`Ivory Lives'

Weaving together historical, structural and cultural approaches to the study of youth, this article examines the impact of global change and economic restructuring in a Northeast English youth community. In breaching the `structural/cultural' divide, the article seeks to intertwine the analysis of cultural identities with local political economy. Using subcultural analysis, the ethnography demonstrates how young people enact `localist', `survivalist' and `globalist' responses to ongoing transformations. As cultural markers of ethnic habitation, these subcultural postures exhibit how youth are imbricated in the making of whiteness in the post-industrial moment. At the same time, the study also illustrates the extent to which contemporary generations can dismantle whiteness to forge transnational new ethnicities, befitting of global times.