Street social capital in the liquid city

This article reflects on the lives of a group of young men on Ireland's socio-economic periphery, focusing on how exclusion shapes their cultural orientation and orders their spatial practices. Whilst populist imaginaries and certain academic understandings of young, disadvantaged, urban males...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:	Ethnography 2013-03, Vol.14 (1), p.3-24
Main Author:	Ilan, Jonathan
Format:	Article
Language:	eng
Subjects:	Biographies Cities Communities Criminality Cultural Capital Cultural groups Cultural Pluralism Ethnography Ethnology Europa Gangs Housing Human Dignity Ireland Liquids Males Masculinity Security Social capital Social exclusion Social relations. Intercultural and interethnic relations. Collective identity Social structure and social relations Socioeconomic status Socioeconomics Street culture Urban Areas Urban life Urban space Youth
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Summary:	This article reflects on the lives of a group of young men on Ireland's socio-economic periphery, focusing on how exclusion shapes their cultural orientation and orders their spatial practices. Whilst populist imaginaries and certain academic understandings of young, disadvantaged, urban males tend to cast them in the role of claiming and violently defending territories, their relationships to space may be considerably more transient and fluid. Within the late-modern 'liquid city' exclusion has cast the young men researched here into migratory practices, where they must negotiate relationships with potentially hostile peers in various parts of the urban environment. Adopting street cultural norms of rugged masculinity, crimino-entrepreneurialism and the recourse to violence can result in the accumulation of 'street social capital'. This can allow disadvantaged young people to secure a sense of existential security, pleasurable experiences, disposable income and a culturally mediated notion of dignity, despite their spatial and socio-economic exclusion.
ISSN:	1466-1381 1741-2714