Malcolm James

Nihilism and urban multiculture in outer East London

This paper discusses nihilism as it relates to contemporary urban multiculture in outer East London. It addresses how contemporary discourses on, and performances of, nihilism signal shifts in the constitution of urban multiculture. Attention is paid to acts of anti-sociability (and sociability) for what they reveal about contemporary urban rearrangement, and in particular the re-formation of urban multiculture in a moment defined by globalization, virtual communication, ethnic diversity and neoliberal marginalization. Through addressing discourses on, and performances of, nihilism the overall argument of the paper is for a renewal of the terms on which we understand and engage with urban multiculture, and for an appreciation of how relations between class, race and culture have shifted since key texts on the subject were published.

Reconstituting Race in Youth Studies

‘Hamid’, a young British-Somali living in Manchester, explains how he routinely negotiates his identity. At work, he passes as Caribbean rather than Somali because he is black and walks with the so-called ‘Moss Side limp’. This assumption is made based on where he lives and how he acts but, in spite of the fact that he has a Muslim name. Indeed, his passing is so successful that when fasting during Ramadan, people think he is joking. He recognises an advantage to being associated with a Caribbean identity these days because, ‘[Racism is] more of a religious thing [now]. So, the emphasis has been taken away from black people onto Asians—from one brown to a lighter brown. People are not so interested in the gangbangers, they’re looking for more religious terrorists, so that kind of helps you out.’ In contrast, Hamid describes himself as classless and raceless but conscious of various ‘codes’ that he has picked up from living in different parts of Manchester and mixing with people from different racial, class and religious backgrounds. He explains how he has to keep these ‘lives’ separate in order to maintain an effective blurring. In order to pass effectively in each space, he must change the way in which he interacts with it by meeting some in certain spaces but not others. ‘When in Rome, do as the Romans’, he jokes.1

Diaspora as an Ethnographic Method Decolonial Reflections on Researching Urban Multi-culture in Outer East London

This article reflects on diaspora as an ethnographic method. Grounded in a decolonial critique of colonial methodologies (including an evaluation of transnational scholarship), it discusses how diaspora provides intellectual and practical tools for ethnography, tools grounded in the appreciation for the relational, dialogical and poetic qualities of social and cultural life and invested in decolonial approaches to knowledge and power. This article is not another call for a one-size-fits-all approach to ethnographic methods, but instead reflects on the knots of ethnographic enquiry around three outer East London youth clubs, between 2008 and 2012. In doing so, it highlights a number of debates pertinent to this special issue: how to think and do ethnography with young people in a changing migratory and racialized landscape; how to engage transformations in youth culture; and how to address digital technologies.

Negative politics: The conformity, struggles and radical possibilities of youth culture in outer East London

Drawing on an ethnography study, this article addresses young people’s contemporary politics in outer East London. Through an exploration of online music videos and one girl’s story, it engages with, and questions, prevailing academic discourses on the decline of youth politics. Foregrounding a conjunctural methodology, it discusses how young people’s political performances do indeed conform to the neoliberal matrix. However, beyond this, it also explores their struggles against neoliberal marginalisation and the possibility of radical politics beyond these constraints. The overall argument of this article is to understand how young people’s politics are simultaneously conformist, agonist and possibly radical in contemporary outer East London.

The Multicultural Future

‘Cultural translators’, business strategists, consumer psychologists, marketing experts, global multinationals and consultancies all try to unlock the impending desires of so-called Generation Y1— the cohort of children born between 1979 and 2000 (Hoffman 2007; Lancaster and Stillman 2010; Lazarevic and Petrovic-Lazarevic 2007; O’Neill 2009; Quinn 2005; Tapscott 2009; Yarrow and O’Donnell 2009). These educated, middle-class, wealthy young men and women are courted as the future pioneers, navigators and consumers of technological, individualised and globalised advances (Harris 2004, p. 15). On the constitutive outside are those who lack aspiration. These young people are classed and racialised in negative relation to dominant culture. They represent the uncertainties and dystopias of the world to come. Through these young people the negative implications of individualisation and globalisation — the breakdown of community and the increasing polarisation between the rich and the poor — are viewed (Harris 2004, pp. 4–5). These young people haunt adult society ‘because [they] reference our need to be attentive to a future that others will inherit’ (Giroux 1996, p. 10).

Circuitries of Urban Culture

While Britain’s Got Talent and Chris Brown were playing through the youth clubs, YouTube was also becoming popular. Although literacy was to spread rapidly, at the beginning of 2008, knowledge of these platforms was limited. Only a few of the young people knew how to upload videos to YouTube. Nonetheless, by the beginning of 2009, it was used widely as a televisual and home movie interface — the latter facilitated by the affordability of mobile phones with cameras. By the end of 2009, young people talked of being ‘addicted to YouTube’.

The Multicultural Past

Over the two years I worked in Newham, I learned a lot about the memory practices of young people and youth workers. Like the quotes above, these practices drew attention to competing nostalgias of ‘home’ and post-national recollections, at the same time as they addressed exclusive memory practices tied to whiteness and national belonging. As with all aspects of social and cultural life, urban multiculture’s contemporary form references what came before. This chapter explores the memory practices of young people and youth workers to address urban multiculture’s relation to the past. As will become clear, what came before is not static but under constant revision.

Conclusions and Political Endnotes

For a time after I left the youth clubs, it was difficult see beyond the emotions of the final days. My understanding of social life in outer East London was temporarily coloured by the difficulties of doing youth work in ‘the cuts’, and all that that entailed. It was only after going back over three years’ ethnographic material — field notes, interviews and videos — and thinking more broadly about Leyham and the other youth clubs that so many more voices re-emerged. It was here, by allowing the ethnography to speak, that my immediate emotions were contextualised and the many other positionalities that comprised the ethnography resurfaced. These slowly emerging positions were grouped into the chapters of this book.