Tuesday, November 22, 2011

The most effective way to understand contemporary culture is to analyze the trends of its youth.

 Cultural ethos of a  society inevitably change over time. What is the best way to understand contemporary culture of a scoiety?  Many people think that  analyzing the trends of its youth is the most effective way to feel the pulse of contemporary culture. I do not agree with this argument. I believe that trends of a representative section of the society needs to be analyzed, and not one subgroup  alone while one attempts  to characterize contemporary culture.

A society is composed of not just the youth, but the members of varying age groups from infancy to adulthood.  In order to get a feel for the contemporary culture of the society, the trends in all these  age groups, over a time period  needs  to be analyzed. Just analyzing the youth, leaving the children,  middle aged and elderly aside, may give a skewed perception of the cultural milieu. For example, to know what’s in vogue in the world of fiction, examining the books that the youth focus on will not be reflective of the society as a whole; one needs to look at the market trends in books sold to all age groups and not just popular young adult fiction or whatever is popular among the youth. About clothing and accessories, the style that the youth prefers may not be in line with what the 40 and 50 year old ladies  opt for. Same is the case in music. Just because Justin Bieber is a sensation among a subset of the society, other similar sized or larger subsets may not share their views.  The movies that the youth go to may be a totally different genre when compared to the ones popular amongst younger children. Similar cases can be found out in virtually any field that on examine when one tries to understand the contemporary culture.

In summary, I believe that most effective way to understand contemporary culture is to analyze trends in a representative sample of the society, consisting of different age, race, gender and socioeconomic status.  Just analysing the youth’s trend may be easy, but it may give a skewed version of contemporary culture.


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