Book Alert: Urban Dialectics, the Market and Youth Engagement

When the police shoot or choke civilians in supposed fear and dread of the people they are meant to be protecting and as a consequence deny them the full due process of the law, powerful ‘fears and beliefs’ are in many cases being fatally enacted and are rendering the law impotent. Where do these ‘fears and beliefs’ come from? How do they become institutionalised to the extent that they are (re)produced by market-driven commercial values? Clennon argues that the commercialisation of the ‘Black’ experience that comprises much urban popular youth culture exerts a ‘coloniality of power’ that deeply influences all of our civic institutions via the formation and transmission of historical and marketised societal values. Drawing on Lacan, Benjamin, Freire, Collins, hooks and others, Clennon underpins his observations of his community enterprise research with young people with a theoretical framework that explores the interiorisation process of cultural oppression and liberation. Clennon also examines how the Freirean process of ”consciousness-raising” can be applied to examine popular youth culture in ways that empower its consumers, as well as tracking the genesis of some of its more negative market origins.