ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the biographical narratives of a group of young male offenders are used to explore some of the problems and possibilities of growing up male on the margins of civil society. It is suggested that drug use, drug dealing, and 'normal' crime serve as important cultural and emotive resources for scripting a particular, and powerful, masculine identity on the street. The chapter discusses some stories about self, daily life, crime, and drug use in the city, or on one of its satellite estates. The richly textured stories of the young men capture a profound contradictory and exclusionary tendency in modern society at the end of the century. For, while it is the case that one cannot now speak sensibly of a singular and reductive masculinity, but rather of a range of possible masculinities, it remains to ask what form of masculine identity is open to the young men of the (ex) working class now described as an 'underclass'.
