Youth cultures and change in Tunisia : towards understanding youth networks dynamics in the context of social movement and subcultural theories

Abstract

The thesis questions the relationship between Tunisian youth values and practices and their impact on the process of social and political change, the work will show the significance of combing subcultural theory and the social movement theory to analyze the different network dynamics that youth groups engage in Tunisia as a mediator between their values and practices. Furthermore, the thesis will compare the different types of youth networks of subcultures and mainstream cultures both institutionalized and noninstitutionalized. The Hypothesis of the thesis is that youth who belong to institutionalized subcultures have more dynamics targeted at achieving social and political change by opposing to the values of society and introducing new meanings and practices in the Tunisian context than youth who belong to institutionalized mainstream cultures. In order to test this problematic, a qualitative research method was applied to five Tunisian youths. The results were able to verify the hypothesis with three cases out of the five tested cases.