ABSTRACT
In the first half of this book, we have focused primarily on students as ‘readers’ and ‘writers’ of popular culture. In doing so, we have sought to move beyond traditional views of young people as passive victims of media influence. Thus, while questions of ideology and social power have been central to our analysisparticularly in terms of gender and ethnicity-we have challenged the idea that young people are simply ‘slotted in’ to existing social categories and ideologies as part of some inexorable process of socialisation. On the contrary, we have emphasised the diverse ways in which young people actively create and define their own social identities through their relationships both with their peer group and within their school. In the process, we have adopted a view of subjectivity not as unitary and stable, but on the contrary as diverse and changeable.
