Foot Soldiers of Modernity: The Dialectics of Cultural Consumption and the 21st-Century School

Abstract

Drawing on more than twenty-five years of experience researching and theorizing about culture, youth, and society, Paul Willis presents a broad theoretical argument that positions the school as the site and instrument through which cultural responses to material conditions are played out. Willis distinguishes between three "waves of modernization" that stem from radical shifts in technological and material production and that are accompanied by specific cultural forms, particularly forms of youth culture. He argues that it is from these specific cultural forms that an effective struggle for social change can emerge.