Volume (16): Issue (3)

This article explores the modalities of involvement of young people in underground punk music scenes, as they forge do-it-yourself (DIY) careers through applying skills in production, promotion, composition and performance, acquired through long-term immersion in these scenes. In each such career, we can see an illustration of how youth culture can be seen as a platform through which young people acquire practical skills and competence in an era of risk, uncertainty and precarious living. Working with a corpus of over 200 interviews, we propose an analysis of the representations of Portuguese punk scene members with regard to the DIY experience, demonstrating and specifying scene knowledge, networks and skills, which are crucial to the location of these subcultural entrepreneurs in the larger labour market. We will also attempt to demonstrate the importance of DIY ethics, aesthetics and praxis in the constitution and dynamics of the Portuguese punk scene from the late 1970s until today, highlighting its role in the lives of the participants. Moreover, we will look at DIY as an expression of the symbolic capital of punk, enabling careers, pathways, trajectories and roles, as well as functioning as a specific (sub-)cultural capital present in most underground musical events, and with particular intensity in the case of punk. Finally, the feud between the mainstream and the underground is a key issue in the discussion of the DIY ethos, taking us into the core of the question of authenticity.

Webster’s dictionary defines flow as ‘a smooth uninterrupted movement’ and as ‘a continuous transfer of energy’. In hip-hop culture, the word is used to express movements that blend in a musical and bodily sense, and by extension, a social and cultural sense. This is why the Young Latin Kings and Ñetas, two immigrant collectives in Barcelona who were considered dangerous ‘Latin gangs’ up until a few years ago, chose this term to name their project of conflict resolution through music. Their project was presented in 2008, after two years of hard work in a youth centre in Nou Barris (a working-class district in Barcelona with a long tradition of hosting immigrants). This article seeks to analyse the social context and the social processes of juvenile identity (re)construction, considering the music and artistic production Unidos Por El Flow of the Latin Kings and Ñetas as a major argument for the importance of music and the arts in identity (re)structuring and social inclusion of many youths.

Artistic intervention in cultural districts can be an outstanding viewpoint to understand the multiple layers of uses and segregations that bring everyday life vitality to the complex organisms that cities are. Urban informality contexts can be fundamental for the expression of this diversity and to liminality strategies, particularly interesting in the case of artistic intervention, as artistic creativity is often about transgression, differentiation and, therefore, conflict. Small initiatives that develop in an informal and ephemeral way by artists who choose the city as stage for their work, exploring the ambiguous and flexible boundaries between public and private spaces, are particularly interesting, evidencing the conflicts usually verified on creative milieus but being also important to keep these places as vernacular as possible and to avoid gentrification processes. In this perspective, this article aims to discuss this relation between urban interventions, informality and public sphere appropriation, analysing the way informal artistic dynamics can contribute to urban revitalization, territorial resilience and to the enhancement of ‘real’ creative milieus. Drawing on a research-action-based methodology the authors explore the results and impacts of three experiences of urban intervention that they developed in three consecutive years in informal urban contexts in Bairro Alto, Lisbon, Portugal. These ephemeral artistic interventions introduced new spaces of public use in the city, performing different public and private spaces, and bringing them to the public sphere. They created ‘new’ zones that re-gain a use in the city, contributing to the vitality and symbolic centrality of this area.

Limerick SoundScapes is a sound-mapping project that seeks to critically engage citizens of the multicultural, socially and economically divided post-industrial City of Limerick in the Republic of Ireland. Facilitated by an interdisciplinary team at the local university, citizens from all walks of life are encouraged to traverse the city, using hand-held recorders to capture a vast array of sounds and create soundscapes. Initially, we locate the project within the context of a city currently experiencing a state-sponsored programme of urban regeneration. The project is also understood in terms of top-down and bottom-up cultural initiatives, particularly in relation to Limerick’s designation as National City of Culture 2014. In addition to looking at how Limerick SoundScapes was conceived and realized through a pilot programme in 2013, we focus specifically on two members of two local participating organizations as an example of how the project operates. Through the activities and experiences of these two volunteer recordists, we illustrate how the project is as much (if not more) focused on engagement and building social relations as it is on producing a finished product that seeks to sonically and culturally represent the city. Such projects have the capacity to promote real diversity and a critical and participatory citizenship through shared, creative goals and a dialogic of doing. However, we also show that culture is often understood in a particular way in Limerick, which we argue is to the detriment of investing in bottom-up projects that can potentially build ‘institutional capacity’ and boost ‘civic creativity’.

While some of our early studies on cultural policy focus on the role played by central government in the support of Portuguese artistic and cultural organizations, more attention should be paid to the way in which the local work of organizations can be developed by examining the collaborative art contexts that had predated government funding. We introduce the idea that collaborative contexts are feeding and boosting organizations’ work and, consequently, enhancing the effect of the government aid that targets local communities. Using a multiple case-study methodology, we argue that culture goes beyond state funding and we illustrate this by examining the cultural projects developed by artistic organizations in five Portuguese inter-municipal communities with different collaborative profiles and geographies. We find that informal contexts, networks and partnerships foster the local collaboration of cultural organizations and enhance their reputation. We also draw attention to other complementary dynamics introduced by the collaborative art process such as the increase in cultural organizations’ activities; the growth of local professionals, thus fostering the local arts profiles and creation itself; the greater cosmopolitanism of cultural organizations that operate in cities, villages or districts and move in international arenas; and finally, the intensification of cultural experiences and conviviality with the participating public.

Deep asymmetries in economic structures across EU member states became evident in the context of the recent crises in the eurozone. Notwithstanding, innovation policy analysis at the EU level tends to overlook these asymmetries. The use of innovation scoreboards – such as the Innovation Union Scoreboard (IUS) – as a main device for policy monitoring and benchmarking adds to the common tendency for one-size-fits-all approaches to innovation policy. In fact, the methodology underlying the construction of the IUS largely ignores the wide variety of economic structures among the countries under analysis. This article shows that once each country’s economic structure is considered the assessment of innovation strengths and weakness at the national level may change significantly. Policy recommendations may be improved accordingly.

Some scholars have hypothesized that social integration in the European Union (EU) is a trigger for bi-national European marriages. Although this idea has been the motivation behind some research, empirical evidence shows that the effect of accession to the EU has had a limited effect on partner choice. This study aims to add to the knowledge on this issue by analysing the trends and patterns of marriages between Portuguese and non-Portuguese citizens between 1997 and 2011. We conducted bivariate and multivariate analyses using official data on marriages that took place in Portugal, with the results showing that bi-national European marriages remained stable throughout the period, although some nuances are evident depending on the type of marriage. While Portuguese-EU15 marriages declined over time, those between native Portuguese and other Europeans increased. Gender differences determined the development and composition of these marriages. This article also notes the existence of three distinct types of bi-national union: labour, recomposed and highly educated couples. The final part of the article seeks to explain and interpret the findings, specifically by focusing on the increase in cohabitation as a functional substitute for bi-national European marriage, the need to compare and combine the number of marriages in both spouses’ countries, and changes in the structure of the Portuguese matrimonial market due to the arrival of new social groups (e.g. Brazilian and Eastern European).

Five Rising Democracies and the Fate of the International Liberal Order, Ted Piccone (2016) Washington DC: Brookings Institution, 250 pp., ISBN: 9780815727415, h/bk, £23.47; ISBN: 9780815725794, p/bk, £21.50

A Primeira República: Na Fronteira do Liberalismo e da Democracia, Miriam Halpern Pereira (2016) Lisbon: Grâdiva, 224 pp., ISBN: 9789896167295, p/bk, 19.60