Rudy Vigil
C-uppsatsen
Advisers:
Karin Becker
Björn Eneroth
Institutionen för bildpedagogik (BI)
Konstfack
Youth Identity Construction Study and Photo Installation
of six
Arts Students
by Rudy Vigil
C-uppsats
to be examined in Konstfack's Library
on Wednesday, 5th of April, at 1 p.m.
Abstract
Vigil, R., 2000. Youth Identity Construction Study and Photo Installation of six Arts Students.
This study explores the identity work of six arts students in the Arts Program at St Erik's High School. Students in the theater and art programs in the class of 2000 were asked to respond to a questionnaire survey distributed to students in their first year of the three-year arts program, later in their second and in some cases in the third year to compare differences in responses. The survey inquired into the students' family background, interests in music, style of clothing, media consumption, attitudes towards parent culture, institutions and political affiliations. Based on the responses of the survey, various types of observation, in and outside of school, over a two year period, six students were chosen for further observation and subsequent interviews to become the subjects of a collaborative photographic and bicolage installation between the students and myself.
Results of the study show that the arts students, despite that fact that they appropriate elements from the youth culture industry, are highly creative in reordering these elements as bricoleurs. This is manifested in their creative use of symbolic communication and semiotic power in their artistic work but even more interestingly, in their behavior seen as aesthetic performance, contributing to their identity construction. This aesthetic identity work enables them to resist the homogenizing elements of hegemonic culture allowing them to develop their own subjectivities, expressing values and attitudes for and by themselves which are less frequently seen in the parent culture.
Youth Identity Construction Study and Photographic Installation
by Rudy Vigil, 12.04.2000 Stockholm
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Contents
The purpose of this study is to explore the process of identity construction among a group of students attending the Arts Program at St Erik's Gymnasium (High School/College) in Stockholm, from the fall of 1997 to the spring of 2000. I see youth identity construction as an aesthetic, performative practice whereby youth present consciously and unconsciously images of themselves synthesized from the multitude of impressions, visual and auditory, which they are inundated with daily.
My hope is that this qualitative study will shed light on how youth in general use, lend, alter and produce images as signs and symbols with which they are able, through performative processes, to present these meaning bearing signs outwardly, creating pictures of who they are and who they want to portray themselves as being, for themselves as well as their environment.
Initially my interest in youth identity construction stems from my roll as a teacher of young people and the parenting of my son who at the time of this writing is sixteen. After having lived in Stockholm, Sweden, where my son was born, during the better part of the 1980s, I taught Art at the middle school level in the US, California and Arizona, during a seven-year period from 1990 to 1997. I've also taught English as a second language to youth in their late teens and early 20s in the summer program at the University of California, Riverside for five years during the same period. In 1997, I moved back to Stockholm, and began teaching at the high school/ college level. I also began a cultural studies research program in the art education department at Konstfack for which I am presently writing this paper.
The culmination of this research project is a digital photographic and object installation, a collaboration between my students and myself, intended to visualize the performative and semiotic identity work of the youths in my study. I have photographed each student standing full length with a digital camera. The digital image I've then printed to near full scale. Each photo is the same size and they are lined up in a row on a wall. Directly in front of each image is a brown cardboard box, containing objects that symbolically represent aspects of each individual's identity. Each youth has selected the objects in his or her box, and we have discussed their selection so that I may better understand their motivation. I also discussed with each person the choice of photo to be enlarged.
In the late modern period the normative prescription for how young people develop their identities has become less constrictive as communities have grown and media globalization has become a reality. With the help of existential philosophy and theory, we have been able to understand that as individuals we construct our identities based on our experiences. We may also construct and use various identities for different situations. We present these identities, project ourselves based on, among other things, what we do, what Goffman calls performative practice[1]. A constructivist theory of identity formation is the effect of complicated discursive practices - social, cultural, linguistic and otherwise symbolic[2].
On the other hand since media are controlled and consolidated into larger and fewer financial concerns, it may be posited that the global community establishes other types of constrictive forces on the youth of today[3]. Others maintain that transnational corporate interests are counterbalanced by the public's increasing accessibility to generative media: audio, video, image recording and the access to internet publication.
The source of this image production performance in youth identity construction is varied and complex but seems to stem from our environment: parenting (possibly to a lesser extent than say 50 years ago), peer groups, educational institutions, media and youth culture industries. This performative practice enables youth to "try on" different identities. As individuals who must create themselves and their own subjectivity, it is necessary for youth to test these subjectivities[4]. In this way others who witness the performative practice objectify an individual's subjectivity, and in turn project it back. This objectification by others is a way for the individual to reflect on his/her projected subjectivity/identity mirrored in the other. I am interested in examining how my students' performance is manifested visually as an aesthetic practice. I am primarily interested in how my students perform their subjectivities or identities. I wish to examine the way youth project who they are or test who they want to become.
What I want to discover in this study is:
1. How do my students express who they are and who they are becoming, to themselves as well as their environment? How does this aesthetic practice manifest itself? In what manner does this symbolic positioning, or semiotic production take form - by way of dress, behavior, social interaction and by what they produce, be it visually in the form of images, or performatively in the form of music production or theatrical performance? What strategies do they use to assert their identities and test new subjectivities?
2. To what extent are their expressions and their possible identities limited or constrained?
3. Is it possible to shed light on the extent to which youth are influenced by their environment, including parental, societal and institutional factors, and, what they create, develop, synthesize or otherwise generate themselves?
4. To what extent are youths conscious of the impressions they inculcate verses the extent to which they are conscious of their own identity construction performance? How does this reflexivity work?
Much of what I've found in my observations and that which I base my identity construction model on is grounded in the theories of the Birmingham School, the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies at the University of Birmingham. Foremost of these theories are those of Dick Hebdige[5] who has taken Claude Lévi-Strauss' theory of bricolage in an identity construction model to describe various youth subcultures. Also the concept of reflexivity in the cultural populism of John Fiske and the dynamics and semiotic power of the production of meaning through interpretation[6] are theories which I apply to my study. This is relevant since some of the youth of my study have shown themselves to be quite adept at reading media and the production of the trendsetters of the youth culture industries.
From the socialization theory of Thomas Zeihe I have understood that the need of constructing ones identity has become important in the latter half of the 20th century. With productive work transferred from family towards a corporate economy, socialization spheres transfer towards peers groups, the media and the youth culture industry. The move towards individuation places greater responsibility on the individual, often creating anxiety and self-consciousness. The traditional socialization function of the family diminishes while family begins to provide insular security in its narcissistic consumption of goods. People growing up after World War II experienced a transition from outmoded traditional values towards individuation. This process created liberation from constrictive rolls and forms of identity but also more responsibility and anxiety on the individual manifested in a greater degree of narcissism. This anxiety was in some ways resolved in the identity offered in the popular social movements of the 60s and 70s, the anti-war movement, civil rights, the women's movement, the gay movement, the hippie movement and their protest against technological rationalization which shattered earlier forms of communal living. All and all however, this period was marked by optimism and progressive social change. The youth of the 80s, however, rebelled against their parents' anti-technological rationalizationism. They interpreted the failure of these movements as utopian pipe dreams, technology and capitalism as unavoidable, embracing technology, corporate capitalism and fast-money to be made on the market seen in the trend of yuppiedom and career-climbing, corporate inclusion.
In the previous classes, which have graduated from St Erik's, those born just before 1980, there was a general sense of criticism even ambivalence towards society, in the sense that things may not be getting better. The situation seemed bleak with regards to employment opportunities, inflation, environmental destruction due to industrialization, however individuation syntheses are even more certain. There are fewer traditional models of identity for youth to use, but there are a greater number or more frequent retrospective trends of the entire post-war period, from the 50s to the 90s for youths to use as bricoleurs for their identity construction. The parents of my group of study have already experienced this liberation - void of identity formation. Some of the individuals of my study have accepted the social criticism of their parents closing the generation gap their parents' parents felt so strongly. They take the attitude of "where do I go from here?" Technology is more instrumentally excepted rather than the polarity of 'embraced or thwart'. In some of the retrospective trends, there is a desire to attain the spiritual and mysticism of preindustrial culture but not so much in the anti-technological rationalizationism of the late 60s and 70s. They instead are able to incorporate all means in order to reach the end. This can be seen in the use of technology in alternative sources of energy, in trends of co-housing and other forms of communal living and the use of computers in the generation of tribal influenced music of the techno-rave scene of the 90s as well as the production and publication of subordinate or otherwise marginalized information, meaning and pleasure.
Typically, children are guided by their home environments until the preteen years, at which time they are increasingly influenced by the impulses provided by the environment outside the home, the youth culture industry and their peer groups in their teen years. Together with their circle of friends, youth choose what to adopt or distance themselves from. They express this in the form of imitation or outspoken ridicule, incorporating or vehemently rejecting representations provided by the media. This negotiation process of youth identity construction is consistent with the neo-gramcian models[7]. John Fiske's 'semiotic' use of Gramsci filtered through his reading of Foucault's power discourse illustrates this negotiation process and the production of interpretation[8]. Trends are synthesized in the streets and underground subcultures but are appropriated by the youth culture industry, then packaged and sold back to the youth who rearrange them once again[9], so that the process becomes a constant cyclical negotiation and exchange of resistance and incorporation.
The theorists from the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies, Clarke et al (1975), Hebdige (1979) and Willis (1990) among others, use semiology, the interpretation of cultural signs and symbols, to explain the politics of youth's resistance to hegemonic culture. To understand what a subcultural style signifies to the members of the subculture, a researcher uses the concepts of homology and bricolage. Homologies allow the researcher to determine how a subculture reflects the broader group of which it is a part by looking at the meaning of its "style" as symbolic expression. Bricolage is a loose collection of cultural elements taken from the parent culture and reordered to communicate a new meaning. A subculture engages in bricolage to establish an independent identity[10]. Cultural signs and symbols are incorporated from other groups but their meanings are altered to communicate the ideology of the subculture or group of individuals deploying them. One example is the Mods incorporating business suits in their own style, thereby altering its meaning in the process. The swastika is another example. The fact that the Nazis used the Native American sign of the four directions to represent what Hitler espoused as the supremacy of the Aryan race is one transformation. The sign has since been associated with Nazi racism. The meaning of genocide is the Nazi epilogue. Some London punks in the late 70s, then, used the swastika to shock and revolt against the society which they felt was lost, corrupt and not worth salvaging. The meaning of signs were inverted to turn society upside down. Whether this was a conscious endeavor at the time or not is less important. The mutability of the Punk movement can in some way explain its resilience.
What this Punk example illustrates is how youth embrace signs, images and icon but may change their meanings to serve the use of the youth subculture. These homologies create a visual manifestation to the subculture identity.
I've been interested in the Punk movement of the last 20 years, and residuality. Linda Andes presents a model of becoming Punk[11] that allowed me to understand the residual aspects of the Punk movement and its individualist ideology, which I feel I can apply to youth identity construction in general. Her model is based on three different stages prefaced by a predispostionary stage. The predispostionary stage is marked by youth that feel that they are some way different and apart from their "normal" peers. Rebellion and a self-definition of Punk and non-conformist displaying offensive or shocking behavior to others mark the first stage. The second stage is marked by an affiliation with the lifestyle of Punk subculture having a reference group of other Punks in accordance with accepted understandings of Punk behavior. They are also accepted as a part of the group rather than being seen as "poseurs." The 3rd and final stage then is marked by transcendence having assimilated the ideology of punk in an existential manner, dissociated from the subculture, using one's self as reference group and whose core values are personal integrity, honesty and individualism.
The students in my study, born after 1980, generally seem to have a sense of optimism towards the future. They are self-awareness to the point that they are conscious of the fact that they create or construct their identities and that there is a wealth of sign symbols and meaning from which to construct their subjectivities. They in turn reflect on these constructions which they project and are mirrored by those in their environment. This self-refexivity give them the opportunity to alter what they have constructed. For the most part, to me, this appears to be accepted positively by them. Since they are approaching adulthood during the recent up-swing in the economy, above all within the It-industry, with its spin-off in cultural and aesthetic production, then it is in a positive climate in which they enter the job market or continue their arts education.
I have chosen arts students because I teach within an arts program. I am interested in my own art production as well as the production of art in general. The reason why it is interesting for me other that for the reasons I've already mentioned is that within the aesthetic production and performance of art students, be it the production of art or the production of their identities, there is a wealth of material to examine.
Graduation from Högstadiet, usually at the age of sixteen, marks the end of compulsory school in Sweden, however most students continue on to Gymnasiet, upper secondary school or High school in the United States which is my point of reference. As in the U.S., this is usually a three-year program, the difference being that in the U.S., students are usually between the ages of fifteen to eighteen, and at Swedish Gymnasiet, student are between the ages of sixteen to nineteen. The Arts Program is one of sixteen national programs. They are intended to provide a broad-based general education that satisfies the minimum prerequisite requirement to qualify for further study at university or college.
St. Erik's Gymnasium, located in central Stockholm, was traditional a trade school until the Arts Program was started in 1994. Arts Students tend to set themselves apart from other students by their often unique and extravagant manner of dress, either verbose variations of different subculture style: Punk, Grudge, Hip-Hop, Techno, Rave, Trip-Hop, poppers, Goths or standard art-school black. At St. Erik's this caused a rift in the school social climate, especially between the new Art students and the Kickers of the traditional trade school student body, often of immigrant background, who seemed be provoked by the more flamboyant Arts students. Over time, with the introduction of the Natural Science Program in 1997 and then the Technology Program the following year, the adversarial tension between programs began to diminish.
Because of the Arts students' obviously unique, creative, consciously and reflexively aestheticized appearance and behavior, they produce a wealth of study material relevant for my study.
I have observed the students in my study during their entire three years at St. Erik's Gymnasium. As I have mentioned above Gymnasium is attended by most youths in Sweden but is not mandatory and admittance to which must be applied for. Students are usually between sixteen and nineteen years old. However, some ten percent of students within the Arts Program at St. Erik's are older due to having taken a break from school for one reason or another or due to having switched programs after a year or more or due to having to repeat because of receiving non-passing grades.
In my study, I use an ethnographic influenced approach as a way of observing my students on a daily basis in and out of a classroom setting, more often within the boundaries of the educational institution. However, I've occasionally been able to observe their behavior in a public sphere when I've met students at political demonstrations, the youth center, Lava, on the street, in cafés and at certain youth generated events like the action on Götgatsbacken in September of 1999 and the alternative Lucia celebration in December of the same year.
Even though for the most part I see my students in the public sphere, the question of public and private has become increasingly diffuse. For example, isn't the classroom more private than the schoolyard, and conversation among smaller groups of students or individuals on campus more private than the classroom environment? Aren't the lounge steps at Lava more private and relaxed for young people who frequent them than the street or the schoolyard?
My study is qualitative in that I'm able to examine in depth and on many different levels several students in the Arts Program at St Erik's, and more specifically the six individuals in my study. I also have access to my son, who is a student in the Arts Program at Södra Latin, a comparable school on the southern island of Stockholm, and his friends.
Initially, in order to gather material on symbolic construction and bricolage based on Hebdige, I constructed a questionnaire in which I ask students about the music they listen to, the choice of clothing they wear, the media they consume and a little about why they do so. I ask about their political affiliations, their friends and families, how they feel that they are influenced by them and how they think that they, themselves, influence others. How do they feel about what others think about them? I distributed the questionnaire first to one first-year Theater class, a third-year Art class and a third year Theater class in the spring of 1998. From the first-year Theater class, I got about fifteen sets of responses back out of the thirty that I distributed. From the third year art class and the Theater class, I got only a handful back. In the fall of the same year, I then distributed the questionnaire to the first Theater class and also to the other two Theater classes of the same year, the class of 2000. All three Theater classes were then in their second year, all three of which I taught in Cultural History. I also gave the questionnaire to the Art class of 2000. This class I taught in English. Then in the spring of 1999, I distributed the same questionnaire one more time, partially to compare with their earlier responses and partially to attempt to cull more responses from the Arts Program's class of 2000 as a whole. (See appendix 1)
I had assumed that youth often consider these questions if not consciously, at least on an unconscious level, but when I asked the students what they thought about these questions, many claimed that they had not considered them before. Others said that they had not considered them but that it felt insightful to think about them and that it increased their self-awareness. My questionnaire, then, initially mobilized a reflexive discourse on the part of and among the students. Occasionally a discussion would arise in class, or in conversation after class, about style, identity, music as well as other media, art production and consumption which were instructive for me and reflexive for students.
Selection process - After receiving the responses to my questionnaires, I spent two years observing students at school in and out of the classroom, speaking with them formally as a teacher, but also casually on as equal terms as I could manage, with shared knowledge of youth culture and music and with a genuine interest in them as individuals. A theater instructor and I were responsible for one of the theater classes last year during the time that their original class advisor was on leave. For this reason I had extra contact with this class and Brankica. In my roll as a researcher I would also ask them their opinions of various issues but also about aspects of youth culture which I did not understand, about their dress, behavior or interests. I was conscious of my dual roll as teacher and researcher and made a point of talking specifically about the project outside of class time. However, in my roll as a teacher, I am not an authoritarian, but make it apparent that I am learning in my process of providing my students with an environment, the proper tools and resources from which they are empowered to take responsibility for what they learn, through problem solving, with guidance. Despite their obvious dependence, due to grades, there is a high level of student democracy by which students may exert influence. I would also meet students in the city outside of school and would speak to them as much as what I perceived as comfortable for both them and as well as myself. Ageism, especially in public, despite an open mind, exists for adolescents as well as middle-aged adults.
During the late Fall of 1999, before winter break I selected six students based on the information from my questionnaire and from general observation and conversation for my more in-depth analysis and Photo Installation. I have known all six of the students I have selected for my analysis and installation since I began at St. Erik's almost three years ago. All of them began as first year students at that time except for Rostam who began the year before, but who is repeating his final year this year and will graduate with the other five this spring. Of course I have chosen students with whom I feel I can work, but they are not merely students whom I like. My main criterion is that they represent different types within the program. First of all, there are three females and three males, including one young woman and one young man of relatively recent emigration. Brankica came to Sweden at the age of eleven and Rostam at the age of eight. The other four were born in Sweden, but Liam's father immigrated and his mother's family immigrated shortly before his mother was born. Therese, Erik and Anna come from what I would call educated Swedish families who are not affluent but have a high level of cultural capital[12]. I set up interviews with the students, meeting with them for an hour or more, all of them at school except for the meeting with Brankica which took place at a café close to school because I had once bumped into her there during lunch. She is not fond of the school environment, so we both agreed that it would be more relaxing there. The interviews were based on individualized questions based on the information I had already received from the above mentioned sources.
I begin the presentation of my results with an account of what I have learned about each of the students selected for the project, initially based on my questionnaire found in the appendix, and later based on the more in-depth interview. I learned more about each student's interests and motivations for their interests, but also more about the way they deal with their environment, more about how they process information, how they interact. I learned more about their identities and how they project them, but also about their personalities and how they feel about issues in their milieu, which is a part of my milieu, which exists at the local level as well as the macro, global level.
Liam Hamilton is an art student, prolific cartoonist and airbrush painter. He paints on various materials and found objects. He is also creative but laconic, expresses himself in his art images and image narratives rather than his presence. Although his appearance his deliberate and quite conscious with obvious performative qualities, he chooses to attain a certain canvas neutrality. He lives with one of his parents who divorced twelve years ago. I think its his mother, but I've only met his father, on two different occasions when he was helping Liam set up and take down a solo exhibition at school. Liam has access to his own studio in the building where he lives.
His mother's parents came from Latvia and were both architects. His mother was born in Sweden and also studied architecture. She worked as an architect but later started at the postal service. His father came from Belfast, Ireland, but soon grew tired of the constrictive nature of his Catholic upbringing and moved to Edinburgh to study architecture. He later moved to Sweden to work at an architectural firm where he met Liam's mother. He worked as an architect and interior designer for a chain of clothing stores, but now he works on his own.
I have understood before, but in his interview with me, Liam led me to believe that much of his reality, like Brankica's, is also in his mind, choosing to construct his own reality rather that allowing anyone else to impose their subjectivity too much onto him, but at the same time he worries that maybe someone else or something else is or has. Growing up on sci-fi movies from the influence of his younger uncle on his mother's side of the family, Liam enjoys the odd and unusual, constructing his world from the millions of images he's inculcated from the blue glow of the TV screen. His drawings illustrate his interest in cyber culture and the incorporation of technological bioimplants. Liam is a cautious person, deliberately somewhat displaced at times, exhibiting a deliberate awareness and flighty, cat-like behavior. He wanted to have a stuffed cat in his box, stuffed because he knew that a live cat wouldn't sit still very long, but decided against it when he thought of what kind of idea that would lend to others about him. He wants to show that he likes and appreciates cats. I told him that a stuff cat would probably give viewers a different message than what he had intended. This increased his awareness of what he was producing and contributing to with this project.
Liam was in my English class his and my first two years at St. Erik's. He writes English well. Despite his spelling errors and occasional awkward grammar, with his odd form of language he is able to illustrate images in his idiosyncratic way. When I had him in a course in web design last year, he wanted to design a site filled with is painting, illustrations and narrative strips. He wanted to try to abstract the site, removing all words, communicating solely with images. He's not that fond of most people, but he does have his younger brother and circle of friends he's known since he was in grade school who are also interested in art. He's been in an art program since he was ten years old.
Therese Romander is an art student with a Heavy Metal look. She is interested in sculpture and 3-D form, prefers rough materials, iron, steel, burlap and dark wax. She is friendly but initially comes off as aloof and nonchalant. Born and raised on the farm on Ekerö (an island to the east of Stockholm in Lake Mälaren) which her family bought upon their exodus from Stockholm before Therese and her two sisters, one and four years younger, were born. On the property there are stables which her family rented, while she was growing up, to adolescent girls who kept their horses there. From these 'horse girls', Therese was introduced to the interests of older girls, among them hardrock culture. Therese is aware of the culture of the Mälar Islands and claims that her interest in art and crafts stems from the history of the islands. Her parents are not farmers but educated in the city and have a certain amount of cultural capital. They fled the city crowds however in the 70s. Therese is interested in Hardrock but also Cornelius Vreeswijk and Stefan Sundström from her parents.
In my interviews with Therese, I learned that her transition from lower middle school to upper middle school, at age thirteen, was also a major transitional period for her projected identity or her symbolic positioning of that identity. At her former school the dress and style of most students was relaxed and of little concern, but at her new school she was confronted with a cliquishness and trendy snobbishness to which she was not accustomed. In order to deal with the style change, at first she tried to keep up with the fashion consciousness imposed on those who aspired to fit in. Discouraged with her inability to keep up with the reigning trend, she decided to use an opposing approach of embracing the abrasiveness of heavy-metal style she had initially been exposed to by the horse girls who rented stalls in her family's stables. In this style she found an identity that didn't change with the capriciousness of market fashion which afforded her an individuality that eventually gained her a certain amount of respect at school where previously she had gone to so much effort to fit in on their terms.
Although Therese seems slightly aloof upon first meeting her, she is very kind and can be considerate after a very short time. She tells me that she reads horror stories and thrillers, enjoys watching horror film is interested in the history of violent crimes. She enjoys relaxing at home in a dark room with lighted candles, suggesting an interest in mysticism or the occult.
Rostam Zandi is an art student, photographer and painter, repeating his 3rd year. I have taught Rostam in Cultural History and Computer Graphics. He is of Russian background and speaks Russian fluently. He is dyslexic for which he has had to use compensatory strategies to get through school and life in general. Possibly for this reason he is affable, charming and persuasive. His dyslexic identity has in fact been the source of some of his artwork, a documentary type video, Confessions. He recently moved into his own apartment, away from his, he says, dominant father.
Rostam was born in Kiev in the Ukraine in 1979 where his mother's family is from and where his maternal grandmother still lives. He and his older brother moved to Stockholm not long after the Chernobyl disaster, after his mother underwent the arduous process of seeking an emigration visa. His father, who was born in Kurdistan and studied in Lebanon, had moved to Stockholm earlier to flee the political situation in the former Soviet Union and to seek employment as an architect. After Rostam's family had been united only 2-3 years his mother was diagnosed with terminal cancer and died shortly thereafter. Rostam's transition to the Swedish educational system was not made easy by his immigrant status and undiagnosed dyslexia. He wasn't tested until his second year of Upper Secondary School. His dyslexia may explain Rostam's keen interest in images. His senior thesis took the form of a video called Confessions which deals with growing up with dyslexia complicated with immigrant status.
Rostam's brother, who had never felt at home in Sweden moved back and forth from Kiev and Stockholm, was influenced by western hippie mentality, as Rostam refers to it, living a somewhat bohemian existence. His father's political dissidence and his brother's alternative lifestyle have influence Rostam, so that he tends to question the mainstream culture around him. I have met Rostam at several alternative youth events arranged by various anarchists' groups. During the last year or so, Rostam very often has his camera with him. There was a street festival, in September of 1999, arranged by the youth organization Reclaim the Streets, in which a group of 500 or so young people blocked off Götgatsbäcken, a narrow trafficated street on the southern island, Söder, to protest auto traffic and the lack of venues available for young people to gather. Rostam, Erik and Anna were there along with several other young people from the Arts Programs of both St. Erik's and Södra Latin, my son included. I was also in attendance. Rostam was very pleased to be able to document the initial joy with which the action empowered the youths that partook in the event. He was also frustrated at not having enough film to continue his documentation when the police attacked, detained the crowd without asking them to disburse and eventually arrested a better part of the crowd until incarceration facilities were full.
Brankica Nikolic is a theater student and poet from the former Yugoslavia who understands that her Serbian culture has contributed to her identity. She has a strong personality, often convinced of her convictions. She is a dreamer. Her fantasy world may be more important to her than her tangible world. The everyday is boring for her, tedious and mechanical. In her vivid imagination, she creates her own ideal world, which she shares with few, her closest friends, upon whom she has a definite impression. She is conscious of some of her mentors, her father, Herman Hesse, Hölderlin, Tagore. She is moody, but positive and philanthropic. She enjoys mysticism. She lives with her parents and two older brothers.
After an hour and a half interview with Brankica I better understood her deliberate dream world. She is conscious of the fact that she sets up an image of the world that isn't always based on reality but rather a construction of her own ideals. Reality never seems to match up to her imaginative constructions. This doesn't seem to be a problem for her however.
She may be forced into this abstracted ideal situation because of the fact that a major part of her identity emanates from her native former Yugoslavia. She makes a point of saying Yugoslavia and is angry that people don't allow her to retain this image of her homeland. A major source of her identity springs specifically from the country landscape of her childhood, which she is very well aware no longer exists the way it seemed to her then, so possibly, for this reason, she has no illusion that any other ideal that she has exits either. She says that this doesn't bother her; she has her world and that is enough for her.
She and her family didn't move to Sweden until she was twelve years old. She says that her parents were forced to deceive her in order to get her to go along with moving in the first place. They told her that they were only going to visit Sweden for a short time. After her family, her parents and two older brothers, made the move, she didn't return to Yugoslavia again for three years. Even though she cherishes her homeland, one understands after talking to her for a short time that it is one of the major sources of her identity, she makes a point of making known that she is no Serbian Nationalist. Last year when I asked her what language she spoke, she told me that she spoke Serbo-Croatian, but became nervous and didn't want to make a big of deal of her being Serbian. I understood this later when she explained the unhappy feelings she has towards Serbian Nationalism, which she sees as an ignorant emotion, her two older brothers blindly embrace.
Brankica has been back to Serbia twice during the seven years she has lived in Sweden. The first time was for the occasion of her grandfather's funeral. The second time was last summer. I talked to her on a school outing one of the theater instructors and I had with her class before summer break. We went to an island in the Stockholm archipelago. Although it was still early in the year for summer activities, the idea was that we were to spend a day in the sun. We were all dressed casually except for Brankica who wore a dress and high-heeled shoes. Despite this difference in dress, she adapted to the situation, taking off her shoes to walk through the forest without any complaints. One of her male classmates carried her a bit of the way until we reached a sandy beach. I think this pleased her very much. On the boat trip back to Stockholm, we spoke of her upcoming trip to her hometown. She spoke of a man who she had met there on her previous visit and whom she corresponded with. She seemed infatuated and in love despite, but perhaps due to, the fact that he was ten years her senior. Needless to say she was looking forward to meeting him. I asked if he knew that she was coming, to which she responded that she wanted to surprise him. Speaking with Brankica during my recent interview, she made no mention of this boyfriend. When I asked her later, she told me that she would tell me another time.
Despite the impression that Brankica gives me that "the former Yugoslavia" is a major source of her identity, she does not have plans to return after she graduates from school this Spring. She realizes that her home is not what she left seven years ago, nor possibly, is her image of it what she ever thought it really was. She plans rather to go to some school in the Swedish countryside to work on her poetry, which seems to be a major motivating factor in her life.
She told me that the first two years of high school, she went out with her friends, also from the former Yugoslavia, to dance and drink rather often. This behavior may have been a attempt to assert her coming into adulthood and creating independence from her parents often seen in the behavior of sixteen and seventeen year olds. She told me now, however, that she enjoys going home in the afternoons and drinking Bosnian coffee with her neighbor who she speaks about mundane things, which Brankica says she finds pleasant and relaxing. She finds a mature solace in this activity. She tells me that much of the image of life which she consciously produces herself is the source of her poetry. This statement and her lyrical way of describing her situation causes me to believe that she is actively and consciously creative, verbally illustrating for me images of how she sees her surrounding, punctuated by her vivacious gesticulation.
She tells me that she enjoys talking to older people than herself and is the reason she seeks company with her older female Bosnian neighbor. This recent activity of conversing with her neighbor and concentrating on her poetry could be seen a mature activity, but it could also be interpreted as a reflexive period of her late adolescent life on the verge of adulthood and expected independence from her family. She tells me that in middle school that she had a male teacher from the former Yugoslavia who is now a cultural worker. She says that he always had answers for everything and that no matter how ridiculous her ideas seemed he would always listen and understand and would always have something wise to say in response. This I see as a desire to seek reassurance and support form elders, which may be seen as an element of seeking solace with her neighbor.
Erik Holmström is a theater student, with a keen interest in music. He is creative and uses divergent thinking. He is involved, engaging and enjoys performative projects. He was born and raised in Tallkrogen, a nearby southern suburb of Stockholm. He was educated at a Waldorf school where his father teaches and his mother worked administratively and later as a teacher as well. He is creative plays guitar, writes his own folk ballads and perhaps due to his thematic early education, he understands the connections between different media: music, photography and acting. I have seen him at leftist and anarchist demonstrations against racism, the first of May demonstrations and at the demonstration after the death of syndicalist union activist Björn Söderberg. He wrote in his responses to the questionnaire that in addition to the morning newspapers, he reads the anarchist journal, Brand as well as the syndicalist youth organization's newspaper Direkt Aktion. He wrote that occasionally he'd buy a music magazine. His TV viewing is restricted to music programs and news coverage. Entertainment and game show programs he dismisses as useless and the chance glance at soaps give him nothing. Erik is conscious of the commercialism of the media, the purpose of which is to sell audiences to sponsors. He believes that much radio and television programming is of a similar nature, but appreciates that which is different. He believes that there is many cultural activities and entertainment, discos, film, concerts, which are directed towards youth, which is positive, but that it is too divided into different age groups. He wrote this two years ago, so he writes about age limits, and that he would rather be able to associate with other in respect to interests rather than age.
He is ambitious, engaging and involves himself with many performative projects, so much so that, as he himself says, he can barely do anything thoroughly. He has played in a band, Utopia, for a couple years as well as a theater group started by its members. He enjoys photography. His peers are those who he creates together with. He doesn't really have an interest in just hanging out. He says that the style of clothing he wears is not of major concern to him. I see it as being relaxed and functional. He buys most of his attire from used clothing stores. He says that it should be comfortable and that he enjoys the worn, personal look of used clothing in addition to the cost. He wears denim jeans, usually dark not necessarily black, dark shirts and sweaters with an occasional click of color. He cuts his hair when he feels that it gets too long, often short so that he doesn't have to worry about it for awhile.
Music is very important for Erik. He produces his own music. When he filled in the questionnaire in the spring of '98, he wrote that he was so affected by playing music himself that he had a very difficult time just relaxing to music. As soon as he heard music that he would immediately begin to concentrate on its construction, its harmony and rhythms, the instruments, etc. In his recent interview he said that he was able to listen to music and do other thing which I assume means that he can now selectively concentrate better. His interest in music is very diverse and says that he picks up things from a little of everywhere.
When I ask about his plans for the future, he doesn't seem to be anxious in any way. He plans to continue with projects: plays, music, photography. He goes with the flow and seems to be very adaptable, using that which comes his way in a creative, productive manner.
Anna Adolfsson is a theater student, models clothing, is conscientious about schoolwork and life in general. Respect and friendliness with an interest to learn mark her relations to other people. She works hard and is very considerate. Her success may be due to hard work and time budgeting with time for relaxed but high-intensity conversation with those she comes in contact with. She lives with her father and two sisters.
Anna was born and raised in Stockholm, initially just south of the city center in Hammarbyhöjden and then at the age of nine, she and her family moved to the southern island in the city center. Her parents had separated the year before, so that when they moved to Söder, her mother and her boyfriend moved to one apartment and her father moved to another. Both dwellings are located within a few blocks of each other which made living two weeks with one parent and then two weeks with the other a bit easier than if her parents had not had apartments so close to each other.
Anna is the oldest of three girls. Her two younger sisters are two and five years younger. Anna is positive and open-minded. She works hard in school and has many interests. She is active in the Young Leftists. I've seen her at political functions, for the most part at first of May demonstrations passing out pamphlets, but also at the Reclaim the Streets' action at Götgatsbacken in September of 1999, from which she left when the police came. As opposed to other politically active youth in the Arts Program who lean towards the left, she believes in peaceful political change which she says is even different from her father's more radical views. She paints, writes poetry, dances and listens to a wide variety of music, both contemporary independent as well as vintage alternative music. She sings together with another girl in her class to music written by Ingy, the woman who got her started in modeling. As far as her clothing, it is also varied. I like her color schemes: moss green and violet, warm yellow and orange even turquoise and pink, all often framed with black and white. Perhaps due to working as a model, she has knowledge and access to a variety of youth styles. She tells me, however, that she was interested in a wide variety of styles before she started modeling two years ago. I also remember that she wore varied, whimsical clothing in warm, happy colors when she started St. Erik's just before she started modeling. Ingy also discovered her on the street because of her own particularly creative way of dressing. She says that peers call her a hippie, but she then retorts that this is for their own convenience, so that it will be easier for them to label and understand on their terms. She is aware of her eclecticism and sees this synthesis as being her identity, constructed of the elements which she is drawn to. She is aware of their origins: punk, hippie, hip-hop, snob, bookworm, rocker, pop, oriental, Krishna chic, fashion freak. In this sense she becomes a designer, and she is well aware of it, in her down to earth way, as being her own aesthetic performance. She is also aware of the symbolic value that is possible.
Her group of friends is diverse. One would almost think that since she is so active in school, gets good grade, works professionally in an attractive career and has so many diverse interests that her peers would be envious of her, but I think because she doesn't flaunt her activities and because she is so sincerely friendly that it is difficult not to like her, even for her classmates and peers who feel that they might be competing with her.
After receiving responses from my questionnaire and while observing and relating to my students, I decided that I want to create a representation of my students' identity construction. I decided that I would not only offer images of their subjectivities, but also attempt to show elements of their construction and reflexive process. It is for this reason that I chose to present a photo installation where full-length, full-sized photos are combined with student installations: cardboard boxes filled with objects which have contributed to their identities. I photographed each student on a neutral background, to show that it is the student that is the main focus. The boxes could be said to symbolize the youths' dynamic, transitionary, migratory identity construction. In Sweden, at the gymnasium/high school level, young people become more independent, legally independent and often move away from home, if not physically then mentally, spending more time away from home. Each student was asked to be responsible for the contents of their box, fully understanding that the contents thereof are objects which are symbolically charged for them and by them and are major factors contributing to their identity construction and performance.
These six individuals have first had the opportunity to examine specific questions about who they are, what they do and why they do it. They needed to think about what has contributed to who they are and how it has done so. With this in mind, along with much consideration, they have fill their boxes with that which is dear to them, constructing for themselves and for us images of who they are. As I have indicated earlier, young people at some point take time to spend reflecting on their behavior, performance, selection on clothing and consumption of music and media, which, among others, Fiske (1987) and Willis (1990) have shown to be a form of aesthetic production in their interpretation thereof. Upon reflection on these aspects of self, many have told me, has increased their self-awareness. The attention they have received has also increased their self-confidence.
I've used photography to illustrate their identities, attempting to freeze gestures which indicate mood, aspects of what I see as their identities which can be seen as my interpretation. However, Rostam helped me photograph and set up lighting. He took his own pictures with a medium-format camera in the event that the digital photographs were not sharp enough but were not used. I also discussed with each one of them individually and in groups which photo to enlarge, going over all the photos carefully on two or three different occasions. I am aware that photography can be just as subjective a representation as any other aesthetic expression, a painting or collage. I chose not to use the sharper Hasselbald photos. The low contrast, cool tint of digital TV type imagery is intended to remind viewers that this is merely a media I've used as a tool to attempt to shed light on who my students are or how they see themselves as being and how they present that identity. The photo becomes a device to enable viewers to understand the contents of each young person's box.
I now return to my initial questions:
1. How do my students express themselves and their identities about who they are and who they are becoming, for themselves as well as their environment? How does this aesthetic practice manifest itself? In what manner does this symbolic positioning, or semiotic production take form - by way of dress, behavior, and social interaction and by what they produce, be it visually in the form of objects and images, or performatively in the form of music production or theatrical performance? What strategies do they use to assert their identities and test new subjectivities?
2. To what extent are their expressions and their possible identities limited?
3. Is it possible to shed light on to what extent youth are influenced by their environment, on what is directly transferred by parental, societal and institutional factors, and, what is created, developed, synthesized or otherwise generated by the youths themselves?
4. To what extent are youths conscious of the impressions they inculcate verses the extent to which they are conscious of their own identity construction performance? How does this reflexivity work?
In the results section I have described these youths based on my observations and our conversations together, reading what they have written and by discussing the installation, all of which I think outline many different aspects of their identities and the subjectivities they present. One of the most obvious similarities between these young people is that they are Art students. Naturally, this means different things to different people. For many it means that they are creative. For them it means they create their own. They create their individuality through their performance and production. "Art student" may mean that they have the license to create themselves, their own individual identities, and their own subjectivities. That which they have in common, then, is that they have the license to be different from others, which I think make identity construction even more interesting among this group of young individuals. Some groups are more cohesive than others are, but I think that it's safe to say that a substantial part of their identity stems from being a member of this group. However, within the group they also need to assert their individuality. Some of the students expressed an internal tension between being a part of the group and asserting difference within the group. Confidence is gained by belonging to the group where one feels trust, reassurance and a certain amount of strength through validation, at the same time that one must mark one's individuality in order to feel self and develop one's ego. In order to mark one's subjectivity, it helps to feel confident. A person gains strength from the group in order to forge new individual ground. A person on their own doesn't receive reassurance unless one is completely separated from the group. That person constructs his or her own world or receives validation from another source, making them impervious or seemingly little affected by critique.
One diachronic observation and development I have noticed in the dichotomy between group membership and subjectivity assertion is that with time students become more interested in constructing subjectivities and homologies on their own and seem to not depend on group validation to the same extent. This pattern of progression from group reference point towards self-reference reinforces Andes model of punks incorporating the Punk ideology to the point of not needing to identify within the Punk subculture but can create one's subjectivity independent of the group. I wonder if it is possible, then, to attach subculture status to being an Art student?
As a group, Art student status is that of other, outside the mainstream societal norms, which is desirable, especially if one criticizes the mainstream or dominate culture for among other reasons, its homogenizing effect. Most of the young people in my study can be said to have a political view left of center. Some appear a-political, choosing to concentrate on their own privately constructed reality. Liam, Brankica and, to a certain extent, Therese, would like to be left alone by leftist politics and capitalist consumerism. Some question leftist politics, to advocate a more self-empowering anarchist view. "Why pay others to do what you can do yourself?" What, then, are some of the strategies that these youths use to resist the dominate mainstream? Many use a semiotic power of resistance[13]. Erik allows himself to be photographed with a Parent Advisory - Explicit Lyrics T-shirt. The label that appears on audio CDs to inform parents that the lyrics are normatively questionable. Wearing this label is an attempt to negate its intended function - what Erik sees as the censorship of artistic expression in music. This can be seen as articulation, from the double-sense neo-Gramscian perspective of 'disarticulation-articulation'.[14] Through this action of disarticulation of the hegemonic culture's warning and rearticulation of the sign as "wearable," hence, innocuous, Erik mobilizes polysemic potential against a structure of domination by questioning the meaning, the 'signified', of the parent advisory label or 'signifier'. Here the meaning of the sign is changed in order to question its original function.
In this rerepresentation, Erik constructs new meaning in a similar way to what Anna does. She says that her peers often want to label her style as one coined by the media or youth culture industry: Punk, Hippy, Hip-Hop, Rocker, Popper, Oriental, Krishna Chic or Fashion Freak, compartmentalizing her for their own convenience instead of allowing her to exercise the power to be different. Despite the fact that she works in the fashion industry her power to construct new meanings, pleasures, and social identities that differ from those proposed by the structures of domination allow her to resist homogenization. Anna and Erik's representation has a social dimension.
Another strategy of resistance may be seen in Brankica's and Liam's fantasy worlds. Some would label this escapism, but Fiske asks: What is escaped from? Why is escape necessary? and What is escaped to?[15] He continues: Asking these questions gives escapism or fantasy as strong a sociopolitical dimension as representation. Fiske then continues his point by noting Angela McRobbie (1984) where she points out that private fantasy can be interpreted as part of a strategy of resistance or opposition: That is, as marking out one of those areas that cannot be totally colonized.[16]
She goes on to point out that in this situation the distinction between fantasy and reality may not in fact be so apparent.
Fantasy is a means of representation whose privacy and intimacy do not prevent its acting just as powerfully upon the meanings of social experience as do the more public representations of language and the media. Its interiority does not disqualify it from political effectivity: the interior is, to coin a phrase, the political.[17]
Both Brankica and Liam have appeared bored with or uninterested in school, Brankica more so last year and Liam more so this year, initially, probably for different reasons, but utimately very likely to resist their environment in order to prioritize more satisfying, fulfilling, personally constructed realities. This year in Contemporary Art, I have been able to entice Brankica with the work of the Marina Abramovic[18], also from the former Yugoslavia, and Ulay as well as with the visceral work of other performance artists. Last year Brankica was often absent from Cultural History, or, if in attendance, she would sit day dreaming. Serbia was an aggressive factor in Kosovo and NATO was about to begin bombing. War was a fact in her homeland. As I have implied earlier, she has never felt Swedish but Yugoslavian, and as she has told me, the Yugoslavia she left no longer exists. For this reason she would retreat from the reality of war into her own reality, her own subjectivity free from nationalism and ethnic cleansing. By daydreaming and writing, she constructs those areas that cannot be totally colonized. Liam on the other hand is not divided by war but by his lack of interest in the tangible world, which he finds boring, uninteresting and fraught with "an evil circle of consumption." He writes, "I love the world of the mind and easily get homesick when I'm around people too long.
Photographer is a major part of Rostam's identity, whereas when I met him, it was graffiti artist. This is a case of trying on different identities. When I look at my photo of Rostam, I see the name of the place of employ he was most interested in working at last year. Two years ago, a photo of him would have looked completely different, Long hair and colorful clothing. Kamera Doktor is a camera store whose clientele consist of a number of professional photographers in Stockholm. He applied for employment there. The competition is tough, but he was hired. Rostam's dyslexia gives him a different relationship to text, which is in the case of the text on his shirt, reversed, a mirror image. For Rostam this is not a correspondence between sign and sound, but a symbol of concept that becomes decorative. The inability or difficulty in reading the words that are written is a device that he has used in his art. Jumbled, superimposed text in various colors communicating disorientating, conflicting messages, he once used to convey his relationship to his former homeland. The text in this case communicates messages, but no longer as lexical entities but as images illustrating concepts and feelings.
To what extent do these young people use their creative freedom? For some it may be difficult to use this freedom, to create one's own world, existence and identity. That they are ridiculed by non-Art students may be a source of attention that contributes to their identity construction. For the most part there is a high degree of tolerance within the Arts Program, at least among Art and Theater students who I've observed, but if they are criticized by their peers, then they naturally feel alone, jeopardizing their feeling of group belonging. This makes them lose self-confidence, places into question for them their ability to create. This may cause certain art students to rely on more established styles within the art student repertoire. This may be a limiting factor in their identity construction.
Therese has personalized her Heavy Metal style, but originally it may have been a style that she appropriated because of self-consciousness. Her attempt to fit in with her fashion-conscious classmates in middle school was an attempt to try on a new identity and gain a group belonging. Not feeling emotionally equipped to create her own style, she appropriated her Heavy Metal style, but appeared to her peers to be unique. In this way she was able to assert a difference, create a subjectivity and thereby her own identity. This style she has stuck with making it her own throughout the period I've known her. She approaches the Linda Andes' model of subculture incorporation except for the fact that she doesn't fully transcend her Heavy Metal identity as youths in Andes' study did. This retention of the Metal identity may be due to the fact that this style is not as anti-authoritarian and individualistic as that of the Punks in Andes' study, who tended to internalize Punk ideology and transcend their membership in the subculture. After having seen herself as outsider, she associated herself with a subculture, committing her to career membership.
I think that my questions in the third section of my questionnaire, about their choice of clothing, can be addressed now after looking at Therese's as well as all the other students' situations. To what extent do my students appropriate style and elements of style, identities and ideologies from the media, the youth culture industry, parents and peers? I think that in Therese originally appropriated a style, but it was originally the interpretation of that style by the Hard Rock, Heavy Metal horse girls a she came into contact with at her family's stables. After gaining a reputation and a certain amount of authority from this style and later as a subculture, she began to search for its authenticity, thereby validating her identity. However, despite the fact that Therese has originally appropriated the style, does not give her credit for interpreting it on her own terms and making it her own while at St Erik's. Anna's intense eclecticism reveals her desire to control her own power discourse[19] and to render fashion metanarrative[20] innocuous. Erik prefers to make his own music rather than listening to that of recorded artists. Liam constructs his own hyperreality from the blue-ray images that radiate from sci-fi television rather than the corporeal world. Rostam's treatment of text and Brankica's lyrical dream construction are not appropriations directly transferred but synthesized interpretations of the world they live in.
In her study: Teenage Girls, esthetics and identity work, Anette Göthlund found that 15 and 16 year old girls, will set themselves in a mature environment or situation in order to try on the roll of adult. In Brankica situation I see her festive behavior the first two years of high school (rites of passage)[21], her mature Serbian boyfriend who may possibly have been more of a conscious illusion on her part, her association to her middle school teacher, her roll as writer. All of which she has tried on but into which in some respects she has also grown into. Göthlund refers to the aspect of regression or distancing from previous behavior for reflection and self-evaluation as in periods when Brankica has enjoyed coming home and drinking coffee with her neighbor, enjoying the solitude and meditation of mundane palaver. This reflexivity allows Brankica to evaluate her behavior and tried identities.
Each of the young individuals in this study are highly creative. Those who appear to rely on manufactured styles or aspects of style, on closer examination, use polysemic production of realignment and reinterpretation on all aesthetic and cultural levels. Any reliance on that which is manufactured and consumed without personal interpretation in my opinion is due to uncertainty and a lack of self-awareness and self-reliance caught in the false insular security of the narcissistic consumption of goods.
I feel that the group of students I have chosen for my study, despite their differences, seem to in some way approach Andes's final stage of self realization where individuals point of reference becomes self rather than outside entities, transcending subculture or style. They incorporate ideologies and values, then from that point they are individuals who react differently based on their differing individual experiences.
Identitetskonstruktion Bland Estetelever på S:t Eriks
Gym
Enkät till Eleverna
Jag är intresserad av hur du har skapat din identitet, den person som du visar upp för din omgivning. Jag anser att sättet du ser ut och beter dej på är laddat med betydelsebärande symboler. Vad är det för symboler och vad betyder de? Tillsammans bygger dessa symboler ungdomskultur. Hur ni, som grupp, inger dem betydelse kan ses som sättet ni skapar kultur på , och hur du bygger din egen identitet. Jag ser det som något oerhört kreativt.
Dessa konstruktioner kan vara medvetna gjort, men mycket ni gör är omedvetet. Jag vill att ni ska fundera över hur ni har byggt upp era intressen. Vad har ni för idéer om hur världen ser ut? Hur yttrar det sig i musiken som ni lyssnar på och kläderna ni har på er? Hur ser ni ut och varför? Hur mycket har ni fått från era föräldrar? Hur mycket har ni fått från dina vänner? Hur mycket har ni skapat tillsammans? Hur stor del av era åsikter är påverkade av era föräldrar eller media, för eller emot? I hur hög grad ändrar ni på dessa källor, och ger dem nya betydelser?
Ungdomskulttur har fått allt större betydelse inom kulturforskning. Ni är nutids och framtidens konstnärer och kulturforskare. Det är ni som kommer att ge uttryck åt vilket vi är. Jag anser att ni står i spetsen eftersom ni intresserar er för estetisk verksamhet det gör er väldigt betydelsefulla. Jag anser också att ju mer ni kan om er själva, desto mer underlättar ni era estetiska och humanistiska verksamheter.
Var snäll och svara på följande frågar så gott du kan. Kom ihåg att jag är intresserad av din identitet och hur du har skapat den. Om du har mer information som bättre belyser hur du har konstruerat din identitet, eller som skulle ge insikter i den, var snäll och lägg till det.
Var är du född och uppvuxen?
Intresse
Vad gör du med din fritid?
Vad har du för intresse?
Hur har du blivit intresserad för dina intresse?
musik
Vad lysnar du för musik?
Varför har du intresserad dej för den typen av musiken?
Gör du egen musik?
Klädsel
Vad bär du för sorts kläder?
Ägnar du åt en viss stil av kläder? Varför?
Förebilder
Vem uppskattar du? Varför?
Vem vill du bli som eller tar efter? Varför?
Media
Vilka medier "konsumerar" du?--dvs lyssnar på,
tittar på, läser mm?
Vad tycker du om medierna?, radio, tv, film?
Vad tycker du om kulturindustrin inriktad på ungdomer?
Vänkrets
Beskriv dina vänner.
Var har du träffat dem?
Hur ofta ser du dem? Var?
Vad gör ni tillsammans?
Vad har de för intresse?
Vad har ni gemensamt?
Hur är ni anorlunda?
Förmyndare, föräldrar
Beskriv din familj.
Vad har ni för förhållande?
Bor du hos dem?
Berätta lite om dem?
Vad jobbar dem med?
Vad har dem för intresse?
Är dem tillsammans?
Vad tycker du om hur dem tycker och tänker?
Skolan
Vad tycker du om skolan?
Livsåskådning
Vad tycker du om livet?
Vad är det som har påverkat dig och ditt liv mest?
Var har dessa påverkningar kommit ifrån?
Har du några politiska åsikter?
Hur skiljer sig dem från dina föräldrars åsikter?
Hur skiljer dem sig från eller stämmer dem överens
med din vänkrets?
Vad har du för influenser och var tro du att du har tagit
dem ifrån?
Vad är det som jag har glömt? Lägg gärna till något om du tycker att det fattas för att ge insikt till hur du har skapat din identitet.
Jag hoppas att vi har en chans att följa enkät med en klass diskussion.
Tack så jätte mycket för att du tagit tid att
svara på enkäten så gott du kan.
Jag kommer bl.a. att skapa en konstutställning av resultatet
från undersökningen. Jag hoppas att ni kommer kunna
ge mej råd om hur den ska se ut, men det kommer vi att prata
om sen.
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Bourdieu, P. (1980) "The Aristocracy of Culture", Media, Culture and Society 2.
Chomsky, Noam (1998): Manufacturing consent. Black Rose Books Ltd.
Clarke, John, Stuart Hall, Tony Jefferson, and Brian Roberts.
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Reimers, Eva 1995. Dopet som kult och kultur: Bilder av dopet i Dopsamtal och föräldraintervjuer. Stockholm: Verbum.
Storey, John (1993) Cultural Theory and Popular Culture. University of Georgia Press.
Willis, Paul (1990) Common Culture. Coulder, Co.: Westview.
Ziehe, Thomas (1989) Kulturanalyser. Ungdom, utbildning, modernitet. Stockholm/Stehag: Symposion.
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1 Goffman, Erving (1959/1971) The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books.
2 Göthlund, Anette (1997) Bilder av Tonårsflickor, Om estetik och identitetsarbete. Lindköpings universitet.
3 Chomsky, Noam (1998) Manufacturing Consent. Black Rose Books Ltd.
4 Ziehe, Thomas (1989) Kulturanalyser. Ungdom, utbildning, modernitet. Stockholm/Stehag: Symposion.
5 Hebdige, Dick (1979) Subculture: the Meaning of Style. London: Methuen.
6 Fiske, John (1987) Television Culture. London: Routledge, p. 316.
7 Bennett, Tony (1986) 'Introduction: Popular Culture and the Turn to Gramsci' in Popular Culture and Social Relations, (eds.), Tony Bennett, Colin Mercer and Janet Woolacott. Milton Keynes: Open University Press, pp. xv-xvi.
9 Willis, Paul (1990) Common Culture. Coulder, Co.: Westview.
10 Hebdige, Subculture: the Meaning of Style.
11 Andes, Linda (1998) Growing up Punk: Meaning and commitment Careers in a Contemporary Subculture. In Jonathon S. Epstein (ed.), Youth Culture, Identity in a ponstmodern world, Blackwell Publishers.
12 Bourdieu, Pierre (1980) "The Aristocracy of Culture", Media, Culture and Society 2: 225-54.
13 Fiske, Television Culture, p. 316.
14 Mouffe, Chantal (1981) 'Hegemony and ideology in Gramsci' in Culture, Ideology and Social Process, (ed.) Tony Bennett, Colin Mercer and Janet Woolacott, p. 231.
16 Mc Robbie, A. and Nava, M. (eds.) (1984) Gender and Generation. London: Macmillan
18 Goldberg, RoseLee (1998) Performance, Live Art Since the 60s. Thames and Hudson.
19 Storey, John (1993) Cultural Theory and Culture. University of Georgia Press, p. 92. Storey writes of Foucault, "He continually demonstrates how power operates through discourse and how discourses are always rooted in power."
20 Lyotard, Jean-François (1984) The Postmodern Condition: A report on knowledge, Manchester: Manchester University.
21 Reimers, Eva (1995) Dopet som Kult och kultur: Bilder av dopet i dopsamtal och föräldraintervjuer. Stockholm: Verbum.