Becoming and being a metalhead : exploring the significance of heavy metal music and culture for youth identities and aspiration biographies /
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(Published version)
Date
2015
Authors
Rowe, Paula,
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thesis
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Abstract
Young people who engage with heavy metal music and culture have routinely been portrayed in both scholarly and popular literature as apathetic, deviant, delinquent, at risk of substance misuse, having poor mental health, and anticipating or even envisioning bleak futures ... The present research addressed these issues by talking with young metalheads at length, and over time, in order to explore their narrative constructions of the importance of metal in their daily lives, and to observe how social relationships shaped their internal conversations about the possibilities life holds.
Becoming metal explores participants’ reflections on the circumstances and motivations for constructing metal identities during their high school years. The results showed that, as well as the enjoyment of listening to metal, young people drew on metal music and culture as a way of coping with the stressors of daily life. Of particular interest was finding the strong role metal culture played in their ability to challenge dominant power relations during high school years, especially in countering bullying and exclusion by more popular peer groups. Metal, as an identity choice, offered participants a way to biographically reconstruct the negative ‘outsider’ status assigned to them at school as something positive and empowering; and crucially, metal offered a sense of certainty and security amid the less reliable social conditions and structures of late modernity at a time when these young people were becoming faced with making decisions about their future.
Being metal examined the same participants’ narratives of transitioning through school and into post-school environments as a metalhead. In stark contrast to previous scholarly claims that metal youth are apathetic and have low-level aspirations looking towards low-status futures, these young metalheads were all actively envisioning futures incorporating their metal talents, skills, and interests. It was found, however, that whether or not they could achieve their imagined futures, or re-author more suitable options, was strongly influenced by the types of support available to them in family and community contexts. What emerged clearly from this research was that poorer outcomes (where they existed) were shaped by enduring social and familial factors that impact equally on metal and non-metal youth alike.
School/Discipline
University of South Australia. School of Psychology, Social Work and Social Policy.
School of Psychology, Social Work and Social Policy.
School of Psychology, Social Work and Social Policy.
Dissertation Note
Thesis (PhD)--University of South Australia, 2015.
Provenance
Copyright 2015 Paula Rowe.
Description
1 ethesis (323 pages) :
illustrations (some colour)
Includes bibliographical references.
illustrations (some colour)
Includes bibliographical references.
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506 0#$fstar $2Unrestricted online access