Understanding Street Culture: From criminal lifestyles to urban cool in the global ghetto
This talk reflects on the role of ‘street culture ‘, the being, behaviours and beliefs of the most excluded of the urban poor in the cultivation of both criminal lifestyles and urban expressivity across the globe. Recognizing that the ‘defiant stance’ of the street criminal echoes many of the traits long considered as ‘cool’ within the consumer culture, the talk explores the complicated ways in which the urban poor are simultaneously included in and excluded from socio-economic life.
Deploying analyses at the macro, meso and micro levels, the talk considers the ways in which globalization and neoliberalism; expressive practices and cultural meanings; as well as affective and emotional responses, characterise both the behaviour of street cultural practitioners and how it is perceived. Using the theoretical device of the street-cultural spectrum, the talk explains how street culture can be a form of cultivated, prosthetic cool for the included and a means of survival for the most socio-economically excluded. In a world of ever-widening inequality, global integration and media saturation, it becomes important to understand why hanging around can become criminalized in some contexts whereas drug-dealing becomes valorised in others, whilst at the same time images of urban criminality are used to sell everything from pop music to hamburgers.
Schreibe einen Kommentar