Abstract
This article concerns the social world of youth subcultures in contemporary Japan by bringing into the social exclusion theory. By examining “structurally embedded inequalities, ” which tend to be disregarded in post-subcultural theory, this study develops a conc eptual and practical view of the social contexts in which the everyday lives of youth subcultures are created. In paticular, this paper attempts to bridge the cultural perspective of post-subcultural theory and the structural approach of social exclusion theory.
First, this approach treats the socially excluded youth not as a group of the new poor, but as a new ontological agency of social actors produced as a consequence of social stratification. Second, it brings into focus the epistemological turn from socio-political social exclusion to sociological social exclusion. Third, this research shows that the social exclusion as a process is not only forcibly created by structural factors in the global context, but also reproduced through the everyday practices of the local social reality.
The ethnographical data I have been conducting since 2001 demonstrates the life histories of three young males in a group of skateboarders who gathered at the West Gate Park of the Tsuchiura Station. For them, participation in subcultural activities is not only a form of escape but a means of overcoming the stagnation they experience by making use of subcultural capital they have accumulated in their own bodies.
