- Title
- Challenging the structure/agency binary: youthful culture, labour and embodiments
- Creator
- Threadgold, Steve; Farrugia, David; Coffey, Julia
- Relation
- Structure and Agency in Young People's Lives: Theory, Methods and Agendas p. 15-29
- Publisher Link
- http://dx.doi.org/10.4324/9780429324314-3
- Publisher
- Routledge
- Resource Type
- book chapter
- Date
- 2021
- Description
- In this chapter, the authors propose that relaying and rehashing the structure/agency dichotomy is limiting theoretical developments in youth studies, as it is too simplistic to capture the relationships between young people’s everyday lives and their immersion in digital communication platforms, education systems, labour markets, and other social arrangements. They take these theoretical advancements further by proposing youthful labour, youthful embodiments and youthful culture as concepts to interrogate the myriad interconnected dimensions informing young people’s lives, and problematise the very notions of structure and agency as separate analytical tools. They draw upon their research conducted in 2017 that investigated young people’s labouring practices in ‘hip’ inner-North Melbourne bars. Immaterial or affective labour describes forms of work in which the key products of labour are ‘immaterial’: cultural symbols, social interactions, relationships, affects or embodied sensations. In youthful culture, biographical strategies are produced through the incremental impact of immaterial labour on young people’s relationship to ‘youthful’ cultural practices.
- Subject
- structure/agency dichotomy; youth studies; digital communication platforms; education systems; labour markets
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/1446338
- Identifier
- uon:42837
- Identifier
- ISBN:9780367341770
- Language
- eng
- Hits: 805
- Visitors: 777
- Downloads: 0
| Thumbnail | File | Description | Size | Format |
|---|