|
|||
|
Home |
About | Program
| Registration |
Speakers | Receptions
| Call for Papers
| Sponsors | Contacts| CCCS Home
|
|
Lyndal is currently completing her PhD which is based on a cross-cultural analysis of young people and physical culture in Australia and France.
"I reckon name brands really suck. I really hate the social crap of school, I really don't get along well with people that are in the social group so that's why I hang by myself but I just wear some baggy clothes. I don't hang around them, but you know [they wear] Nike, things like that" (16yr male, Qld).
This is a young man's response to the question, 'what sort of stuff do you wear?' which exemplifies the ways in which clothing, in particular sports and leisure wear, can be used by both the wearer and the observer as a means of identifying themselves and others. His comments also reflect an interweaving, through clothing choice, of identity, consumer lifestyles, resistance and social status.
This paper discusses data drawn from a series of interviews carried out with approximately 60 young people aged between 13 and 18 years in Queensland, New South Wales and Victoria. The semi-structured interviews aim to have young people describe their interactions and engagement with 'physical culture'. Kirk (1997) defined physical culture as a range of discourses concerned with the maintenance, representation and regulation of the body through codified and institutionalized forms of physical activity, such as sport, physical recreation and exercise. In engaging with physical culture, young people interact as consumers of commercialized and commodified products of physical culture, of which a potent aspect is sports and leisure fashion.
With a focus on clothing and by drawing on fashion theory, we hope to be able to extend our understandings of the ways in which young people constitute embodied selves/identities.
 |
