Yeni Zamanlarda Genç Yurttaşların Katılımı Konferansı 9-10-11 Mayıs 2014 www.sebeke.org.tr www.twitter.com/sebekeprojesi www.facebook.com/sebekeprojesi www.sebeke.org.tr/ www.instagram.com/sebekeprojesi/ www.pinterest.com/sebekeprojesi/

1. Bodies, Identities, Subcultures
and Participation
Dr Paul Sweetman
Senior Lecturer in Culture, Media &
Creative Industries, King’s College London
CONFERENCE ON PARTICIPATION OF YOUNG CITIZENS IN THE NEW ERA
/ YENİ ZAMANLARDA GENÇ YURTTAŞLARIN KATILIMI KONFERANSI
Istanbul Bilgi University NGO Training and Research Center
/ İstanbul Bilgi Üniversitesi STK Eğitim ve Araştırma Birimi
9-11 May 2014

5. “It makes you feel individual ... You know,
like, everyone's born with roughly the same
bodies, but you've created yours in your own
image, [in line with] what your imagination
wants your body to look like. It's like
someone's given you something, and then
you've made it your own, so you're not like
everyone else any more.”

6. But:
“You can’t, well, you can buy it, but you can’t like, go to the
shop and try it on and say, ‘I’ll have one of them,’ and just
walk out with it. You’ve gotta sit there for hours and put up
with the pain. So even if you’re really rich, if you can’t stand
the pain, you can’t get tattooed.”
“People can buy an expensive outfit or, you know, a leather
jacket, but, [well] you can buy a tattoo, but you’ve still
gotta put up with the pain and the process … There’s a lot
more that goes into it.”

7. “because it's permanent and it's painful and it's
all these things, and you feel special
somehow, you know, it's quite strong, it's
maybe more close, and more passionate than,
than golf say.”

10. “Subcultural practice is not just about re-arranging
commodities, it is also about the exuberant vitality of the
here and now, and … the development of new forms of
physical capital, bodies and subjectivities. It doesn't
necessarily achieve anything beyond a fleeting enlivening
of the present, and if it does, this is as much about the re-
working of the body through ludic forms of self-discipline as
it is about creative resolutions of a symbolic kind … The
gratuitous expenditure of energy and effort to no formal
end, other than the development and display of subcultural
competencies and virtuosities, and the collective
reproduction of the here and now.” (Sweetman 2013: 5.2)

11. “it may be that one way to avoid CCCS-style over-
theoreticism without reducing subcultures to the status of
youth culture in general or any-other-lifestyle would be to
reformulate the concept in precisely these terms; as
relatively committed lifestyle groupings characterised by
the gratuitous expenditure of energy on non-instrumental
pleasures and 'extra-curricular’ virtuosities, leading not
only to the temporary appropriation of time and space, but
the development of alternative knowledges, capitals,
bodies and subjectivities which may themselves stand apart
from, or challenge, institutionalised or hegemonic forms.”
(Sweetman 2013: 5.3)

16. “The whole point of the skate space is that it is a
naturally-evolved environment, a found space used in
response to accidents of architecture. The community
at the Undercroft has evolved around this type of use
over four decades and the natural progression of the
environment cannot be replicated. A purpose built
skate area, regardless of a skater led design, is a fake
and homogenised version of an urban environment and
as such completely removes the entire ethos and
artistic value of the urban arts practised in the
Undercroft.” (http://www.llsb.com/about/faq/)

17. “No matter how the SBC package the new
space, what is created there will be artificial and
contrived. In its very essence; a skate park that
is against the ethos of its perceived users. There
are plenty of examples of where such contrived
spaces have failed.”
(http://www.llsb.com/about/faq/)