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Affective topologies of rural youth embodiment

  • Authors: Farrugia, David , Smyth, John , Harrison, Tim
  • Date: 2016
  • Type: Text , Journal article
  • Relation: Sociologia Ruralis Vol. 56, no. 1 (2016), p. 116-132
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  • Description: This article explores the affective, embodied dimensions of young rural people's relationship with space and place. Relationship with space and place has been recognised as a significant dimension of rural youths' subjectivities but it has been primarily understood through representational perspectives which focus on young people's perceptions, images, or discursive constructions of their local places. In contrast, this article draws on non-representational approaches to subjectivity and space to highlight the embodied, sensuous entanglements between young people's subjectivities and the spaces they have inhabited and experienced. Qualitative data gathered as part of a project exploring youths' subjectivities in regional Australia shows that young people's experience of their rural locale, as well as their relationship to the city, reflect an affective topology of relations of proximity and rhythmic tempo which emerges from the relationship between the space of their bodily hexis and the spaces and places they are situated within. These non-representational, embodied processes are intrinsic to rural youths' subjectivities and structure how young people approach and navigate their futures. © 2015 The Authors. Sociologia Ruralis © 2015 European Society for Rural Sociology.

'If anyone helps you then you're a failure' Youth homeless, identity and relationships in late modernity

The ‘lamentable sight’ of homelessness and the society of the spectacle

  • Authors: Gerrard, Jessica , Farrugia, David
  • Date: 2015
  • Type: Text , Journal article
  • Relation: Urban Studies Vol. 52, no. 12 (2015), p. 2219-2233
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  • Description: In this paper, we contend that the visual discourses of poverty and inequality are constructed through everyday social relations – the visual, spatial and bodily ‘encounter’ with homelessness in public space, steeped in the politics of the stigmatised Other. Bringing together Erving Goffman’s theory of everyday encounters with Guy Debord’s society of the spectacle, we explore the intersection between the ‘sight’ and ‘scene’ of homelessness and the spectacle of capital in public space. We identify how everyday encounters with homelessness perpetuate the notion that homelessness is ‘out of joint’ in relation to the spatial and aesthetic logic of capital and commodity consumption and performance. Reflecting on the repercussions of this for understanding homelessness, we explore the aesthetic dimension of the experience of homelessness within the context of a public space saturated by the social and aesthetic relations and of capital. © 2014, © Urban Studies Journal Limited 2014.

The possibility of symbolic violence in interview with young people experiencing homelessness

Towards a spatialised youth sociology: The rural and the urban in times of change

Responsibility, intersubjectivity, and recognition: The case of Australian young people experiencing homelessness

  • Authors: Farrugia, David
  • Date: 2009
  • Type: Text , Conference paper
  • Relation: TASA 2009
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  • Description: This paper draws on qualitative interviews with young people to theorise the relationship between notions of responsibility and the process of intersubjectivity and recognition for young people experiencing homelessness. It is argued that homelessness as a cultural trope carries a symbolic burden, associated with notions of irresponsibility, passivity, and moral failure. The paper argues that for young people who are or have experienced homelessness, these associations must be reflexively negotiated in the course of managing their intersubjective ties to achieve the recognition as worthy subjects which is a condition of meaningful subjectivity. This recognition is achieved in cultures of sociability in the context of literal homelessness, although when some young people move out of literal homelessness, they seek intersubjective ties from new sources of recognition associated with symbolic capital that the young people themselves recognise. Part of this process is a definition of previous intersubjective ties which is characterised by notions of irresponsibility and moral failure. Furthermore, young people in this project reconstruct the notion of responsibility, allowing the experience of morally worthy intersubjective selves in the context of the kind of institutional dependence intrinsic to the experience of homelessness.
  • Description: E1

Addressing the problem of reflexivity in theories of reflexive modernisation : Subjectivity and structural contradiction

  • Authors: Farrugia, David
  • Date: 2015
  • Type: Text , Journal article
  • Relation: Journal of Sociology Vol. 51, no. 4 (2015), p. 872-886
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  • Description: This article addresses debates within theories of reflexive modernisation about the meaning of reflexivity for understanding contemporary subjectivities. The article demonstrates that the contribution that this concept could make to theories of modern subjectivity has been limited by the problematic assumption that reflexivity describes a form of critical rationality leading to emancipation from social constraint and the sovereign self-fashioning of identity. Both critiqued and defended on these grounds, debate about reflexivity and reflexive modernisation has been limited by a sociologically unsustainable vision of modern subjectivity, and has left theories of reflexive modernisation open to the accusation that they are blind to the relationship between subjectivity and social structure. In response, this article constructs a theory of reflexivity as a social practice which reflects the contradictions and insecurities intrinsic to modern social structures. Conceived as a social practice, reflexivity is a concept that combines the macro and the micro, the structural and the personal. Capturing historically specific forms of structural organisation, as well as the practices through which these structures are made into biographies, the concept of reflexive subjectivity can make a significant theoretical contribution to understandings of modern identities. © The Author(s) 2013.

The symbolic burden of homelessness: Towards a theory of youth homelessness as embodied subjectivity

  • Authors: Farrugia, David
  • Date: 2011
  • Type: Text , Journal article
  • Relation: Journal of Sociology Vol. 47, no. 1 (2011), p. 71-87
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  • Description: Young people’s subjective experience of homelessness is constituted by particular social processes which to this point have not been explicitly theorized. This article draws on qualitative interviews with young people who have experienced or are experiencing homelessness in order to argue that homelessness carries a symbolic burden, the acknowledgement of which is crucial to understanding the process of embodied subjectivity for young people who have this experience. Popular understandings construct those who experience homelessness as irresponsible, passive and obscene. Young people are aware of this, and this knowledge has consequences for the process of subjectivity for these young people. This article draws on conceptual contributions from Bourdieu and Massumi to theorize the nature of the symbolic burden of homelessness and reflect on the issues involved in understanding the process of subjectivity in the context of this kind of inequality.

Youth homelessness and individualised subjectivity

  • Authors: Farrugia, David
  • Date: 2011
  • Type: Text , Journal article
  • Relation: Journal of Youth Studies Vol. 14, no. 7 (2011), p. 761-775
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  • Description: This article aims to contribute to understandings of youth homelessness and subjectivity by analysing identity construction in terms of young people’s negotiation of the structural and institutional environment of youth homelessness. I suggest that while existing literature on this topic concentrates mainly on micro-social encounters, the identities of young people experiencing homelessness can be understood as constructed by structural processes described by Ulrich Beck’s individualisation thesis. Narratives from 20 Australian young people are analysed for how their identities are constructed in their contact with the institutions which govern youth homelessness, and the way these young people make sense of the structural conditions they are facing. Two narrative trajectories are identified. In narratives describing movement into homelessness, young people articulate feelings of failure and shame, consequences of their individualised understanding of their biography. In narratives describing movement out of homelessness into a home, young people articulate feelings of strength and pride, while also describing those who remain homeless in ways which reflect the status of homelessness as a stigmatised difference. This article concludes by discussing the way that structural, institutional and subjective processes interact to produce the identities of young people experiencing homelessness, and reflects on the utility of understanding youth homelessness as a form of individualised social inequality.

Vulnerable, 'at risk', 'disengaged'. Regional young people.

Youth, homelessness, and embodiment: Moralised aesthetics and affective suffering

  • Authors: Farrugia, David
  • Date: 2010
  • Type: Text , Conference paper
  • Relation: TASA 2010
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  • Description: This paper explores the process of embodiment for young people experiencing homelessness. Drawing on interviews with 20 young people, I relate descriptions of embodied feelings and practices to the moral and aesthetic regulatory norms which construct bodies in contemporary modern societies. Young people experiencing homelessness are excluded from the private sphere, meaning they are unable to practice the reflexive body practices required of modern subjects. These young people also lack access to consumer goods, meaning they are unable to construct the forms of aesthetic embodiment expected of young people in a consumer society. The outcome of these exclusions is a form of embodied suffering. Drawing on Massumi‟s concept of affect, I describe the means by which power relations come to constitute embodied feelings, and analyse the emergence of reflexive body practices by young people negotiating the move from homelessness into home. This paper therefore traces the means by which structural inequality is embodied and results in affective suffering for the disadvantaged.
  • Description: E1

Emplacing young people in an Australian rural community : An extraverted sense of place in times of change

  • Authors: Farrugia, David , Smyth, John , Harrison, Tim
  • Date: 2014
  • Type: Text , Journal article
  • Relation: Journal of Youth Studies Vol. 17, no. 9 (2014), p. 1152-1167
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  • Description: This paper explores the identities of young people in an Australian rural town in relation to contemporary discussions of place and social change. The paper responds to dominant narratives in youth studies which position individualised, reflexive subjectivities at the centre of a homogeneous, placeless modernity with an emplaced analysis of contemporary youth identities. Young people's narratives reveal an attachment to place created in community activities and day to day farm life, articulated in the language of the ‘rural idyll’. Narratives about imagined future lives articulate classed and gendered competencies and dispositions acquired in and through place, reflexively mobilised in life planning practices. Therefore, whilst substantial social changes are reshaping youth identities across rural places, young people's responses to these changes are forged in the way that identities are emplaced, as well as articulated in reflexive orientations towards their future lives. © 2014, © 2014 Taylor & Francis.

Unpacking the black box: The problem of agency in the sociology of youth

  • Authors: Coffey, Julia , Farrugia, David
  • Date: 2014
  • Type: Text , Journal article
  • Relation: Journal of Youth Studies Vol. 17, no. 4 (2014), p. 461-474
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  • Description: Agency is a conceptual problem for youth studies. While the term is used in many analyses of young people's lives, this paper argues that the nature and conceptual meaning of agency remain ambiguous: agency is a 'black box' which while fundamental to youth sociology remains unpacked. Ontological and epistemological confusion about the concept means that appeals to agency in contemporary youth sociology beg the very questions they claim to answer. Nevertheless, the concept has become central to the conceptual and political basis of youth research, coming to stand for practices that are 'bounded' by structures and resist existing states of affairs. This limits the explanatory power of theoretical frameworks in youth studies, and does not serve the ethical commitments of a politically engaged discipline. Identifying conceptual and normative problems raised by the way agency is deployed, this paper argues that a conceptually powerful and politically engaged youth sociology must move beyond the problem of agency as it stands, and incorporates theoretical perspectives on youth subjectivities and social action that indicate possibilities for how this might take place. © 2013 Taylor & Francis

The reflexive subject : Towards a theory of reflexivity as practical intelligibility

  • Authors: Farrugia, David
  • Date: 2013
  • Type: Text , Journal article
  • Relation: Current Sociology Vol. 61, no. 3 (2013), p. 283-300
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  • Description: This article argues for a new perspective on the meaning and implications of reflexivity for understanding subjectivity. The two dominant perspectives on the genesis and consequences of reflexive subjectivities are discussed and critiqued in terms of the way they understand the relationship between reflexivity and the wider social world. Reflexive modernisation theory is critiqued for its empty and homogeneous view of reflexivity stemming ultimately from the absence of a theory of the subject. Critical realism is critiqued for its view of reflexivity as a disembodied rationality and its hostility to any connection between reflexivity and pre-reflexive foundations for identity. Drawing on the dialogue between these theories and practice theories, this article creates a new theory of reflexivity which overturns theoretical orthodoxies viewing reflexivity and social practice as opposed concepts. Based on insights from Bourdieu and other practice theorists, this article argues for a theory of reflexivity as actualising a practical intelligibility shaped by the dispositions of the habitus. Examples from empirical literature examining the relationship between reflexivity and class inequality support a theory of reflexive subjectivity based on principles of practice theory. © The Author(s) 2013.
  • Description: 2003011105

Rural young people in late modernity : Place, globalisation and the spatial contours of identity

  • Authors: Farrugia, David , Smyth, John , Harrison, Tim
  • Date: 2014
  • Type: Text , Journal article
  • Relation: Current Sociology Vol. 62, no. 7 (2014), p. 1036-1054
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  • Description: This article draws together arguments for an interdisciplinary ‘spatial turn’ within sociology to analyse the subjectivities and biographical imaginings of Australian rural youth. It draws on a theoretical dialogue between theories of social change, and developments in socio-spatial theory in order to analyse the spatial contours of young people’s narratives, making a case for the significance of an ‘extraverted’ and porous sense of place for understanding rural youth identity. After a theoretical argument about the contemporary meaning of place for theories of globalisation and individualisation, the article presents two theoretically driven sets of case studies. The first discusses rural youth whose identities speak to the importance of place and ‘the local’ as resources for identity, while the second describes young people whose identities are ‘stretched’ across multiple spaces and locales. The analysis speaks to the importance of place for understanding the forms of reflexivity that rural youth mobilise in constructing their place in the world, and speaks to new ways in which to re-embed sociological analyses of youth within the spatially complex social landscapes of a globalised world.

Young people and structural inequality : beyond the middle ground

  • Authors: Farrugia, David
  • Date: 2013
  • Type: Text , Journal article
  • Relation: Journal of Youth Studies Vol. 16, no. 5 (2013), p. 679-693
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  • Description: This paper draws on recent debates about the work of Ulrich Beck to explore the conceptual promise of concepts such as individualisation and reflexivity for understanding contemporary youth inequalities. The aim of the paper was to suggest a theory of reflexivity that views reflexive practices as one of the ways that inequalities operate in modernity. The argument is made in three stages. In the first, debates about the meaning of reflexivity for understanding young people's identities are reviewed, foregrounding suggestions for dialogue and synthesis between the individualisation thesis and the work of Bourdieu. Taking this as a starting point, the paper then reviews changing themes in the literature on young people's identities and the structuring of their biographies amidst conditions of social change, arguing that reflexivity is an important feature of young people's identities, and that reflexive practices articulate classed inequalities under conditions of 'structured fragmentation'. The paper then argues that reflexivity is a means by which the dispositions of the habitus are realised and reworked in practice. The paper concludes by emphasising that reflexive practices are oriented towards local structural conditions, and are one of the ways in which economies of cultural capital operate in late modernity. © 2013 Copyright Taylor and Francis Group, LLC.
  • Description: 2003011218

Moral distinctions and structural inequality : homeless youth salvaging the self

  • Authors: Farrugia, David , Smyth, John , Harrison, Tim
  • Date: 2016
  • Type: Text , Journal article
  • Relation: Sociological Review Vol. 64, no. 2 (2016), p. 238-255
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  • Description: This paper explores the construction and contestation of moral distinctions as a dimension of contemporary structural inequality through a focus on the subjectivities constructed by young people who have experienced homelessness. Empirical material from two research projects shows that in young people's narratives of homelessness, material insecurity intertwines with the moral economies at work in neoliberal capitalist societies to construct homelessness as a state of moral disgrace, in which an ungovernable experience is experienced as a moral failure. When young people gain access to secure housing, the increasing stability and security of their lives is narrated in terms of a moral adherence to personal responsibility and disciplined conduct. Overall the paper describes an economy of worth organized around distinctions between order and chaos, self-governance and unruliness, morality and disgrace, which structures the experience of homelessness. As young people's position in relation to these moral ideals reflects the material conditions of their lives, their experiences demonstrate the way that moral hierarchies contribute to the existence and experience of structural inequalities in neoliberal capitalist societies. © 2016 The Editorial Board of The Sociological Review.
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