Christine Griffin

Young people’s constructions of self: notes on the use and analysis of the photo-elicitation method

The article examines the use of photo‐elicitation methods in an ESRC‐funded study of young consumers. Participants were asked to take photographs of consumer items that were significant to them. These were subsequently used in recorded interviews as a trigger to elicit the discussion of the relationship between consumer goods and identity. The analysis focuses on how the features of visual representation influence the versions of identity that are presented. We show how participants both accommodate to and exploit aspects of the photographic image in creating their accounts. This is achieved by using the visual image to bolster identity claims and employing the verbal accounts to edit and contextualise the identity implications of the visual image. We suggest that the photo interview offers participants an opportunity to show rather than ‘tell’ aspects of their identity that might have otherwise remained hidden. It may therefore be a useful tool for researching contentious or problematic identity positions.

`Wham Bam, am I a Man?': Unemployed Men Talk about Masculinities

In contemporary society, being powerful is typically associated with, among other things, being male, middle class and employed. The cultural ascendancy of these characteristics is supported by specific structural and discursive patterns. However, there are a number of ways in which these cultural yardsticks can be challenged. In this paper we summarize the discursive patterns constructed by a group of working-class men experiencing long-term unemployment in a region of the English West Midlands. These men talked about a conflict between discourses concerning domestic provision and public consumption, leading to a sense of disempowerment and emasculation. Despite the potential challenge posed by long-term unemployment to traditional versions of masculinity, these mens accounts retained their positions within hegemonic discourses of masculinity. Finally, we examine the political implications of such discursive patterns.

Inhabiting the contradictions: Hypersexual femininity and the culture of intoxication among young women in the UK

This paper contributes to debates on post-feminism and the constitution of contemporary femininity via an exploration of young women’s alcohol consumption and their involvement in normative drinking cultures. We view femininity as a profoundly contradictory and dilemmatic space which appears almost impossible for girls or young women to inhabit. The juxtaposition of hyper-sexual femininity and the culture of intoxication produces a particularly difficult set of dilemmas for young women. They are exhorted to be sassy and independent – but not feminist; to be ‘up for it’ and to drink and get drunk alongside young men – but not to ‘drink like men’. They are also called on to look and act as agentically sexy within a pornified night-time economy, but to distance themselves from the troubling figure of the ‘drunken slut’. Referring to recent research on young women’s alcohol consumption and our own study on young adults’ involvement in the culture of intoxication in the UK, we consider the ways in which young women manage to inhabit this terrain, and the implications for contemporary feminism and safer drinking initiatives.

Social marketing, individual responsibility and the “culture of intoxication”

Purpose – Social marketing initiatives designed to address the UKs culture of unhealthy levels of drinking among young adults have achieved inconclusive results to date. The paper aims to investigate the gap between young peoples perceptions of alcohol consumption and those of government agencies who seek to influence their behaviour set within a contextualist framework.Design/methodology/approach – The authors present empirical evidence from a major study that suggests that the emphasis of recent campaigns on individual responsibility may be unlikely to resonate with young drinkers. The research included a meaning‐based and visual rhetoric analysis of 261 ads shown on TV, in magazines, on billboards and on the internet between 2005 and 2006. This was followed by 16 informal group discussions with 89 young adults in three locations.Findings – The research identified the importance of the social context of young peoples drinking. The research reveals how a moral position has been culturally constructed ...

Youth drinking cultures, social networking and alcohol marketing: implications for public health

Alcohol consumption and heavy drinking in young adults have been key concerns for public health. Alcohol marketing is an important factor in contributing to negative outcomes. The rapid growth in the use of new social networking technologies raises new issues regarding alcohol marketing, as well as potential impacts on alcohol cultures more generally. Young people, for example, routinely tell and re-tell drinking stories online, share images depicting drinking, and are exposed to often intensive and novel forms of alcohol marketing. In this paper, we critically review the research literature on (a) social networking technologies and alcohol marketing and (b) online alcohol content on social networks, and then consider implications for public health knowledge and research. We conclude that social networking systems are positive and pleasurable for young people, but are likely to contribute to pro-alcohol environments and encourage drinking. However, currently research is preliminary and descriptive, and we need innovative methods and detailed in-depth studies to gain greater understanding of young people’s mediated drinking cultures and commercial alcohol promotion.

Style failure: Consumption, identity and social exclusion

Recent studies of youth culture suggest that consumption is central to the construction of adolescent identities. Many of these studies have focused on the links between consumption, style and identity, and have concluded that style is a crucial means of sustaining and defining group boundaries. Drawing on a series of group interviews with young people from an ESRC-funded study of young consumers, we focus here on the causes and consequences of being seen as a ‘style failure’. We argue that the link between styles and branded and designer goods makes the maintenance of a style identity economically costly. However, there are also social costs associated with failing to maintain such an identity. We examine the consequences of such ‘style failure’ for young people in relation to issues of social exclusion and status loss.

Children's use of brand symbolism: A consumer culture theory approach

Purpose – The paper seeks to offer a critique of the Piagetian developmental cognitive psychology model which dominates research into children and brand symbolism, and to propose consumer culture theory as an alternative approach. The paper also aims to present the design and interpretation of an empirical study into the roles brands play in the everyday lives of junior school children, which demonstrates the richness of this alternative framework.Design/methodology/approach – The key literature on children and brand symbolism is reviewed and the main concepts from consumer culture theory are introduced. A two‐stage qualitative study involving 148 children aged 7‐11 is designed using group discussions and a novel cork‐board sorting exercise. Findings from group discussions with 56 children in stage 2 of the study are analysed from a consumer culture theory perspective.Findings – The analysis focuses on two aspects of the ways in which children use brand symbols in their everyday lives: their fluid interpr...

The trouble with class: researching youth, class and culture beyond the ‘Birmingham School’

This paper revisits the work on youth cultures and subcultures that emerged from Birminghams Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (hereafter CCCS) during the 1970s. I engage with a number of recent critiques of the ‘youth sub/cultures project’, including Thorntons influential work on rave and club cultures and its troubled engagement with class. I argue that the focus of the youth sub/cultures project on mediated cultural practices through which young people constitute themselves and their (gendered, classed and racialised) positions remains of value, especially the emphasis on a ‘symptomatic reading’ that locates these processes in a ‘conjunctural analysis’. I end by exploring the legacy of this project for understanding youth, class and culture in contemporary late modern society.

Parents' Constructions of the ‘Problem’ during Assessment and Diagnosis of their Child for an Autistic Spectrum Disorder

The majority of studies on the effects of a diagnosis of learning disability in the family have employed traditional ‘loss’ and ‘stress reaction’ paradigms. In contrast to this approach, the current analysis employed a form of discourse analysis to explore the ways in which parents represented the ‘problem’ during the process of assessment of their child for an autistic spectrum disorder. The analysis suggested that parents employed three main discourses in their talk about the ‘problem’, which were termed the discourse of normal development, the medical discourse and the discourse of disability. The ways in which these discourses were used in constructing the ‘problem’, their relationship to each other and the discursive work underlying the diagnosis are discussed. Although this study focused on the specific case of autism, it is suggested that the findings could inform thinking around the complex ways in which medical diagnosis is constructed by families and extend our understanding of this important aspect of health care practice.

Troubled Teens: Managing Disorders of Transition and Consumption

This article focuses on the representation of youth as a key moment of transition in contemporary western societies, set between the dependent state of childhood and the supposed maturity and independence of adult status. Young people are viewed as gendered, racialized and sexualized beings who also occupy specific class locations, and are assumed to move through crucial points of transition as they leave full-time education and enter the job market, as well as the (hetero)sexual and marriage marketplaces. The article examines some of the main discursive configurations and treatment regimes through which ‘troubled teens’ are constructed and managed, especially in relation to notions about disordered patterns of consumption and transition. The paper considers the moment of the ‘discovery’ of adolescence in the late nineteenth century, going on to examine young womens particular relationships to discourses around consumption in the contemporary British youth research literature, and to debates about ‘disrupted transitions’ and citizenship in the 1990s. The article ends with a brief examination of one approach to the ‘problem of troubled teens’ in the USA: Specialty Schools that offer a combination of educational, therapeutic and correctional regimes aimed at young people who have been identified in relation to various disorders of transition and consumption.