July 19, 7:30 pm
The rise of distinct youth cultures after World War II meant that it was the young generation who were bound tightly together with the appearance of popular music and subculture styles. The “youth question” became a constant theme of any conversation about subculture or indeed post-subculture societies. And yet the question of what long-term effects popular music may have had on lifestyle has remained off the agenda.
In her lecture, Paula Guerra will endeavour to address the question of how the habits, behaviour and tastes of fans of rock, punk and EDM (Electronic Dance Music) inform their lifestyles in their more mature years. This question bears over-arching relevance to the peculiarities of growing old in the era of late capitalism, a time filled with new technological and stylistic resources that help to re-define and re-designate tastes and habits in clothing, hairstyles, body art, piercing, concert-going and partying.
The lecture will also present the findings of the KISMIF research project, which covers the Portugal music scene and is based around 217 interviews, song lyrics and other narratives dating from 1997 to the present day.
Paula Guerra is a professor at the sociology department of the Arts and Humanities Faculty of Porto University (Portugal) and founder of the international research network for the sociology of culture and the arts (Rede Luso-Afro-Brasileira de Sociologia da Cultura e das Artes), as well as being director of the international KISMIF (Keep It Simple, Make It Fast!) project and author of The Unstable Lightness of Rock (A instável leveza do rock, 2013), and On the Road to the American Underground (2015).
This lecture is organized in collaboration with the Higher School of Economics in St Petersburg.
Admission is free of charge. The number of participants is limited. Please register in advance.
The Higher School of Economics has prepared a series of multidisciplinary lectures that seek to offer the general public a fresh perspective on the social phenomena and processes that we encounter every day. Leading Russian and international social scientists will use non-intuitive examples and innovative methods to show the audience just how the world in which we are living is changing before our very eyes. The speakers will present new readings on everyday phenomena, sharing recent research findings from the last 2-3 years, as well as their own personal methodologies. Each lecture offers its own introduction to the social sciences. The course is divided into three thematic blocks: Everyday Life, Culture and Big Data and New Technologies.
