PUNK AND HIP-HOP AS SOCIAL MOVEMENTS?

Abstract

I examine in this study two transterritorial youth cultures – punk and hiphop –, considering the possibility of being new political agents territorialized and “placed”. The starting point of the text are some concerns which have conditioned my attention, related to the links between sociability and city in space-time. Punk e hip-hop are regarded as a possibility of identity building for youngsters, who are located in many places in the city and who also build their nets of sociability and their own territories in the city. This territorialization is not indifferent towards the concrete city in which it is realized. In the light of this, I argue that classifying punk and of hip-hop as social movements can only be undertaken under consideration of very clear parameters. Empirical evidence for this argument derives from the history of both young cultures at different scale levels, from the world to the place, taking as reference a midsized city in the state of Paraná. To finalize, I present a preliminary reflection about the socio-spatial dialectic, a subject for which studies like this one can bring some contribution.