Violent Night: Urban Leisure and Contemporary Culture

摘要

From the opening pages Winlow's and Hall's account of youth culture and the night-time economy sets its stall out against what the authors characterize as an optimistic consensus among subcultural and 'post-subcultural' theorists about the creativity, agency and symbolic resistance demonstrated by young people's leisure practices. In contrast, the authors present here an unremittingly bleak interpretation of the lifestyles, relationships, pastimes and futures of contemporary youth. Centred upon an assertion that young people are caught in the grip of a rampant late capitalist individualism and insecurity which pervades all aspects of their lives, the account posits consumerism, alcohol, nightclubs, casual relationships and violent encounters as symptoms and perpetuators of the intensively competitive-, lonely and unstable position in which they find themselves. In addition to the wealth of rich data presented, the account is notable for its sustained critique of the attitudes, outlooks and understandings of young people and of a perceived tendency for youth researchers uncritically to celebrate such youthful practices and discourses.