Culture Journal

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Structural consuming society and juvenile culture: The speculation of a relationship E. Kalerante1 ekalerante@yahoo.gr & C. Zachou2 czachou @gmail.com
1. 2.

Lecturer, University of Western Macedonia Professor, Deere College

Abstact In our study, the relationship between the consuming society and juvenile culture is investigated. Observations based on external and internal interpretation regarding the young as a social category in relation to consumption within the globalized society are analyzed. Juvenile culture construction is based on the signifier-signified relationship which plays a crucial role regarding the youngs integration into social reality. The ceaseless population transfer, commodities transportation along with information and tendencies dissemination are conducive to a super-national juvenile relationships network, targeting, essentially, to an artificial reality. The commodity-mediated self emerges replacing what is old or traditional. Happiness, actually superficial, is achieved through the adaptation of a certain lifestyle based on the consumption of material elements. Certain boundaries determine a youngsters integration into or his exclusion from the social domain. Mass commodities and services consumption welcomes the youngster into the social group whereas the opposite marginalizes him as the other. Eventually, the symbolic code acquired is what directs the young to define their personal and social identity and integrate themselves into successive social domains. Key words: juvenile culture, signifier-signified relationship, integration, lifestyle, commodity-mediated self.

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Structural consuming society and juvenile culture:The speculation of a relationship

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1. The young as a category: definition and conceptualization based on external and internal interpretations The term young, as a social category contains the diversification of the age group while, at the same time, it theoretically incorporates schematic definitions, in terms of external characteristics attributed to it following an interpretation or postinterpretation of typologies that contain it. Thus, signs 1 , responses or choices are attributed to the young so that unifying models or categories are schematized. These observations are, in terms of evaluation, formulated within the framework of a society that has maximized the limits of social tolerance, acceptance and its positive reference to the other in relation to the other. Therefore, the public outside the juvenile culture, usually the adult public, re-interpret signs, delimit relationships and formulate meanings in a continuous procedure of reading through comparison. It is about a legalized process within the frameworks of the changing and timeless postmodern social reality. Thus, semantically speaking, it seems that the adult public and the young public compete within a system of delimitations, reevaluations and interpreting schemata which eventually express and diversify their cultures (Clarke et al. 1975). The content tracking of juvenile culture is conducted through the collation of the distinctive, comprehensible elements which diversify it and define the different fields of the reality ideological interpretation in the deterministically fluid relationships of present past future, in which individuals move, either directed or in the form of a dynamic presence, that project the different interrelations of the economic, social, political factors as the beginning or the end of a period. An exemplary representation of the juvenile culture dynamic presence is that of the 60s. It is characteristic that the different textual consideration composed by the multiple juvenile subcultures, selectively that is from subjects outside subcultures, was categorized as a symbol projection of a unified juvenile culture. At this point, exactly, the subject presence and discourse outside subcultures, that isolate symbols, lay, settle meaning, and formulate themselves a consideration through their own inter-textual composition. The unifying category young is, therefore, an external construction, a projection perceiving them as a universal category, an undiversified, homogenized whole. Juvenile culture pursues signs, its own universe of expression, through the prevailing intellectualistic relativism that permits transitions to alternative approaches. Juvenile virtual inspirations, symbols as versions or mutant forms and concepts of aesthetics and civilization, especially in its organization, are notionally detected and signaled, conducive to (re)conceptualizations and innovative suggestions. A total of notions, evaluations and discourse expressions are, therefore, formulated in juxtaposition to rationalism attributed to the adult public which is perceived by the young as an expression of the western culture prevailing model. On the basis of these evaluations, the adult conservative text, as a total of commonplace prefixes with the revised youngs subverting text, is diversified and collated (Fiske, 1989).
1

In our text signs refer to words, images, gestures, objects etc. especially for the relationship among sign, meaning and code (see indicatively Fiske & Hartley, 1978).

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Structural consuming society and juvenile culture:The speculation of a relationship

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Thus, from the long enlightenment narratives, as absolute interpreting schemata, the young pass to the questioning of the dictated adult paradigm and prefix their own versions of life, system, individual role, social relationships, political and cultural expression. Nonetheless, the postmodern status which, by definition, favors the fragmentation and the schizophrenic partition as a statutory act, leaves unaffected the young public itself. If the one aspect of the issue is, eventually, the external interpretations for a theoretically close and unified juvenile culture, the other one, that of special interest, is the interpretation of the individual or individuals as informal members of the category young and their integration in juvenile subcultures. Issues of their own personal interpretation of their world and representations are posed here as multiple signs in a globalized social reality 2 , which integrates them into the subcultures microcosms diversifying them as an age category on the basis of integration tied to acceptances and identifications. In juvenile subcultures the breaking of the semantic chain projects this way as expected and tolerable. The selective procedure of considerations, ideologies, signs as the first phase of constructing a juvenile culture is organized into a new reference framework, on the basis of an innovative plan that legalizes the special and non-correlative signified 3 and any montage or collage derives as the final product. The young within the framework of the prevailing social fluidity and through a wide spectrum of infinite and, eventually, chaotic selections is invited to choose and construct their identity (Riesman, 1961) and integrate themselves (Berger, 1973). The homeless young, under the interpretation of textual versions that function as being assumed defines his social self and constructs his collective identity, through the subcultures, that eventually are invited to express their identifying codes and the social framework of meanings so that the individual is integrated and functions interactively as an active subject as well as within the subculture normative, disciplinary or ritualistic framework. Under globalized conditions, gradually, in the various socializing phases, juvenile cultures appropriate pre-existing dreams and desires which accordingly stylize, make apropos, readjust consuming, through the same means, massive products. It is about a process which the same selected points, ficticiously enriched, legalize the already existing procedures and means by subject captivation; so that one could ask oneself where the new is. Is it invented by the young or, eventually, was it the common product simply consumed in another fashion? A labyrinthine course through symbols-expressions, not merely linguistic, makes us confront the schematized contradictions within the same structure of the young culture expression and organization and in their interpretation in a reformation phase
2

Fiske & Hartley underline that the signified is arbitrary, the outcome of the cultural way of thinking (Fiske & Hartley, 1978). 3 Jameson uses Lacan to describe schizophrenia, the fragmentation and the instabilities of postmodernism based on linguistic disorder. (Jameson, 1984). Cite Lacan refers to a ceaseless sliding of the signified by the signifier (Lacan, 1977). Derrida pin-points the free game of the signified (Derrida, 1978).

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Structural consuming society and juvenile culture:The speculation of a relationship

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through a symbols and signs fragmentation in which the safe chain sign-signified is perturbed. In particular, the use of symbolic codes defined and delimited in different cultural environments to be chosen by juvenile subcultures and repositioned through semantic interpretations and uses on new reference pivots is observed. The symbols selection and interpretation criteria acquire, therefore, special significance since they should be consistent with the subculture value system, its consideration and the individuals-members that will potentially frame it. It is about a juxtaposition procedure both of the broader adult culture and the other young subcultures. Through the re-evaluation and re-meditation procedure on the different stages of forming signifiers (Eco, 1976) and collective representations their textual homologies are composed. These textual homologies in the form of constitutions (Hall et al. 1978) as well as the interactive participatory representation function as signs, with close interpreting signified for members that at least, informally, have accepted the framework and regulate their attitude and behavior on the basis of predetermined establishments. Therefore, gradually, the individual initiation ritual to juvenile -ready -to -consume cultures as well as the Gordian knot of plot and semeiotics acquire a special interest. Importance is placed both on the discourse structure and the word usage as well as on the representation symbols available to the consuming market. The same signs, therefore, as patterns, ideograms and stereotypes schematize a universe of contrasts and multi-power structures composition in postmodern unifications. These compositions are characterized by heterogeneity that is the generation of meaning which is not a one-way, stable and commonly recognizable for individuals outside culture. If someone does not focus on stability or not of meaning, one should be concentrated on the means and procedure, the magic world conducive to juvenile destinations, to the postmodern style. The contrasting discourse projected by the young in contradistinction to the means appropriated by them in order to express themselves should be underlined at this point. While, that is, the logic of opposition to the status conventions and the consuming culture thoughtless acceptance is used, they themselves play in the consumption by making symbols and external determinations e.g. special clothes, accessories etc. generating considerations and standardizations for a style by which someone is accepted or marginalized. It is, therefore, about a game of images, social representations, theatrical versions (Goffman, 1971) in which the roles are predetermined through definitions within the framework of juvenile culture. What differentiates and, theoretically, liberates it by the different meaning of the commodities to be consumed, concurrently confining it and identifying it with a style dictated in its inside. In particular, a dynamic crashing discourse is observed to be expressed since the use of symbols in the group representation is borrowed by the consuming commodities theoretically being criticized by the juvenile subcultures as pseudo-products in ficticious dictated needs (Marcuse, 1972). Therefore, they themselves, under semeiotic selections, categorize and legalize conventions and identifications through consumption itself. Eventually, with their own idiosyncratic consumption that functions as a group symbolic delimitation, the prerequisites for integration into it are set. Therefore, the symbols to be consumed acquire a normative character permitting the schematization of the members collective identity. The aspect of consuming for the creation of distinctive symbols by juvenile subcultures is
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eventually identified with as a principle and standpoint under the value prefix of the capitalist market, that under communicative terms is tied to the modern, apropos, present and temporary. Concentrating on symbols and, essentially, the consuming logic appropriation, juvenile subculture uses expressional means, as tools, removing past consolidated schemata in their semantic codes, such as the social class. They, therefore, elevate an imaginary unity based on symbols and unifying signs equalization for their members who deem that they cancel social inequality in practice and the long narrative on social classes in theory. Discussion is, therefore, made over an ideology with the outcomes of a moral and value model composed by, theoretically, classless conceptualizations. The normality within juvenile culture seems to be determined by, typically, neutral political and social symbols. Emphasis is placed on the fact that politics is not rejected as a code, which is the stereotype of a divisive environment, but it is rejected as an unknown universe of signs, which are not expressed in their own juvenile semantic universe. A framework of juvenile culture in which the spiritual being is co expressed along with the social and political one is, theoretically, formulated (Jenkins, 1996). Deductively speaking, the concept of democracy and equalizing justice functions within the juvenile culture since this one itself poses, theoretically, the question about the stable and righteous society of free and equal citizens. By sanctioning the asymmetric, among each other, philosophical, moral and religious doctrines, under the terms of political liberalism, the prerequisites of a successive consent are sought after (Rawls, 1993). Socialization in this level, within juvenile subculture functions as a dynamic procedure of open re-meditation and re-conceptualization of situations, symbols since the juvenile subculture itself is estimated with the modern set as its own definition. Moreover, what is of special value is, eventually, its brainwave to combine signs and redefine the signified in an attempt to preserve symbolic limits in the avant-garde and originality quest, especially when other groups potentially appropriate their own symbols. In other words, the facticity itself acquires significance in subculture texts, in which it is included, and constructs the claims of truth by securing in this manner its acceptance and preservation. Its theoretical and expressional content is eventually reformulated re-supplied by the synchronizing interpretation of reality. The socio-spiritual attitudes formulated among members seem to concurrently function as selective evaluations, an outcome of these expressional symbols interpretation, whereas they themselves readjust, unify and schematize patterns giving the opportunity to the new composition to be elevated, adopted and adjusted to ideological signs, the subculture expressional means. Interaction relationships, formal or informal, which are regulated by a positive freedom 4 concept definition, the acknowledgement under the member capacity and its acceptance by the others are formulated within the subculture.
4

About the concept of negative freedom in the classical liberalism and the positive freedom as an outcome of the institutional defense of the democratic minority, as defined by John Stuart Mill see (Sparks & Isaaks, 2004).

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Structural consuming society and juvenile culture:The speculation of a relationship

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While the adult flamboyant consuming (Veblen, 1925) is criticized and juvenile subcultures dictate a form of consuming through which they declare their presence and are not equated to adults. But this dimension does not seem to be evaluated since the juvenile contrast, the crashing discourse and controversy are projected. The juvenile selective consumption and the usual economic sources non-correspondence to the purchasing power-consumption are intentionally overlooked. In particular, it is observed that an external interpretation of juvenile subculture, in order to appoint the juvenile standpoints and perceptions differentiation or the dimension that the young represent the group off conventions, elevate the pure and clean of their age category and identify them with the dynamics of the system change5. This evaluation is the outcome of the standpoint that the status of truth as a synonym of the prevailing ideology (Foucault, 1987) is not to be appointed, but the plural definition of statuses of truth that subcultures potentially express. The positive attitude towards subcultures is related to the evaluators educational capital and their standpoint in hierarchy. The probability of tolerance or approval seems to be increased in cases in which the evaluators have increased possibilities of free choices in the economic and social domain (Kalerante, 2008). 2. Mediating codes of projection and promotion of the products to be consumed. Juvenile subcultures ranging from punks and emos up to different lifestyle groupings construct a series of symbols around a notional pivot defined from inside and emotionally investing forms, as a dynamic relationship of dependence and definitions in a dynamic contradistinction against the established logic-centered, rationalized system. From absolute despair up to the exaltation of love a grading of emotions corresponds to a framework of symbols and signs which, theoretically and practically, delimit a code in which pattern, through the expressional symbols, is open to clarifications and enrichment. This open character corresponds to the more general postmodern demand for relativity, fortuitousness and formlessness and, theoretically, incorporates the classless juvenile population. Within the youngs everyday life tinged concepts, theoretically unconventional and independent, come into view. The expressional patterns give content-form to juvenile subcultures. The geometry of relationships is defined by the relationship determined by external symbols and the flexible signified so that the discussion is about defined relationships, through a language or meta-language that acquires meaning beyond the linguistic conventional codes. The signal discourse by which they mainly express themselves appoints the flexible forms of expression that secure adaptability in the changing conditions. As a communicative style, it compresses notions, which through their learning, ritually, integrate, functioning as an initiation system. The question that is plausibly formulated is how juvenile subcultures and their symbolic codes are formulated in a globalized environment. It seems that the evolution of a super-national culture as this is supported by the Media and expressed
5

Cite under the North Suburb writers evaluation. Graffiti in these areas are evaluated positively by the upper strata within the limits of originality, if not of cultural suggestion and perspective (Kalerante, 2005).

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Structural consuming society and juvenile culture:The speculation of a relationship

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with continuous and unhindered population transfer, commodities transportation, information, cultural elements and tendencies dissemination is prevailing. The supernational systems formulate clich messages while, at the same time, under an image montage, they juxtapose or and, theoretically, abolish the separating social or national lines and encourage the young to integrate into the market, while, concurrently they co-formulate the interethnic juvenile relationships networks by generating and activating communities of feelings by means such as image, music, art, fashion, technology etc. formulating according to Baudrillards terms (Baudrillard, 1983, Butler, 1999) the looking which is a form of artificial reality, prevailing in the modern era. The globalized culture functions, in this phase, in terms of unification since it offers the globalized generation (Edmunds & Turner, 2005) a common reference point that will permit it to outflank the fragmentation of the postmodern situation. Even if the long narrative is not brought back, converging notional domains are constructed, as a new type of homology (Hebdige Dick, 1979). A kind of macro-code consisting of different partial codes which the young use to interpret a reality and share experiences by attributing to meanings, generated within the codes, the concept of the familiar or natural is composed. The power of the globalized symbols lays exactly at their functionality to create integration prerequisites by generating audiences or social webs, overcoming the typical categorizations. In such a procedure, the rules system that formulates the dialogue (Eco, 1976), the estimation, essentially, of means, signs and subjects is appointed. Playing, actually, within the globalized system juvenile subcultures deductively filter their expressional means by isolating, apart from the social class, religious or national issues. Thus, pure patterns, super-national, prejudged as unifying channels and disdaining the notions of convention and historic past based on the historic secession with local ethnic criteria are formulated. The promise of cosmopolitanism mediated by the use of consuming commodities, cancels any separating lines by prevailing utopian projections 6 . Consuming commodities is ideologized as an imaginary liberating agreement, a utopian definitions contract, individual integrations, identities construction through the use of new symbols-signs that permit, theoretically, transgression. It is observed that the individual, product of a massed society, is self-defined under social, ficticious and virtual relationships, communicates and interacts through predefined patterns beyond the narrow boundaries of the local environment or personal and mutual relationships. The commodity-mediated self (Ewin, 1976) reinforced by the voluptuous culture of narcissism (Lasch, 1977) in the ideal time-space, is juxtaposed to the old, worn-out, rigid, local, and traditional. Perhaps the concept of consuming is eventually interpreted in different ways by the members of juvenile subcultures and those of the prevailing culture. It is about the risking of liberation, equality, democratization which acquires a different content through the different
6

Various theoreticians use, instead of the term utopia, the term dystopia wishing to express their critic over the capitalist system that gives feedback to the dream of a consuming paradise, whereas, in reality, individuals confront inequalities, flamboyant consuming, the worn out community, citizen society corrosion, extreme individualism, narcissism, and commodity fetishism. Under this sense the consuming paradise turns to a hell (Aldridge, 2003).

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Structural consuming society and juvenile culture:The speculation of a relationship

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readings of consumption by the corresponding groups. Fiske talks about an idiosyncratic democracy, the Marking Democracy as he calls it, in which the consumer conquers, juxtaposes, opposes, subverts and, eventually, changes the notions by which manufacturers coat the commodity. Fiske, in other words, reverses the School of Frankfurt classical standpoint about a mass society and its omnipotent impact of the cultural industry (John Fiske, 1989). Juvenile cultures, usually, by utilizing single symbols of the prevailing consuming culture, which characterizes as conservative and past, recomposes and projects them as a subverting apolitical product. Thus, symbols are not perceived as invariabilities, but through their deconstruction and separation procedure from the old framework of their meaning they are decoded as a new communication system (bricolage) and, therefore, post-interpretation (Hebdige, 1979, Gelder, 1997). 3. Metaphysical felicity, happiness, elements of the consuming society as juvenile subculture content. Selecting to integrate into a subculture is dynamically tied to a grid of choices related to preferential utilitarianism 7 which is defined and interpreted with assumed representations with reference to happiness. Adopting a style, expressed under a total of distinctive signs functioning and being defined as signified by the same entities, corresponds to the terms of an informal convention about the maximization of voluptuousness, not only as a result of integration, of participatory interaction under globalized terms, but, mainly, through consuming commodities tied to the juvenile culture itself. In market terms, the young as members of a culture also become customers, function (Aldridge, 2003) as members of a broader group of consumers. Indeed, the particular, the special product for a subculture e.g. clothing, acquires a special category (Rubinstein, 1995) for the market. The degree of peculiarity, the different, as a juvenile choice is tied to the conventions that the juvenile culture would theoretically subvert namely money, inequality and ecologic distraction. The money culture itself (Simmel, 1978) signifies the youngs life attachment to the capitalist society means by the declassification of all special values that potentially professed. Therefore, the young, through a lifestyle, are integrated to consumer groups opening, perhaps, under other terms the issue of classes (Clark et al. 1975, Hebdige, 1989) and the social differentiations, as it has already been mentioned. Material elements, therefore, acquire a special importance since they formulate and, concurrently, record preferences within a framework of signs enrichment and readjustment so that, in theoretical terms, a signifier signified relationship functions within the boundaries of the co-formulated juvenile culture. But this relationship with consuming and maximization of prosperity cancels the potentially equalizing affluence that would function in the ficticious juvenile group since the issue of sources distribution is posed (Dworkin, 2006) to fulfill the
7

Reference is made to utilitarianism in the sense ofconsequentialism. This dimension defines the good or bad based on the actions consequences, overlooking the notions of fair or unfair (see general about Jeremy Benthams utilitarianistic Liberalism in Kitromilidis, 1996).

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expressional needs in a connection where the alternative expressional forms presuppose the purchase of commodities and services. Even participating in common activities presupposes economic transaction. The subject socializing procedure, therefore, in a juvenile subculture presupposes the organization of a method by which its confidence towards the system choices will be reinforced. Thus, the concepts of democracy, security, familiarity acquire special significance as systems of explicit social conventions with the theoretical possibility of equalizing through a dictated mimic. Democracy is tied to individual freedom and the possibility of commodity circulation either it is about a material thing or a cultural good. The expressional means give individuals the possibility to accept messages, to group signified to choose and become self-realized through the boundaries of social and political definitions. The youngs perception about the system boundaries is based on the schematic and successive interpretations they render, as members of the juvenile culture, to the social reality through a roughed draft, mainly, of the control mechanisms. Juvenile culture contains the term of juvenile isolation from social conventions through the appointment of the youngs devotion systems to the group aspirations, while at the same time a system of evaluating rules informally regulating the collectivities with a secrecy, typicality and ficticious solidarity code is formulated and prioritized. In this phase the initiation rituals (Van Gennep, 1960; Bell, 1997) the behavior codes and signal discourse indisputably compose textual myths with a confined interpreting public, that of the initiated. Reference is especially made to control systems that the young attribute to adults, as a system continuously evolving and becoming sensitive by integrating structures of other systems with the simultaneous utilization of technology. They feel to be supervised, directed through an established, super-visual surveillance as practice of free and disciplined discourse. In other words, reference is made to authority structures as a suppressive and unforeseen power which through the narratives and forms of knowledge pursue to keep them in chains8. The young themselves use technology and virtual reality by improving the communication, contact, influence channels through a system of juvenile culture subdivisions to groups, in which power lays within the unification of different individuals in globalized systems. The consumption objects, therefore, compose a total of signs that are given meaning by the game of signs differences. The game of voluptuousness (Baudrillar, 1968) is secured through the estimation of fulfillment which the subject is deemed to feel. Within this framework a super-reality comprehensible and felt to the same entities is formulated by the consuming culture. By Laschs terms, extending the concept of private family they seek among juvenile groups a paradise in a heartless world (Lasch, 1977).
8

The discourse schematization and practice and the knowledge and authority relationships to formulate social institutions are the basic conceptual starting pivots of approaching the boundaries of knowledge over man and society (Foucault, 1987).

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Structural consuming society and juvenile culture:The speculation of a relationship

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In all stages, the passing from juvenile culture presupposes the development of social bondages which are linguistic, actively linguistic games in which the young participate by individualizing the social, as a pre-stage to the adult world, in the perception of authority through the dispersed ambiguities of narrative elements (Lyotard, 1984). 4. Consuming and juvenile culture: the young integration and exclusion boundaries The issue under discussion is whether the youngster can remain outside a juvenile culture and what eventually means to be a different youngster (Stratton, 1997). In this stage, their socialization in juvenile culture acquires a special significance since the integration and acceptance dimensions control the access possibility to the signifier and signified grid of the juvenile culture or the preferences framework chosen by the youngster. Whatever the cause from involuntary non integration to the voluntary choice the youngster starts with a deficit, lacking a life stage. The social position and organization of his personality acquires significance and definition through integration to social structures regulating totality and determine broader correlations and normative models. Social integration, therefore, regulates the acquisition of social identity which contains the view of the self through the others. It is about the social aspect of meaning based on the inter-reaction relationships and situations. A deficit in the social self formulation entails marginalization on successive levels. In the first phase, he is marginalized as the other, his non entrance to the consuming of cultural and material products makes him distinctive and selectable, as different, loosing safety9 and the invisible protection that a juvenile culture and the imagined community, the identification with the others10 secures. The system itself wishes to develop and promote juvenile culture for different reasons. Postmodernism has legalized difference and otherness by accepting juvenile culture patterns as fragmented probable worlds or asymmetric spaces 11. They are not, therefore deemed, by definition delinquent, threatening for the social system and, thus, their confrontation is milder or and their attitude is positive in some cases, as it has already been mentioned. Indeed, within the framework of the postmodern society co-existing model, the system accepts and acknowledges them as alternative expressional patterns lifestyles which eventually express a particular age category, in a transitional phase. So, they are the choices of a specific life-cycle stage and, therefore, temporary and insignificant. Moreover, through their particular aesthetic standards, the acceptance of the utopian cosmopolitanism transcendence, their consuming behavior is reinforced and new pockets permitting the capitalist system prevailing and reinforcement in a globalized scale open. Eventually, the system seems to integrate an informally institutionalized, controlled doubt. The young themselves as a group adopt a value system, indirectly appropriating system elements which reform
9

Giddens refers to the co-dependent individual to define the I want in order to preserve the ontological safety (Giddens, 2005). 10 It is used with some dissoluteness, reference is made to the known concept by Benedict Anderson (1983) imagined communities to refer to subcultures essentially diversified from the classic concept of community implying attachment to place as well as duration and stability (Gelder & Thorton, 1997). 11 It is about the definition, according to the definition of heterotopias (Foucault, 1984).

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and stylize as well as formulate on its basis a rules, informal laws, formal evaluation system and dictate attitudes and perceptions that will be, during their maturation, cohesive elements of the structural systems in which the young will reintegrate. If, up to this point, special attention to the isolated subject was given, now the social subject, which, being marginalized 12 , is not integrated in juvenile culture, by cancelling, as a stage the course towards social integration in broader groups and systems that are self-regulated and organized based on the pre-ficticious procedure in youth through juvenile culture is appointed. The loss of experience within juvenile culture with the non reception of images and situations as signs of the social world as that of culture generates an incomplete notion construction and a disrupted perception of the social self in relation to the social reality. The integration and acceptance, therefore, of the symbolic code of a juvenile culture is perceived as a pre-stage for integration in successive social domains. The non delinquent action through juvenile subcultures functions as a place of tension decrease, doubt phenomena unbending and, eventually, gradual familiarization with the system. The controlled contrasting discourse schematizes the legal expression of a different aspect which does not enfeeble social conventions, does not cancel them but contributes to their preservation, even if it seems to be tested or readjusted. The fluid ideological domain of juvenile subcultures renders them more expressional suggestions rather than standpoints and attitudes towards the social reality. Juvenile culture is constructed by reinforcing a chaotic and fragmentary experience, offering a reading utopia which usually does not manage to defend the colossal pessimism by moving under tension between mysticism and melancholy. It detects decadence yet it is shown to be entrapped in innumerable various structural capitalist dependences in which even the emotions are invested. The various expressional symbols formulating style as well as gestures, attitudes are the allusions, the textual references to a doctrine that does not exist, to an ideology which is sought after, to a free individuality that is not in existence. Thus, mimic is proved to be the par excellence of playing and preserving a myth, that of the juvenile different subculture.

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Generally about the exclusion issue (see Kaftantzoglou, 2006).

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