"Youth, murder, spectacle: The cultural politics of ""youth in crisis"""

"This dissertation investigates the ways in which ""youth,"" as a discursive construct, comes to sit at the nexus of debates concerning social crisis and upheaval. In particular, ""youth in crisis"" is an important site for the operations of hegemony. At an empirical level, there exists a disenfranchisement of youth in contemporary United States. The dissertation inquires into the specificities and tendencies of how this ""crisis"" is understood. A key concern is that realm of cultural politics which pertains to the stakes of ""youth in crisis"" as it enters and reverberates in common sense. To this end, the dissertation focuses on the case of a sensational crime, the ""preppy murder,"" and on four different but interrelated sites of cultural activity: print coverage, the confession, daytime television talk shows, and youth films. The dissertation finds that these intersections of youth and crime correspond to an anxiety about the reproduction of the social order, having simultaneously ideological and affective dimensions."

Name thesis:degree_name

Ph.D.

Level thesis:degree_level

Dissertation

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Communications

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2011

Author dc:creator

• Acland, Charles Reid

Contributors dc:contributor

• Grossberg, Lawrence

• American Studies
• Political Science, General
• Sociology, Industrial and Labor Relations
• Sociology, Social Structure and Development
• Mass Communications

Statement dc:rights

• Copyright 1991 Acland, Charles Reid

Language dc:language

eng

Identifier

AAI9124374
(UMI)AAI9124374

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/21984