Editing hip-hop within youth work activities: an actor-network theory analysis

ABSTRACT

Debates concerning hip-hop have tended to centre on controversy. For example, critics of hip-hop have focused on its association with bads such as violence, misogyny and drug use, gangsta culture, and the vandalism associated with graffiti art, while hip-hop’s defenders have celebrated the enactment of goods such as youth expression and empowerment. Increasingly, practitioners and educators have sought to mobilise particular forms or activities of hip-hop in order to draw on the potential of hip-hop in youth work. This article draws on an ethnographic study that explored how hip-hop activities were produced across a range of youth work sites in Christchurch, New Zealand. Using Actor-Network Theory (ANT) the study traced how hip-hop controversies were negotiated within youth work sites of practice, illustrating the collective editing work that was undertaken in order to handle these controversies (bads). The ANT approach to consider what is sometimes referred to as the ‘mess’ of social reality [Law 2004, 230 After Method: Mess in Social Science Research. New York: Routledge] was well suited to the study’s goal of understanding the complexities involved in using and assembling hip-hop in youth work contexts. This paper provides ‘snapshots’ of the study’s findings, to reveal the collective work in the editing of hip-hop music to avoid hip-hop bads.

KEYWORDS:

• Actor network theory
• ethnography
• hip-hop
• youth work
• youth culture

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 We use the terms hip-hop music and rap music interchangeably to refer to music that fits the hip-hop genre.

2 An actor in the ANT lexicon is any entity whose influence is felt on others in the network. In ANT an actor can be human or non-human, as it does not require human intentionality (Latour 2005). Understood as an assemblage, an actor can consist of both human and non-human elements.

3 An MC or rapper engages in the hip-hop element of rapping.

4 A b-boy or b-girl practices the dance element of hip-hop formally known as break dancing (Banes 1985). We use the term b-boying to describe the dance activities of both b-boys and b-girls. In doing so we follow the participants’ use of the term.

5 Each new enactment of a hip-hop entity or activity requires a new set of adjustments to be made as actors adjust to each other, as actors shift across contexts and time. The adjustments made in the case of the appropriation of b-boy activities were no different to those made when these activities were practiced across other contexts in the community, such as peoples’ homes, churches, and dance studios.

6 Training or jamming sessions were where b-boys practiced their b-boy skills.

7 We use the term urban dance to refer to the commercialised styles of hip-hop dance seen in street dance movies, as well as in Rap, R’n’B and pop music videos and concerts.

8 MC's often studied dictionaries, and some recorded lyrics in written form to then perform during MC battles. However, many freestyle raps were not mediated by prepared content, as was the case in the free-style cypher sessions.

9 Even Youth Trust B, a youth trust with a reputation for supporting underground hip-hop artists, found they could not translate this group's activities into their network.

10 In New Zealand the stigma around hip-hop has seen public resentment over the spending of tax-payers dollars on activities related to hip-hop (see Chapter One, Wilson 2015), as well as misunderstandings as to the content of hip-hop activities (see Chapter Five, Wilson 2015).