Dueling banjos: Shifting economic and cultural contexts in the lives of youth

Background/Context: As the economy grows ever more tight, the school (K-16) is increasingly important in relatt m to life choices and outcomes, and researchers who focus on youth culture, often in and ou' of school contexts, can no longer afford to ignore such traditional educational institutions If school credentials do not "guarantee" social mobility, they are certainly the sine qua run of such mobility in the New Economy. Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study: In this article, we put these concerns into dialogue with 'ecent work (including our own) that valorizes out-of-school settings and popular texts as siti's for the production of authentic and vibrant youth identities. We find ourselves less and L'ss able to read youth practices as removed from the structural realities of schooling and the economic context within which this all plays out. This means that we can no longer valoriz; youth practices as disconnected from their broader context because the linkage between "success" in school (defined in particular ways such as test scores, attainment, and so forth) and economic and social possibility is becoming tighter than ever. The consequences of what we often theorize as vibrant youth identities as produced in outof-school sites, then, must be examined and theorized as part of a long-term intellectual project that explores such identities in school spaces and beyond. Research Design: For this article, we critically interrogated and synthesized extant research in three key areas: the New Economy and globalized capitalism; the production of youth identities through popular culture and out-of-school learning settings; and qualitative research and multi-sited ethnography. Conclusions/Recommendations: We offer reconceptualized multi-sited ethnographic approaches as one potential set of responses to this central challenge now facing educational researchers: bridging cor.cerns around the attenuation of economic opportunities for youth and current work on the vibrancy of youths' cultural lives.