Place, time and stigmatised youthful identities: Bad boys in paradise

Abstract

This paper focuses on rural young people in time and space, examining the implications of changes in their location for their youthful identities and reputations-particularly those of young males. It explores how, in a fishing, logging and reluctant tourist town on the coast of New South Wales, Australia, such young people form and perform their identities and gain their status through a 'geometry of multiple differences'. This geometry includes collisions and collusions between history and the present, nature and culture, and between generations. The paper begins with a consideration of how boys in particular use public space as a theatre for certain of their masculine performances. It also..