class 7 youth agency

These readings describe distinct youth cultures, in varied ways intermeshed with the entertainment industries.  In mapping the YDEI matrix, a key question is that of youth agency:  how do youth express innate longings for freedom, autonomy, equality, respect, creativity, play, and community?  Can such fundamental human desires  be considered elements of democracy as everyday practices?   

entertainment industry mappingi by JM, Spring2010

Reading questions – WRITTEN RESPONSES REQUIRED — 1-2 pages.  Post to rolling Google doc with date, assignment title; send link.   Single-spaced & typed in Times New Roman or Arial (size 12 font), 1-inch margins.  Insert horizontal line between assignments.  Please proofread.

  1. Summarize each reading:

  • Start with a strong opening sentence or two.
  • State several key points/takeaways.
  • This could include something you find particularly interesting and/or important.
  • You might also add any thoughts or comments on the material.

  1. What do these readings say about youth agency?  Some prompts:

  • For each youth cohort, what power structures are they negotiating?
  • What’s the role of peer culture, of sociability?
  • How are impulses for creative expression, voice, and peer connection displayed?
  • How do these expressive practices generate youth agency (power)?
  • In what ways, if any, do these practices express “resistance” to authority?
  • How do these different cohort experiences compare? 
  • What’s the role of the entertainment industries?

Readings

  1. Tricia Rose.  “A Style Nobody Can Deal With:  Politics, Style & the Postindustrial City” in Hip Hop. Microphone Friends:  Youth Music & Youth Culture, (1994) , pp. 71-88.
  2. T Kira Madden.  Chapters “Cry Baby” and “Can I Pet Your Back” in Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girls (2019), PDF pages 1-13.   
  3. Danah Boyd.  “Why Youth (Heart) Social Network Sites: The Role of Networked Publics in Teenage Social Life.” MacArthur Foundation Series on Digital Learning – Youth, Identity, and Digital Media Volume (ed. David Buckingham). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press (2007), pp. 18-23. (at subheading “But why there?”)