Music as Youth Culture

Dan Laughey's book is a very welcome addition to the sociological literature on music and culture. The central aim of the text is to explore young people's practices of music consumption, and the ways in which music is situated within everyday interactions. Within this aim, Laughey explores both interaction in music consumption sights (such as venues of music listening) as well as personal consumption practices, and the ways in which both of these aspects are played out in relation to a connection between the 'local' and the 'global' and the idea of intergenerational discourse and practices. The book's eight chapters comprise a review of literature on music and youth culture; an empirical investigation of historical and contemporary youth music practices; and a theorisation of practice through the use of concepts that bring these historical and contemporary practices together.

The book explores a broad literature from cultural studies, and does an interesting job of examining, from an interactionist stance, some of the limitations of their arguments and theories. For example, Laughey shows that the concept of subcultures has often been used in a way that separates social groups off from each other, without examining the ways in which group 'members' interact across these boundaries. Similarly, he illustrates, as others have before him (e.g. Martin, 1995) that the approach to conceptualising...