Bokov, G. E. In the World of Abandoned Urban Spaces: New Identities of Youth Subcultures (From the Counterculture to the Urban Exploration

Abstract: The subject of the present research founded by the Russian Foundation for Humanities (Project No. 14 – 03 - 00683a) is the new identity of young people from contemporary youth subcultures that explores forbidden urban spaces. This refers to the phenomenon of youth counterculture in the 1960th as the opposition to urban industrialism and to new generations of subcultures. The author studies the role of megalopolises in the formation of subcultures and the importance of the theories of post-industrial society for creating social utopia. Therefore, the subject under research is the transformation of the views of the ‘alternative culture’ and the meaning of the industrial and eschatological themes and anti-utopias for contemporary followers. Special attention is paid to such forms of exploring abandoned urban spaces as squatting, urban exploration movement and industrial subcultures. Since these are very complex and diversified phenomena, in order to study them it is necessary to use a wide range of research methods. This includes social-historical, descriptive and typological approaches as well as qualitative methods of social researches. The research is based on analyzing the main sources of ‘alternative culture’ from canonical works written by Theodore Roszak and Charles Reich to Internet resources and other self-representations of the contemporary representatives of subcultures. Theoretical base of the research includes concepts of the post-industrial society offered by Daniel Bell and Alvin Toffler and particular researches within the framework of ‘urban studies’ and urban sociology, Western and Russian researches on the youth sociology, counterculture and subcultures. Moreover, the activity approach and the closely connected theory of practices are also taken into account. The method of involved observation and interviews of the representatives of ‘urban exploration’ have been also used. This is an interdisciplinary research. It touches upon the phenomenon of urban abandonment and focuses on the exploration of ‘diminishing’ industrial cities by modern youth subcultures. The author of the article shows that these subcultures appeared as a result of urbanization processes, however, demonstrate a very negative attitude towards urbanization. In big industrial cities theorists of the youth counterculture create the evil image of technocracy. The uprise of technocracy at the end of the 1960th – beginning of the 70th coincided with creation of concepts of the transfer from the industrial society to the post-industrial society and growing popularity of social utopias. However, the following decades emptied mystical-chiliast expectations of the counterculture and the eschatology of the counterculture was filled with industrial topics which resulted in new models of youth identity. For the communities like urban exploration and industrial subcultures, this relates to the exploration, acquisition and re-encoding abandoned urban spaces which correlates to anti-utopianism and the concepts of the ‘ending’ of the industrial civilization.

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