Book review: By any media necessary: the New Youth Activism

When will cultural studies get over youth culture? When will we be post-youth? Youth has been the proxy for cultural studies resistance, politics and social change through much of its history. When Richard Hoggart trashed his Juke box boys, when Paul Willis followed his ‘lads’, when Dick Hebdige discursively combed the mohawks, we were drawn – like a moth to a flame or a sociologist to a biker – to the weird clothes, interest-ing hair and complex bricolage. Our mistake was that we made youth carry the burden of disruptive politics. Cultural studies researchers relied on youth to be our ventriloquist’s dummy, to speak anti-establishment politics and activate Gramsci’s war of position.