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Living for the weekend

Youth identities in northeast England

University of York, UK, sw514{at}york.ac.uk

Steve Hall

University of Northumbria, UK, steve.hall{at}unn.ac.uk

Consumption and consumerism are now accepted as key contexts for the construction of youth identities in de-industrialized Britain. This article uses empirical evidence from interviews with young people to suggest that claims of `new community' are overstated, traditional forms of friendship are receding, and increasingly atomized and instrumental youth identities are now being culturally constituted and reproduced by the pressures and anxieties created by enforced adaptation to consumer capitalism. Analysis of the data opens up the possibility of a critical rather than a celebratory exploration of the wider theoretical implications of this process.

Key Words: individualization • identity • instrumentalism • consumerism • friendship • youth

Ethnography, Vol. 10, No. 1, 91-113 (2009)
DOI: 10.1177/1466138108099588


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