Transcript The Internet in Youth Cultures

Sofia Laine, PhD candidate, University of Helsinki, Department
of politics and economics
“[...] freedom of movement is not the end purpose of
politics, [...] it is rather the substance and meaning of
all things political. In this sense politics and freedom
are identical, and wherever this kind of freedom does
not exist, there is no political space in the true sense”
(Hannah Arendt, 2005, The Promise of Politics)
 Political = influencing attempts to society or
community – motivation to make a difference, change
things
 What the participation should create is the new forms
of knowledge, power, action and know-how, needed to
create a different type of society.
 participants
do not feel they are being forced into
doing something, but are actually led to take
actions which are inspired or directed by centers
outside their control.
 Who has planned the activity? What roles young
people get in the process – are they just
’consuming’ what adults have created or are they
active in all phases (planning, building,
executing/realising, reflecting and evaluating)?
 Young people should be the main actors in each
phase, adults would give support when needed.
 To
understand the many dimensions of
participation, one needs to enquire seriously into
all its roots and consequences, these going deep
into the heart of human relationships and to the
socio-cultural realities conditioning them.
 No form of social interaction or participation can
ever be meaningful and liberating, unless the
participating individuals act as free and unbiased
human beings.
“[…] to participate means to live and to relate
differently. It implies, above all, the recovery of
one’s inner freedom – that is, to learn, to listen, to
share, free from any fear or predefined conclusion,
belief or judgment.” (Rahnema 2010, 140)
 includes
qualities as attention, sensitivity,
goodness or compassion,
 and these qualities should be supported by such
regenerative acts as learning, relating and
listening
 … these work for both inner and outer
treansformations.

Everyday-makers (EMs) invent a variety of ’small’
everyday tactics and narratives about how one can
make a political difference as an ’ordinary’ political
citizen (Bang and Sørensen 2001). Create new practices
of participation here and now. ‘Way of subjectivity’
By establishing practices and empowering participants, their
spaces of experience allow ordinary people to become actors
in their life more and to contribute to social change in very
concrete ways, starting with their everyday lives. (Pleyers
2010, 102).

Expert-citizens (ECs) work mostly full-time in a variety
of administratively-initiated partnerships, teams and
projects. Also workers in the youth organisations are
many times part of this stream. ‘Way of reason’
Ralph Nader (22.9.2010): consumers’ decisions are
changing the companies. And the companies are
changing the world. Consumers actions may have an
influence on political decision-making.
 Fair-trade, local and organic production
 Recycling, ecological travelling, boycotting
 Time-banking
 “How our life here affects the lives on the other side
of the world?”
 ”How our living habits affects the lives of next
generations? What we leave to them? Will there be
anything left?”

European Youth Forum (YFJ) was independently
established by youth organisations in 1996. As decided
in the Youth in Action Programme 2007-2013, YFJ gets
up to 80 per cent of its funding from European
Commission. With this funding the Commission expects
‘active contribution by the YFJ to the political
processes relevant to youth at European level’.
 EU Presidency Youth Event (case study 2006): All the
other youth participants who were not part of the YFJ
were frustrated of the lack of the influencing
possibilities and lack of roles.
 For whom should these political spaces be? What is the
aim of these meetings? Just to network and exchange
experiences or something else too?

 The
more ECs cooperate with each other and more
established top elites, the greater the likelihood
that ECs will exclude laypeople from the discursive
construction of new publics and modes of
democratic governance.
 Different forms of participation include different
forms of knowledge: we need both, everydaymakers and expert citizens – we also need better
co-operation between these two logics.
Experts remote from
citizens
 (Inter)national cut off from
the local
 Institutionalization of the
movement/organisation
 Top-down
 Effectiveness


Technical measures
Way of reason (ECs)

Activists reject experts
Local cut off from the
(inter)national
 Very fluid, informal and
sporadic networks
 Bottom-up
 Participation of all in
decisions
 Concrete, local
experience

Way of subjectivity (EMs)
 Rahnema,
Majid (2010) Participation. In Wolfgang
Sachs (ed.) The Development Dictionary. A Guide
to Knowledge as Power. London: Zed Books.
 Bang, Henrik P. & Eva Sørensen (2001), ”The
everyday maker: building political rather than
social capital”, in P. Dekker & E. M. Uslaner
(eds.) Social Capital and Participation in everyday
life. London: Routledge.
 Pleyers, Geoffrey (2010) Alter-globalization.
Becoming actors in the global age. Foreword by
Alain Touraine. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Email: [email protected]