The die-hard local skateboarders of Franklin Skatepark—a group of working-class, Latino and white young men in the rural Midwest—are typically classified by schools and society as “struggling,” “at-risk,” “failing,” and “in crisis.” But at the skatepark, they thrive and succeed, not only by landing tricks but also by finding meaning and purpose in their lives.
In Dropping In, Robert Petrone draws from multiple years of ethnographic research to bring readers into this rich environment, exploring how and why these young men engage more with skateboarding and its related cultural communities than with school. For them, it is in these alternative communities and spaces that they meet their intellectual, literate, and learning needs; cultivate meaningful and supportive relationships; and develop a larger understanding of their place in the world. By looking at what these skateboarders can teach us about what is right and working in their lives, Petrone asks educators and others committed to youth development to rethink schooling structures and practices to provide equitable education for all students.
"Intellectually deft and lively to read, Skate Life is an important addition to the literature on youth cultures, contemporary masculinity, and the role of media in identity formation."
---Janice A. Radway, Northwestern University, author of Reading the Romance: Women, Patriarchy, and Popular Literature
"With her elegant research design and sophisticated array of anthropological and media studies approaches, Emily Chivers Yochim has produced one of the best books about race, gender, and class that I have read in the last ten years. In a moment where celebratory studies of youth, youth subcultures, and their relationship to media abound, this book stands as a brilliantly argued analysis of the limitations of youth subcultures and their ambiguous relationship to mainstream commercial culture."
---Ellen Seiter, University of Southern California
"Yochim has made a valuable contribution to media and cultural studies as well as youth and American studies by conducting this research and by coining the phrase 'corresponding cultures,' which conceptualizes the complex and dynamic processes skateboarders employ to negotiate their identities as part of both mainstream and counter-cultures."
---JoEllen Fisherkeller, New York University
Skate Life examines how young male skateboarders use skate culture media in the production of their identities. Emily Chivers Yochim offers a comprehensive ethnographic analysis of an Ann Arbor, Michigan, skateboarding community, situating it within a larger historical examination of skateboarding's portrayal in mainstream media and a critique of mainstream, niche, and locally produced media texts (such as, for example, Jackass, Viva La Bam, and Dogtown and Z-Boys). The book uses these elements to argue that adolescent boys can both critique dominant norms of masculinity and maintain the power that white heterosexual masculinity offers. Additionally, Yochim uses these analyses to introduce the notion of "corresponding cultures," conceptualizing the ways in which media audiences both argue with and incorporate mediated images into their own ideas about identity. In a strong combination of anthropological and media studies approaches, Skate Life asks important questions of the literature on youth and provides new ways of assessing how young people create their identities.
Emily Chivers Yochim is Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication Arts, Allegheny College.
Cover design by Brian V. Smith
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