Appropriate Articulations of Taste: The (re)production of gender in contemporary youth taste cultures
This thesis explores gender in contemporary youth taste cultures, contributing to the academic field through its illumination of taste’s role in the (re)production of gender. We continue to see inequality on the basis of gender in contemporary society and thus this thesis provides a much needed understanding of the (re)production of gender during youth. Much of the academic field has interrogated gender and youth, albeit with the majority looking at the experiences of boys and girls separately. However, little work has considered taste as being a potentially regulatory space in terms of gender during youth. Meanwhile, save some important interjections by Skeggs (1997), gender has largely been overlooked in the taste culture literature. This thesis shows that there is great potential in bringing together taste and youth, allowing us to better understand the complexities of gender (re)production. To explore these issues this thesis takes an empirical approach. In total, 112 people aged 13-16 from the Norfolk region took part in this study. Both traditional and innovative qualitative methods were used, and they were designed to develop a rich understanding of contemporary youth taste cultures. A bespoke identity page was a created as a means of capturing the cultural texts young people like and dislike, and a series of focus groups were also undertaken where collective meanings were foregrounded. The richness of empirical evidence and its careful analysis has revealed the significant role that taste plays in young people’s discursive (re)production of gender. It finds that young people inscribe a range of cultural texts with gendered value, and that they use these understandings to regulate the parameters of gender ‘appropriate’ taste. This thesis therefore contributes to the academic field not only through its development of academic theory, but also in the wealth and originality of data that it provides.
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