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Nowadays a lot of research describes most young people as barely interested in politics, expressing little trust in political institutions and far from any forms of institutional political participation. Moreover, most of the engaged youth are involved in forms of participation described as more civic and social than political, weakly ideological, more and more often digital and developed in virtual space, and usually experienced as one among several components of everyday personal lives. The article explores youth activism in political squats because it is a form of participation which, in countertendency, is political and radical in its aims and strategies, explicitly ideologically inspired, strongly rooted in physical places, and often quite central in everyday personal lives. The text is based on research conducted in the city of Turin (Italy) by means of qualitative interviews, participant observation and document analysis. Four main interconnected thematic dimensions are considered: Individuals&rsquo ; biographical paths and meanings of activism ; distinctive lifestyles and cultural sensitivities among the activists ; collective narratives about contemporary society and possibilities of social change ; patterns of intervention and forms of organization. On the basis of these analyses, the article maintains that this form of activism can be usefully interpreted as a real lifestyle, which has an explicit and intense political sense, but which young activists also connect with a much wider, more differentiated set of meanings.

Most research about young people and religion in the Western context underlines their growing distance from institutionalised forms of religious participation, and explains it as a consequence of the weakness of their religious frames, as well as of other factors that interfere with the translation of these frames into forms of action. At the basis of this interpretation there is the hypothesis that these forms of participation are means of actualisation of religious values on the basis of religious beliefs and worldviews. Referring to recent research about young activists in Catholic groups in Italy, the article shows instead that their individual frames of involvement are variegated, and largely go beyond the boundaries of the religious field: religious factors are often not even considered as fundamental for collective identification, which is also rooted in shared non-religious distinctive meanings, practices and lifestyles.

In recent decades, social research on youth in Italy has explored a wide range of issues through different interpretative and methodological approaches. However, there are very few studies that seek to identify the keynote features of the juvenile condition. This article argues that collective identities and forms of identification among youth are shaped more and more frequently through the sharing of social practices, of the meanings connected to these practices, and of more comprehensive lifestyles. With reference to four main fields (sport, music, politics, religion) and focusing on youth cultures, it analyses the connections between behaviours, attitudes, values and representations of youth actively involved in each of these different fields. The aim is to identify transversal processes through which young people today elaborate and adopt social practices and cultural profiles, create new social forms, and develop innovative signification processes.

"This volume, taking an international perspective, reconstructs the main interpretative models developed for the analysis of subcultures and lifestyles, and then proposes a new analytical model based on an intersection between these two research traditions"--

"This book draws together both primary and secondary empirical research and existing literature to examine transgressive subcultural activities and engagement in digital social spaces (DSS). The book addresses four objectives: 1. To understand how young peoples' subcultures arise online and they are constructed and experienced in DSS; 2. To understand how and why DSS matter to young people; 3. To understand if any DSS controls exist in these online spaces; and 4. To understand how identity locations such as (social class, gender and ethnicity and/or their intersections) shape young peoples' engagement and behaviour(s) in DSS. In addressing these objectives with a focus on European contributions, the text provides a holistic understanding of the purpose of digital social spaces in shaping young peoples' identities and self-perceptions. It will be of interest to postgraduate students, secondary school teachers, lecturers and scholars in education, sociology, youth studies and technology"--

In the past decades, urban scholars have discussed at length how the production of aesthetically pleasing and consumption-enticing cityscapes has become the core of postindustrial urban economies. Critical analyses have underlined how the "dictatorship of the visual" characterizing these urban processes implies the expulsion from public life of "unacceptable" differences and conflicts within. While fundamental, these perspectives have not fully engaged with a variety of urban practices and groups that are simultaneously addressed by urban leaderships as visible assets and threats for image-based redevelopment processes. Drawing on two ethnographic studies in Turin and Bologna, Italy, this article contributes to address this gap by focusing on parkour and graffiti's ambiguous and controversial positions in these rebranding cities. By addressing how traceurs and writers reconciled and negotiated their positioning within image-led urban redevelopment processes, this article expands existing discussions on the nexus between (in)visibility, publicness, embodied geographies, and aestheticized cityscapes.