Welcome to episode 018 of The Sizzle!
You can join my mailing list to stay in loop about Sizzle Episodes and to receive [semi regular] emails about using psychology in your life: https://www.drjotaylor.com/my-mailing-list
During our conversation, Yusef and I talk about a lot of things, including"
- Road Culture / Street Culture / Youth Culture
- Not underestimating young people
- Emancipatory education
- "If you live in the world, you will have to do some sociology"
- Sometimes the people who are invited to make contributions are the people who should be least listened to
- Research and extracting value from people and situations
- How people can leverage road culture for their own benefit
- Road life, road man and archetypal tropes
- "Badness", "Badmen" and the way that language moves on
- Young people are not one thing
- Their engagement to road life is relational, they don't just do one thing, they aren't "just road".
- How young people might strategically engage with aspects of road culture (e.g. dress, music, language etc) as part of their diet of engagement
- How road life varies across a lifetime
- The importance of not rendering spaces as criminal, road life is not synonymous to criminality.
- Attempts to extract value from road culture and black diasporic culture
- Road life as a cultural continuum, ranging from spectacular actors to people who are affiliated
- Road culture as a culture which borders Blackness and other types of marginalisation
- The dangers of limiting the creativity in Road Cultures to "just rap music"
- People's situation causing them difficulty but also being a tool which can be leveraged to create value
- "The apex of authenticity and Consumability" - artists
- How can we acknowledge the diversity within Road Culture and not deracialise it.
- Road culture acknowledges that marginalised communities have created value in the face of oppression
- The Road as a function, comprising business, social and practical elements
- The history of "the street", when children would have not had formal education and would have been finding ways to get by in that area.
- Public vs Private spaces in urban centres
- The role of online space in taking the functions of The Road and The Street
- How narratives around optimism and aspiration can be exclusive
- How some states or experiences might be "worse than death" (e.g. not being loved, being disgusting etc)
- The Munpain as a psychosocial concept (a malaise or suffering which is located in the social world)
- Everyday suffering and where it can be located: within a person or originating within social structures.
- The way small moments of pain can add up to an overwhelming experience.
- The importance of designing interventions with communities and groups who are intended beneficiaries.
- Oppositional presentations as a survival mechanism.
- How violence can be a reaction to mundanity and fear.
Find Yusef at @SociologySef
Read his article: Dying to live: Youth violence and the munpain https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0038026119842012
Find me at @jgetaylor (twitter)
Sign up to my mailing list: https://www.drjotaylor.com/my-mailing-list
Further reading:
Darker than Blue - Paul Gilroy
Cruel Optimism - Lauren Berlant
Teaching to Transgress - bell hooks
