Abstract
Maritza Urteaga is a Mexican anthropologist, researcher in the graduate programme on Social Anthropology at Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia (INAH). She has conducted ethnographical researche with miners in Peru. In Mexico she has studied young punks and Mexican youth cultures. In collaboration with authors such as Jose Antonio Perez Islas, Rossana Reguillo, Jose Manuel Valenzuela, Rogelio Marcial and Carles Feixa, Urteaga sought to structure the notion of youth cultures in the Mexican context. Throughout her work she emphasises the importance of comprehending youth representations and practices as metaphors of social change, breaking up with linear interpretations that tend to silence the set of elements with which young people interact and with which they construct new ways and conceptions of politics, of social relationships (Urteaga, 2011). In her book La construcción juvenil de la realidad: jóvenes mexicanos contemporáneos, Urteaga deals with three main professional and personal issues: the structuration of a field studies on Mexican youth; the relationship between Anthropology and youth; and the ethnographic construction of today’s young people. These three subject matters are examined in five chapters.
In the first chapter, Urteaga points out some conceptual clarifications on the term youth, bringing out its differences with regard to adolescence and showing how it emerged in the European society during the eighteenth century. She takes as the work of Feixa (1998) and Lévi and Schmitt (1996) as reference points. From this conceptualization, she takes a panoramic point of view on the historical construction of the Mexican youth from the beginning of the twentieth century to the present day situation. Taking into consideration the previous research she employs the concepts of images, representations and imaginaries on young people. Urteaga aims to show on the one hand, the social construction of the category of youth by the hegemonic institutions such as—family, school, work, religious institutions, political parties, intermediate hosts, army (Feixa, 1998; Margulis and Urresti, 2000). On the other hand, she points to the construction of youth culture, as corresponding to the territories and spaces for youth sociability created in the interstices of the institutional spaces, such as neighbourhood, streets, movie theatres, music, parties, places of entertainment. For Urteaga, the hegemonic institutions tend to place young people as passive subjects, which would need education and qualification in order to prepare them for the future, making invisible their autonomous practices and actions. On the perspective of the youth construction of culture, young people are considered active agents, as they participate in the processes of creation and circulation of culture. Urteaga identifies three areas: sociability, culture. In her ethnographical researches, Urteaga demonstrates how such participation and cultural youth productions take place.
The second chapter is dedicated to continuing the theoretical discussion on youth, but now seeking to establish a wide view towards the construction of a ‘new paradigm in studies on youth’. In this context, Urteaga emphasizes that youth is a socio-cultural construction that changes its form and content through time and space, in contrast to the essentialist view of the concept of adolescence. According to Urteaga (2011:150), the new paradigm in youth is proposed as a theoretical and interpretative space that helps us to understand the construction of childhood and of youth as social institutions which exist beyond the activity of any teenager or young person in particular. It means that both concepts of childhood and of youth are discursive formations constructed in every culture according to every different historical moment. This new paradigm has methodological implications that bring the reader get closer to and focus on a youth agent who is highly complex and diverse in its practices and perceptions about life. Thus, it becomes possible to understand the intense ethnographical insertion in Urteaga’s work, which approaches youth scenarios in order to realize how such ‘youth construction of reality’ occurs, hence the name of her book La construcción juvenil de la realidad.
In the third chapter, Urteaga discusses the relationship between young people and public spaces, emphasizing the fact that recent research refers to young people as social and cultural agent produced by modern urban society. If so many institutions were historically established to imprison the young (in family structures, schools, associations, military service, etc.), current youth movements has become one of those that use the public spaces to liberate such institutions (Trilla, 2011). The forms of occupation and use of the public spaces are very different and they are not always performed under consent. This may imply controversies, restrictions and disputes, both in intergenerational and intragenerational perspectives. Urteaga stresses that these differences are even bigger in a world city (Hannerz, 1998), which is the case of Mexico City. This context is the starting point for the author’s study on current youth forms of living in the Mexican capital. She chooses three forms of occupation of urban places to analyze: the indigenous young people; the trend-setters; and the young bandas or pandillas. The trendsetters and the indigenous young people occupy the urban space of downtown, while the bands or pandillas occupy the local public space: the neighbourhood, some local streets. In this work, in its fourth chapter the realities of indigenous young people are described, while the fifth chapter focuses on the young trendsetters.
In the fourth chapter, Urteaga describes her research on indigenous young people from three perspectives: age, ethnicity and the migrant background. One may say that Urteaga performs an important academic and social contribution when she focuses on the reality of young people in such social situation, considering that the ethnic indigenous studies traditionally prioritize on the leaders, generally male and adult people, leaving out by default young people and children in their analysis (Urteaga, 2011). Using ethnographic dense insertions, the author writes about social conditions and changes towards production by the indigenous young people. Simultaneously she discusses the issue of the indigenous youth as living in a bordering area, a socio-cultural space under construction (in progress) and as a ‘transited intersection’ placed ‘in and in between’ the rural and urban areas (Urteaga, 2011: 206).
Urteaga dedicates the fifth and final chapter to the trend-setters, those who produce new ways of life. Her ethnography stressed the different roles of young people in the current urban life and culture. Perhaps because they are part of industrialized societies in the beginning of the twenty first century, there are very few studies on these groups. Trendsetting is a marketing category to name people that Hanner calls ‘experts on expression’ or ‘people who deal with culture’. According to Urteaga (2011: 334), trendsetters are individuals with an innovative way of thinking and acting that transcends the present time and projects him or herself to the future; they are people highly motivated by being and remaining ahead in everything that may be new in his or her habitat and in his or her social and cultural network. They are identified by their look, their sense of fashion, their manner of speaking and by their behaviour in general. Of the ages ranging from 15 to 35, the trend-setters come from every socio-economic group. They are identified by their attitude towards categories that are sensitive to appearance, like clothing, cosmetics, technology, music, cosmetics, drinks, etc. Urteaga presents some features of the young trendsetters: they divide their time between work and leisure and the work itself is associated to an idea of satisfaction, and not to sacrifice. They participate in exhibitions, opening ceremonies, book launchings, fashion parades etc, being always ‘connected’ during these events which serves them as inspiration to their projects. They use creativity, which is more than an attribute, as a search that is always associated to generating something different. The young trendsetters generally conduct their work in a self-suggestive and collective form and are very connected to social networks. Finally, the trendsetters have an open attitude towards the use of technology to support their creative, artistic and entrepreneurial processes.
Urteaga’s research points out to an existing relationship between trendsetters and different youth subcultures: ravers, rappers (hip-hoperos), skaters, cholos, punks, gothics, head bangers, as long as these subcultures serve them as inspiration to their productions. Such relationship takes place due to their spiritual (mind) and ideological openness with what is happening in the everyday life, which is different from some other subcultures which are more airtight (Urteaga, 2001: 390).
The book written by Maritza Urteaga is an important contribution to the studies on youth, both for its profound theoretical discussion and for its ethnographic abundant variety. When proposing a new theoretical paradigm, along with other authors, Urteaga stresses the importance of comprehending youth as a socio-historical category that is plural and changes its form and content through time and space.