From underground cultural boundaries in nineties to fluid networks at present. The context of youth (sub)cultural identities in Estonia
From underground cultural boundaries in nineties to fluid networks at present. The context of youth (sub)cultural identities in Estonia

Summary/Abstract: Younger generations in Estonia are involved into global cultural trends that exert increasing influence on their lives and identity formation. Even though youth cultural trends are nowadays global, they are also closely related to the local culture and historical background of their different societies. Subcultural trends adopted in Estonia have been altered in the process of their diffusion and their internal structure and relationship to society at large are influenced by the smallness of the country, its Soviet background and its lack of social classes. This paper focuses on the diffusion of global youth cultural trends – club culture and hip-hop culture – in Estonia and the construction of (sub)cultural identity from a micro-sociological perspective. The diffusion of trends is divided into four periods: esoteric, underground, mainstream and WEB2, and cultural identity is analysed in these periods with respect to changes in society as well as the underground scene. The starting point for our analysis is that identity is relational, fluid and comparative. The empirical part of the paper relies on participant observation and open-ended interviews with young people who participate in club culture (collected in 1998–2002 and 2010) and hip-hop culture (collected in 2007–2008).

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