the Spanish 15-M movement), youth riots (e.g. in England 2011 and the French banlieues 2005) carried out by young people who were not able to argue their protest in an intellectual manner as well as movements in between those two forms (such as the young people engaged in the Arab revolutions in 2011). On both sides of the Mediterranean and in the protests all over the world the rebelling young people have used youth cultural structures and elements. In this session we want to discuss the return of politics in youth culture, investigate the role of youth culture for youth movements and thereby consider also conservative movements from the political right (such as the German Identitären) which use forms of protests traditionally deployed by left-wing protesters.