This volume seeks to address what its contributors take to be an important lacuna in youth cultural research: a lack of interest in the phenomenon of collectivity and collective aspects of youth culture.
Bjørn Schiermer is Professor at the Department of Sociology and Human Geography at the University of Oslo. His sociological interest is equally divided between theoretical work and empirical interest in youth culture. Recent publications include "Nostalgia, Irony and Collectivity in Late-Modern Culture: Ritual around the Disney Christmas Show in Scandinavia", "Late-Modern Hipsters: New Tendencies in Late-modern Culture" in Acta Sociologica and Forms of Collective Engagements in Youth Transitions: A Global Perspective edited together with Cuzzocrea and Gook.
Ben Gook is a Lecturer in Cultural Studies at the University of Melbourne. His publications include Divided Subjects, Invisible Borders: Re-unified Germany after 1989 (2015) and "Ecstatic Melancholic: Ambivalence, Electronic Music and Social Change around the Fall of the Berlin Wall" in Emotions: History, Culture, Society (2017).
Valentina Cuzzocrea is Associate Professor in Sociology at the University of Cagliari, Italy, and a past coordinator of the European Sociological Association Research Network 'Youth & Generation'. She has published internationally on youth in journals such as Journal of Youth Studies, Young, Time & Society, Current Sociology, Sociological Research Online, European Societies, Mobilities and Studi Culturali. Her last books are Mobility, Education and Employability in the European Union. Inside Erasmus (co-authored with D. Cairns, E. Krzaklewska, and A. Allaste, 2018), Italian Youth in International Context (co-edited with B.G. Bello and Y. Kazepov, 2020), and on the theme of collectivity, the forthcoming collection Forms of Collective Engagements in Youth Transitions: A Global Perspective (co-edited with B. Gook and B. Schiermer, 2021).
Introduction: Collectivity and youth cultural research
Part I
1. 'I just wanted to be a part of it': Musical experiences of youth and belonging
2. Making time for the tribes: The work of synchronization in the making of youth collectivities in the age of digital media
3. Top-down collectivity? European youth policy and the need for social cohesion
4. Enacting the music: Collectivity and material culture in festival experience
5. Making a brotherhood: Young ultras beyond the match
Part II
6. Learning from Willis' Lads: Collectivity and object-oriented practice
7. Spaces of collective individualism: Practices of collectivity for young street artists in Yogyakarta
8. School strikes for climate: Young people, dissent and collective identities in/for the Anthropocene
9. Scoring the refrain: Young African men in a diasporic context
Afterword
Collective narcissism: Some basics of neo-tribal sociality