Cultural Boundaries Essay

early days culture has been studied from several ideological perspectives on assumptions that they ar not isolated and untouched by the surrounding culture (Keyes, 2000). This intuitive feeling has lead researchers to assume that youth culture is not part of increase up, but a phenomenon that occurs as a precipitation of the social, political, cultural and ideological factors. There is not one monolithic youth culture that defines all puppyish people.Popular youth culture embraces a diversity of sub-cultures or tribes such as skaters, medicinegies, snobs, band geeks, Satanists, Jesus freaks, techno-goths, computer dweebs, blacks, Latinos and white trash. Groups distinguish themselves by dress, style, music, body modification practices, race, ethnicity, and language. (Hines, 1999) Thus a researcher, who intends to study the ethnic, racial, political, cultural, sociological or linguistic aspect of a subculture, often ends up in analysing one of the factors and tend to romanticise or over-politicise these aspects.Thorntons study on club cultures and Navas treatise on youth and consumerism are good examples in this genre. The debates on how best to conceptualise both the structural and cultural transitions of young people remains a central issue in the sociology of youth. In these debates cultural approaches have been criticised for neglecting the role of social years and status inequalities in lifestyle choices (Bennett 2002). The cultural nighttime lives of young people have provided fertile ground for social researchers.There have been explorations of the character and division of dance scenes (Thornton 1995), the relationship betwixt femininities, womens clubbing experiences and feminism (Pini 1997a, 1997b), clubbing experiences (Malbon 1999) and the relationship between drug custom and clubbing (Henderson 1993 merchandiser & Macdonald 1994 Forsyth 1997). What has not been studied so healthy is how people become clubbers, what practices this entails , what pattern of young people dress in this lifestyle, what resources are required to do so, whether this process is gendered as well as if and how this experience has impacted on their sense of identity.Earlier studies portrayed Rave culture as being a social arena where social divisions were put aside and anyone and everyone mixed together (Henderson 1993 Merchant & Macdonald 1994). Yet, more recent studies suggest that distinctions do operate between mainstream and hip club scenes (Thornton 1995), that nightlife provision exploits lively cleavages in the youth population, and segregates young adults into particular spaces and places (Hollands 2002, p. 153).Given this it seems important to unpack further the nature of boundaries the divisions between us and them the boundary work that we do and how boundaries are constituted in social interaction. Thornton asserts club cultures are sagaciousness cultures, but as she alike points out, practices of distinction do not just invo lve taste and cultural hierarchies are numerous (1995, p. 3). What other practices of distinction are involved in identification and specialization processes, both within and between club scenes?It seems unlikely that these processes and practices are wholly elective. Young peoples experiences of clubbing, their lifestyle choices, need to be contextualised and conceptualised in such a way that recognise that some young people are more able than others to engage in particular styles of life, and consumer and cultural activities, such as clubbing. Boundaries are about both the individual and the collective, notions not new to youth research.Willis (1978) suggested that congruous a flower child or a bike boy involved not only cultural knowledge, but also a process of developing gathering sensibilities, and these sensibilities could be used to identify and differientiate one group from another. The notion of becoming is a way of exploring both individual and group processes (Becker 1 991) how young people learn to use recreational drugs, learn particular practices, affiliate with a culture, lifestyle or social group and invest in additional forms of identification, as well as encounter cultural barriers that constrain participation and processes of becoming.Symbolic interactionist theories would suggest that notions of what and who you are, as well as what and who you are not, only become meaningful and square through interaction with others. When social anthropological and symbolic interactionist conceptualisations of boundaries are brought together they can help us understand how people come to form into collective groups, groups that construct shared meanings through interaction.Symbolic boundaries, group life or how people do things together (Becker 1986), are interactional resources that groups draw upon to create their receive boundaries. These notions offer a fruitful way to explore the relationship between the individual and the group, and the division s between us and them found in the empirical studies exploring the cultural night-lives of young people. Moreover, it may be that identifying as and becoming a clubber may only acquire meaning in relation to and in contrast to those who do not identify as or become clubbers.