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Swagger, Ratings and Masculinity: Theorising the Circulation of Social and Cultural Value in Teenage Boys’ Digital Peer Networks

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  • Laura Harvey
  • Jessica Ringrose
  • Rosalind Gill

Abstract

This paper seeks to disrupt sensationalist racialised and classed media accounts of the youth looting in the 2011 London riots. It draws upon research on young people's uses of mobile digital technology, including social networking sites like Facebook and Blackberry Messenger to understand the performance of contemporary teenage masculinities. Developing the work of Beverly Skeggs, we demonstrate how value circulates in young people's digital peer networks. We analyse how images of designer goods and labels that signify wealth are used on social networking sites to embody cool masculine ‘swagger’ and attain popularity ‘ratings’, which we theorise as forms of social and cultural capital that circulate in the peer networks. Interview narratives also illustrate that the construction of online value must be verified in boys’ offline lives; and we show how teenage boys are negotiating power relationships and peer hierarchies online, at school and in their neighbourhoods. We argue that an analysis of symbolic value in digital contexts and in embodied everyday life helps in understanding new regulative formations of gender and masculinity in late-modern, globalised contexts of youth identity construction. In this way, our findings and analysis directly challenge the simplistic public discourses of ‘feral’ and ‘mindless’ youthful masculinities depicted in the UK media representations of the London riots, providing more complex insights into the construction of contemporary teenage masculinities.

Suggested Citation

  • Laura Harvey & Jessica Ringrose & Rosalind Gill, 2013. "Swagger, Ratings and Masculinity: Theorising the Circulation of Social and Cultural Value in Teenage Boys’ Digital Peer Networks," Sociological Research Online, , vol. 18(4), pages 57-67, November.
  • Handle: RePEc:sae:socres:v:18:y:2013:i:4:p:57-67
    DOI: 10.5153/sro.3153
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Imogen Tyler, 2013. "The Riots of the Underclass?: Stigmatisation, Mediation and the Government of Poverty and Disadvantage in Neoliberal Britain," Sociological Research Online, , vol. 18(4), pages 25-35, November.
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    Cited by:

    1. Tracey Jensen, 2013. "Riots, Restraint and the New Cultural Politics of Wanting," Sociological Research Online, , vol. 18(4), pages 36-47, November.
    2. Lisa Mckenzie, 2013. "Fox-Trotting the Riot: Slow Rioting in Britain's Inner City," Sociological Research Online, , vol. 18(4), pages 68-99, November.
    3. Marisa Silvestri, 2013. "Reflections on a ‘Depressing Inevitability’," Sociological Research Online, , vol. 18(4), pages 5-9, November.
    4. Kim Allen & Sumi Hollingworth & Ayo Mansaray & Yvette Taylor, 2013. "Collisions, Coalitions and Riotous Subjects: Reflections, Repercussions and Reverberations - an Introduction," Sociological Research Online, , vol. 18(4), pages 1-14, November.
    5. Emma Casey, 2013. "‘Urban Safaris’: Looting, Consumption and Exclusion in London 2011," Sociological Research Online, , vol. 18(4), pages 48-56, November.
    6. Leah Bassel, 2013. "Speaking and Listening: The 2011 English Riots," Sociological Research Online, , vol. 18(4), pages 111-121, November.

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