Young People Talking About Adolescent Rural Crowds and Social Settings

The present paper sets out to examine rural young people's views of crowds and social settings, and to gauge adolescents' perceptions of adults' attitudes towards them in rural townships. Seventy-three young men and women aged 15/16 and 17/18 years were interviewed in friendship focus groups in five selected rural contexts in northern Scotland. Findings showed that the groups in the study regarded themselves as 'normal' in their dress, interests and activities, and there were no cases of self-identification with other rural groupings. By comparison, rural crowds were typically seen as either 'cool', 'bad' or 'sad' (cf. Michell, 1997), and these variations in 'other' labelling were often related to perceived status within the wider peer population. Rather than differentiated sub-cultural groupings as in urban findings, there was a clear division between town and country youth, and this led to a strong territorial rivalry. The greatest competition for adolescents over public 'space', however, came from adults.