NEET Believers? An Analysis of 'Belief' on Urban Housing Estates more

Culture and Religion ‘NEET’ Believers? An analysis of ‘belief’ on an urban housing estate rP Fo Manuscript ID: Manuscript Type: Keywords: URL: http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/rcar ee Journal: rR Draft Culture and Religion Original Article Social Exclusion, NEET, Youth, Belief, Urban ev ie w On ly Page 1 of 30 Culture and Religion 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 ‘NEET’ Believers? An analysis of ‘belief’ on an urban housing estate Abstract This article explores the impact that the experience of deep-seated social exclusion amongst unemployed white young men on a large urban housing estate in Birmingham, UK has on the ways in which they talk about identity, meaning and ‘belief’. Arising from detailed ethnographic fieldwork the article forwards an analysis of current debates about youth social exclusion and the deployment of the acronym ‘N.E.E.T’ with reference to these young men and others like them across the UK. Drawing upon conversations between the author and young men during fieldwork the article seeks to bridge the gap between social science based examinations of youth social exclusion and theological analyses of youth spiritualities to critically interrogate current debates about the nature of ‘belief’ and ‘belonging’. In particular the article raises a key critical question: Is the word ‘belief’ ‘fit for purpose’ when considering the experience of socially excluded young men on urban housing Fo rP ee Keywords: Social Exclusion, N.E.E.T, Youth, Belief, Urban. estates? rR ev Introduction ‘I believe in God but He doesn’t live round here.’ ‘Bromford’s shit and God’s a bastard’ ‘I believe in the Bromford. In my music I’m trying to lay down our story’ ‘There were devil faces in the dust.’ ‘If you don’t get killed you get locked away but there’s always a different path to take.’1 Since the late 1990s anti-social behaviour and social exclusion amongst urban youth have been placed at the centre of British government social policy. The cultural, spatial and political experience of urban youth has provided a focus for debate within youth studies, social geography and political sociology and within practical theology a focus has been placed on youth spiritualities. However, with the exception of a current research project in the UK (Olson et al)2 insufficient attention has been placed on the relationship between social 1 URL: http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/rcar MAIN FILE iew On ly Culture and Religion Page 2 of 30 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 exclusion and its impact on the nature of ‘belief’ amongst young adults described as ‘NEET’.3 Within this article I explore this relationship, establishing a dialogue between debates about social exclusion amongst unemployed young white men, analyses of contextualised discourses of meaning and explorations of ‘belief’ in a ‘post-religious’ urban context. In particular I ask whether ‘belief’ continues to provide a useful analytical concept when exploring the ‘post-religious’ discourses of meaning expressed by the ‘NEET’s whom I have got to know in east Birmingham. Methodology Since November 2010 I have spent two evenings every week on the Bromford estate as a participant observer (Dewalt and Dewalt, 2002) alongside detached youth workers and one evening each week simply being around on the estate.4 My fieldwork has been shaped by three methodological approaches: ethnography, participatory action research and grounded theory. Heath, Brooks, Cleaver and Ireland (Heath et al, 2009, 99) describe ethnography as, ‘…the study of people in naturally occurring settings by methods of data collection that capture their ordinary activities and the social meanings that are attached to these.’ Ethnography, therefore, describes and seeks to interpret living communities. Furthermore I have drawn upon participatory action research (Stringer, 1999 and Reason and Bradbury, 2006) which Reason and Bradbury (2006, 1) suggest, ‘...bring[s] together action and reflection, theory and practice, in the pursuit of practical solutions to issues of pressing concern to people.’ Such a perspective runs the risk of subverting the freedom of people to define themselves. To minimise this danger I have utilised the Grounded Theory developed by Glaser and Strauss (1967) and more recently by Charmaz (2006) whereby emphasis is placed on allowing the context to reveal itself during fieldwork. This inductive approach has enabled my analysis to arise from the discourses of meaning articulated by urban youth themselves and has been aided by a use of Pinn’s (1991) ‘nitty-gritty hermeneutics’ which 2 URL: http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/rcar Fo rP ee rR MAIN FILE ev iew On ly Page 3 of 30 Culture and Religion 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 was developed in relation to responses to suffering within the Africa-American community. Pinn describes a hermeneutical approach which engages with the contradictions of urban life without consciously framing experience within any a priori theoretical or theological template. Unlike the hermeneutics of liberative suspicion articulated within liberation theologies, ‘nitty-gritty’ hermeneutics is not bound by any ‘...doctrinal or theological presuppositions.’ (Pinn, 1991, 116) Instead it engages with ‘...raw natural facts...irrespective of their ramifications... (enabling) a clear and unromanticized understanding of a hostile world.’ (Pinn, 1991, 116) Such an approach to the discourse of socially excluded urban youth can uncover their narrative, rather than imposing a pre-defined meaning upon it. I have therefore drawn upon this approach so that my analysis of debates about ‘belief’ engages directly with the unrevised discourse of unemployed young men on the Bromford estate. Placing and Picturing Bromford The Bromford estate was built in the late 1960s and is four miles from Birmingham city centre. Access onto the estate for those without a car is limited because the one bus serving the neighbourhood runs until only 6.00pm. One road leads onto the estate ending in a cul-desac at the M6 motorway. There are very few shops and community facilities on the estate and just one religious building, an independent evangelical Christian church whose congregation mostly commute to worship.5 Bromford is ½ mile from ‘The Fort’ shopping centre but three barriers make easy access impossible: a railway, a river and the M6. In February 2011 21.8% of men on the estate were registered unemployed.6 The number of people suffering from long-term illness is higher than the average for the city (Baker, Singh and Begaj, 2008, 5 of 8) and more people die young in Bromford than the Birmingham average, mostly from illnesses related to substance abuse and poverty (Baker, Singh and Begaj, 2008, 3 of 8).7 According to the ‘English Indices of Deprivation 2010’ the Bromford estate is one of the 5% Fo rP URL: http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/rcar ee rR MAIN FILE ev iew On ly 3 Culture and Religion Page 4 of 30 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 most multiply deprived neighbourhoods in England.8 In 2001 the estate had a ‘non-white’ population of 10% but a dual-heritage population that is three times the city wide average of 2.9%, although these figures are likely to have changed when the data from the 2011 National Census is published during 2012. FIGURE 1 should be placed here…9 N.E.E.T or Not? The term NEET pinpoints one severe example of social exclusion amongst young adults in the UK and is the inheritor of previous descriptors such as ‘underclass’ and ‘Status Zer0’.10 MacDonald and Marsh (2005, 26) suggested that ‘Status Zer0’ was a metaphor for social alienation but by the end of the twentieth century it resembled more moral judgement upon unemployed young adults than value neutral description of their employment status. Williamson (2010, 1 of 3) suggests that the NEET acronym was initially used as to avoid the more obviously pejorative ‘Status Zer0’ but hints at his unease about the term in the ‘Times Educational Supplement’ – ‘Neet acronym is far from a neat description’.11 Similarly the 2010 House of Commons Education Committee report notes, ‘...the term “NEET” is imperfect…its use as a noun to refer to a young person can be pejorative and stigmatising...’ (2010, 9). The Audit Commission notes that NEETs are four times more likely to remain unemployed for long periods of time, five times more likely to have a criminal record, three times more likely to have depression and six times less likely to have formal educational qualifications than other young adults (2010, 16).12 Much of the discourse around the NEET acronym objectifies the young men whom I have got to know in Bromford and, I suggest, robs them of their agency. In pragmatic terms they are NEET. However, like its predecessors, the term has increasingly resembled an ontological judgement rather than a description of their current experience. In spite of this NEET terminology has become increasingly common Fo rP URL: http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/rcar ee rR MAIN FILE ev iew On ly 4 Page 5 of 30 Culture and Religion 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 within political and public discourse and NEETs have been depicted by sections of the British media as exemplars of what UK Prime Minister David Cameron has called ‘broken Britain’.13 Consequently it becomes easy to lose sight of the discourses of meaning articulated by these young, largely ignored, men and the ways in which their discourse of exclusion interacts with wider debates about the nature of ‘belief’ in ‘post-Christian’ Britain. NEET ‘belief’ arises from the exclusion from employment, education and training but this specific experience is informed by wider and deeper patterns of social exclusion. Levitas (2005, ix) argues that the term ‘social exclusion’ shifted in emphasis during the ‘New Labour years’ (1997-2010) from a focus on economic redistribution towards an implicitly moral social integrationist discourse.14 The Social Exclusion Unit called social exclusion, ‘...a short-hand term for what can happen when people or areas suffer from a combination of linked problems such as unemployment, poor skills, low incomes, poor housing, high crime, bad health and family breakdown.’15 Lowry (2000, 2 of 28) likens it to the ‘…dissolution of social bonds…’ and cautions against a reductionist approach which focuses only on economic exclusion. Levitas (2007, 10), like MacDonald and Marsh (2005, 193ff) and Castells (1998, 73) speaks of the three dimensions of social exclusion: lack of resources, lack of participation and lack of a reasonable quality of life. With this in mind Figure 1 maps youth social exclusion under four headings to indicate its multifaceted character. All of these markers are present to varying degrees on the Bromford estate. The urban theologian Leech (1997, 90) speaks of the existential implications of deep seated exclusion, which fosters a sense of ‘…emptiness, void and loss of meaning.’ During April 2011 the nihilism borne of such existential exclusion became apparent on the Bromford estate as the newly developed adventure play area in Comet Park was set on fire. 5 URL: http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/rcar Fo rP ee TABLE 1 should be placed here…. rR MAIN FILE ev iew On ly Culture and Religion Page 6 of 30 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 Figure 2 should be placed here…. In the face of such psycho-social alienation Castells (1997, 360) points to the importance of existential emancipation from deep seated social exclusion, ‘Whoever wins the battle for people’s minds will rule, because mighty rigid apparatuses will not be a match in any reasonable timespan for minds mobilised…’. During my fieldwork I have glimpsed snatches of such mobilised minds as Tek9’s track ‘What’s Going On these Days?’ illustrates, ‘If you don’t get killed you get locked away but there’s always a different path to take.’16 As Tek9’s story illustrates, where NEETs refuse to be robbed of their agency, an emancipated future becomes possible. The young men alongside whom I am working are socially excluded but there is more to their experience than that. Terms like ‘NEET’ and ‘social exclusion’ do not do justice to the existential disconnection they express as they suggest that ‘God doesn’t live round here’ or that ‘Bromford’s shit and God’s a bastard.’ Young men on the Bromford elude academic labelling, political initiatives and tabloid stereotyping. I have been struck by their creativity, unlikely hopefulness and passionate solidarity. Is their discourse a new expression of implicit religion or an alternative ‘post-religious’ discourse which cannot be shoe-horned into existing categories? Before I respond to this question I explain my use of the term ‘discourse’. Discourses of Meaning Discourse plays a central role in identity formation. As Johnstone (2008, 33) notes it; ‘…both reflects and creates human beings’ worldviews.’ In my exploration of NEET discourses of meaning I draw in particular on Foucault’s (2002, 201) suggestion that, ‘Knowledge is…defined by the possibilities…offered by discourse.’ ‘Belief’ is, therefore, inherently discursive and implicitly relational. For Foucault what we know and ‘believe’ is not the autonomous articulation of our inner life but an expression of relationships in which we 6 URL: http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/rcar Fo rP ee rR MAIN FILE ev iew On ly Page 7 of 30 Culture and Religion 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 share, the cultural practices in which we participate, the dominant socio-cultural discourse within society and the political and economic forces which shape the communities to which we belong: what Foucault calls episteme (1972, 211). Discourse is inherently contextual. NEET discourse engages dialectically with a socially constructed urban space that designed and governed by distant powerful adults (Lefebvre, 1991, 42ff and Soja, 2000, 11ff). Public space in Bromford has been planned with an exclusively residential purpose in mind but has been subverted. The five-a-side pitch, the space beneath the M6 flyover and the overgrown border between the Bromford and neighbouring Castle Vale (known locally as ‘the wasteland’) are objectification and vilification by wider society and de-contextualised or one dimensional analyses of ‘belief’. I have used critical discourse analysis (Fairclough and Wodak, 1997) to explore contextualised discourses of meaning by NEETs in Bromford in the face of alienating and hegemonic public discourse and dominant understandings of ‘belief’. Central to my exploration of NEET discourses of meaning and their relationship to discussions about the nature of ‘belief’ in the twenty-first century are debates about secularisation. Recent public discourse in the UK can appear to uncritically assume that institutional religious decline inevitably means that we live in an increasingly secular society. An example of such an approach is found in the work of Steve Bruce. On the basis of what read as a priori assumptions Bruce (2002, 74) confidently predicts that the British Methodist Church will ‘…finally fold around 2031…’ and that by that point church attendance in the UK will have become statistically insignificant. This, he seems to equate with the victory of secularism which, he argues, in the absence of ‘deliberate social control…’ (2002, 104) is almost sociologically inevitable. Bruce eschews the sociological significance of so called ‘New Age’ spiritualities unlike Lynch (2007) who offers a far more nuanced exploration of the ‘new spirituality’. The enduring significance of such spiritualities is dismissed by Bruce Fo the crucible within which NEET discourses of meaning critique their rP URL: http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/rcar ee rR MAIN FILE ev iew On ly 7 Culture and Religion Page 8 of 30 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 (2002, 105) because ‘…common beliefs and reinforcing patterns of behaviour [are] subverted by the stress on individual autonomy.’ This perspective is questioned by Partridge (2005, 10) and contrasts with that of Heelas and Woodhead (2005) who suggest that rather than being a harbinger of ultimate secularisation as a result of its lack of solidity the subjective turn in contemporary religiosity may, in fact, signal a paradigmatic shift towards more fluid modes of spiritual discourse and what Lynch (2007, 136) calls the ‘...sacralization of the self.’ The ‘secularisation thesis’ on which such arguments rest originates in the work of Comte (1883) and in Weber’s (1964 and 2002) sociology of religion which attempts to explain the way in which rationalisation within capitalist societies leads an increasing ‘disenchantment’ with religion and its marginalisation within society. During the 1960s a key advocate of this thesis was the sociologist Peter Berger (1967) whose seminal text The Sacred Canopy was published towards the end of the ‘death of God’ decade explored by Cox in his work The Secular City (1965). Berger (1967, 107) speaks of an externalised secularisation process of differentiation (Casanova, 1994, 211ff) whereby, ‘…sectors of society and culture are removed from the domination of religious institutions and symbols.’ He (1967, 107) refers also to an internalised secularisation process, what he calls the ‘…secularization of consciousness.’ Religion ceases to be externally relevant or internally plausible but, Berger suggests, remains a ‘sacred canopy’ beneath which people shelter in a world devoid of meaning. Might the NEET discourses of meaning I am encountering be viewed as a confirmation or a critique of the assumptions of the secularisation thesis? In recent decades disenchantment discourse has been partially supplanted by reenchantment narratives (Partridge, 2004 and 2005 and Lynch, 2007). Such emergent analyses do not deny the numerical decline of formalised religion. They do, however, dissent from the implication in the work of figures like Bruce that the ongoing process of secularisation is irreversible in northern European countries like the UK. Alongside such re-enchantment Fo rP URL: http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/rcar ee rR MAIN FILE ev iew On ly 8 Page 9 of 30 Culture and Religion 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 narratives former advocates of the secularisation thesis like Berger (1999), as well as sociologists of religion like Davie (1994 and 2002) have questioned its validity, suggesting that, whilst ‘externalised’ secularisation in the UK is apparent, there is little clear evidence that existential questioning is on the wane. Berger (1999, 2 and 3) has shifted his thinking dramatically, ‘…the assumption that we live in a secularized world is false…secularization on the societal level is not necessarily linked to secularization on the level of individual consciousness.’ Do we, as the political philosopher Habermas (2008 and 2009) suggests, live in a ‘post-secular’ world? On this fluid landscape where institutional religious allegiance is in continued decline but where the thirst for spirituality appears to be unquenched and the credibility of the secularisation thesis society questioned how might NEET discourses of meaning be best framed and understood? Can we credibly talk of ‘post-Christian’ NEET Fo rP ee rR ev URL: http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/rcar believers? To ‘Believe’ or not to ‘Believe’ The word ‘belief’ is weighed down by the baggage of history, systematic theology, formalised religion, sociological theory and anthropological observation. Given the array of assumptions and theories that surround it is the word ‘belief’ ‘fit for purpose’ when considering the discourses of meaning articulated by socially excluded young men on contemporary urban housing estates? It is important to consider briefly four key approaches to the concept of ‘believing’ before responding to this question. First, ‘belief’ can denote personal assent to formalised propositions about the purpose of life and involvement in religious communities: ‘believing and belonging’. Although her analysis could have been broadened to engage with the role of the ‘creed’ within Roman Catholicism and the shahadah in Islam Day (2010, 9) correctly emphasises the centrality of propositional belief within Protestant Christianity.17 Arising from a post-Reformation emphasis on the centrality of individual faith and involvement within Christian congregations, assent to historic and 9 MAIN FILE iew On ly Culture and Religion Page 10 of 30 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 informal ‘creeds’ propositional ‘belief’ continues to characterise Protestantism. However Day’s (2010, 9) suggestion that, ‘...so ingrained is ‘belief’ to their tradition that they may never consider what...they mean by that word...’ does not bear scrutiny. The suggestion ignores the fluidity of ‘belief’ within Protestant Christianity, the ongoing importance of Bible study groups, the history of Practical Theology and the tradition of Contextual Theologies (Bonhoeffer, 1959; Gutierrez, 1973; Moltmann, 1967; Cone, 1975; Hampson, 1996 and Beckford, 2000 for example). In spite of this Day correctly suggests that the assumption that ‘belief’ equates to personal assent to core doctrines remains the dominant model of what it means to ‘believe’. Second, the word ‘belief’ has recently been aligned with Davie’s (1994) observation that people increasingly ‘believe without belonging’. Individuals may assent to JudaeoChristian theological themes but do not connect this ‘private faith’ with any need to publicly belong to a faith group: the ‘I don’t need to go to church to be a Christian...’ perspective. Davie (1994, 79) suggests that, ‘Christian nominalism remains a more prevalent phenomenon than secularism…’ (1994, 76) She further critiques secularisation narratives in relation to the significance of unsystematised common religion and a range of ‘...heterodox ideas (about)….healing, the paranormal, fortune telling, fate and destiny, life after death, ghosts…prayer and meditation and luck and superstition…’ (1994, 83) in spite of an ‘antipathy towards organized religion.’ (1994, 77) Davie successfully summarises a key shift in the nature of ‘belief’ in the UK. However, I suggest that she atomises individuals to an unwarranted degree by neglecting the ongoing significance of faith-based social movements for social justice which arise from broadly shared faith frameworks18 Voas and Crockett (2005) forward a searing critique of Davie’s paradigm. They write, ‘Believing without belonging’ was an interesting idea but it is time for the slogan to enter honourable retirement.’ (2005, 25) Unfortunately a potentially nuanced exploration of the relationship Fo rP URL: http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/rcar ee rR MAIN FILE ev iew On ly 10 Page 11 of 30 Culture and Religion 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 between ‘belief’, action and identity too often slips, like the work of Bruce (2002), into unsubstantiated assertions such as the insistence that, ‘Religious belief has declined at the same rate as religious affiliation…’ (2005, 13) or that ‘…residual religiosity…often [has]…little personal, let alone, alone, social significance...’ (2005, 14). Voas and Crockett’s proposition that formalised ‘belief’ is in decline resonates with NEET discourses of meaning, as I show below. This however does not mean, as Voas and Crockett assert, that ‘residual religiosity’ has little individual or social significance. Their assertion is forwarded without hesitation but no credible evidence. It is not a perspective that takes account of post-religious but unsecularised discourses of meaning in communities like in Bromford. Third, as Robbins (2007, 14ff) notes, ‘belief’ can signify relational believing rather than propositional assent: ‘believing in’ instead of ‘believing that’. For Robbins to ‘believe in’ is to signify a trust in the object of belief that impacts on an individual at a deeper existential level than the more propositional ‘believing that’ which requires little personal investment. Robbins (2007, 15) suggests that the solidity of ‘believing that’ lends itself to social continuity; perhaps it can be seen as the belief pattern of modernity. Although at a minimal level a number of NEETs in Bromford retain vestiges of propositional ‘believing that’ in relation to formalised religion and a ‘belief that’ ghosts exist neither impacts significantly on their everyday lives or on their interpretation of their social exclusion. Robbins (2007, 16) suggests that it is ‘believing in’ statements move us beneath the surface and beyond impersonal proposition; they are ‘...essence statements...’ which pinpoint the values on which people base their lives. As a result of my fieldwork I question Robbins’s implication that ‘essence statements’ necessarily imply a ‘believing in’ framework which is used as a basis for living. Young men in Bromford articulate fragmentary discourses of ‘essential’ meaning which offer some sense of what a raw ‘NEET spirituality’ might look Fo rP URL: http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/rcar ee rR MAIN FILE ev iew On ly 11 Culture and Religion Page 12 of 30 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 like. However these cannot credibly be viewed as either propositional ‘believing that’ statements or foundational ‘believing in’ statements. Fourth, Day (2010, 17ff) argues that it is possible to see ‘belief’ as a ‘performative’ process: ‘Belief in these terms is not separate from identity or social context but a way of framing who ‘I’ am relative to ‘you’ here and now.’ ‘Belief’ therefore is inherently contextual. For Day (2010, 14) it is more about one’s relationship to a communal identity than individual existential questioning, ‘Belief arises not as a ...creed but as a collective pragmatic means for the ‘believer’ to impose order and achieve a sense of coherence.’ Is therefore, as Durkheim (1915) suggests, ‘belief’ a psycho-social means of inhabiting the rituals of religion with symbolic and ontological meaning; a means of establishing both an internal and an external identity in order to place oneself in relation to wider social relations and collective identities? If ‘belief’ is essentially about social belonging can it tell us anything about the moral values that guide individuals or is it effectively amoral? Day suggests that the implication in the US based work of Smith and Denton (2005) that, ‘...young people’s midinarratives are insufficient because true happiness requires a meta-narrative...’ rooted in Christian faith (Day, 2009, 276) cannot be sustained in light of her own work with British teenagers; a perspective that I affirm below in relation young men on the Bromford. As Day (2009, 276) correctly suggests there is, ‘...no reason to de-legitimise young people’s moral beliefs as insignificant simply because they are firmly grounded in the significance of the social and the emotional and not in a grander narrative.’ However whilst Day is right to critique the implication that it can only rest in a religious meta-narrative her wider analysis of ‘belief’ fails to convince in one key regard. Whereas Davie overly atomises ‘belief’ Day’s analysis, whilst successfully articulating its role in community building, identity formation and communal well-being, runs the risk of diminishing the agency of individuals and the Fo rP URL: http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/rcar ee rR MAIN FILE ev iew On ly 12 Page 13 of 30 Culture and Religion 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 significance of personal commitment. As such it is not a sufficiently convincing framework within which to consider NEET discourses of meaning. As I explore the contours of these NEET discourses below I will ask whether such models of believing can help to analyse the narratives hinted in the Bromford ‘sound-bites’ with which we began. As a result of my use of grounded theory and Pinn’s ‘nitty-gritty’ hermeneutics I cannot rationalise their fragmentary discourses of meaning by squeezing them into any over-arching templates. Instead in the final section of this article I draw on the voices of these five young men to begin to identify the shape of the fragmentary and provisional discourse of meaning which arises organically from their experience of social exclusion. These ‘sound-bites’ signify a ‘disenchantment’ with formalised religion but does this mean that they are avowed secularists? My fieldwork suggests that this is not the case. Rather theirs is a ‘post-religious’ but unsecularised discourse of meaning. Drawing on my exploration of analyses of ‘belief’ I will consider whether it is credible to speak of these young men as ‘NEET believers’. Bromford Believers? The young men with whose words this paper began would not claim to be articulating ‘fourth world’ spiritualities anymore than they would use the terminology of Davie (1994) (‘believing without belonging’), Day (2009) (‘believing in belonging’) or Robbins (2007) (‘believing in’ or ‘believing that’). I have not witnessed a new ‘religious’ form emerging on the streets of the Bromford estate. In light of my fieldwork I suggest that even the very term ‘believing’ is becoming problematic carrying, as it does the weight of assumptions and conflicting analyses. Can we, therefore speak of ‘NEET believers’? What I have encountered in my fieldwork is not an emergent ‘post-secular’ spirituality but an organic and fragmentary expression of anger, love, fear and hope comparable to the vision of life on a similar North London housing estate in the track ‘Council Estate of Mind’ expressed by the rap musician 13 URL: http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/rcar Fo rP ee rR MAIN FILE ev iew On ly Culture and Religion Page 14 of 30 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 ‘Skinnyman’.19 Equally, although the Bromford is bounded by a half-formed suspicion of the small Muslim community on the estate I have not encountered much evidence of the ethnicity-aligned aspect of what Day (2009, 266) calls ‘believing in belonging’. The isolation of the estate does foster what Gilroy (2000, 84) has referred to as ‘camp mentality’. However, in spite of its largely homogeneous ethnic profile young men in Bromford are more shaped by the fluidity of an urban ‘third space’ (Bhabha, 1994 and Baker, 2009) and by boundaryhopping hip-hop than they are by ethnic or religious essentialism. They ‘believe’ in each other in the face of authority, but what I have begun to witness is solidarity not raciology. How then might my examination of this urban estate, current ‘NEET discourse’, social exclusion, the nature of ‘religious’ discourse in a ‘post-religious’ context and analyses of ‘belief’ enable an exploration of these glimpses of a NEET discourse of meaning? I will draw on three approaches to linguistic analysis in an attempt to answer this question. First I draw upon critical discourse analysis. Second I utilise the discipline of semiotics (Holdcroft, 1991, Thwaites et al, 2000) to explore the process of signification at work within the reflective fragments exemplified by the Bromford sound-bites introduced above.20 Third, a use of ideological criticism (rooted in the Marxist social theory of the Frankfurt School) makes it possible to interrogate the relationship between NEET discourses of meaning and wider power relations. ‘I believe in God but He doesn’t live round here.’ The 19 year old who suggested this to me was brought up within a Roman Catholic family. One evening he recited the Lords Prayer and part of the Nicene Creed to me: ‘But it’s got nothing to with Bromford. It’s for other people. Not me.’ In the face of long-term unemployment he retains an almost unconscious ‘Of course there’s a God…’ echoing strands of propositional ‘belief’, the ‘common religion’ to which Davie refers and Robbins’ Fo rP URL: http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/rcar ee rR MAIN FILE ev iew On ly 14 Page 15 of 30 Culture and Religion 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 ‘believing that’. However there is no sense that this has anything at all to do with the life he leads. From a semiotic perspective two phrases are of significance: ‘believe in God’ and ‘doesn’t live round here.’ This young man uses the formalised religious category of ‘belief’ to signify the vestiges of a formulaic allegiance to the religion he ‘learned’ as a child at school and in the Mass. However, he presents Bromford as a ‘forgotten place’ signifying the role of formalised religious discourse in the lives of socially excluded young men in comparable ‘fourth world’ communities. In Foucault’s terms he articulates a dialectical discourse that arises from the episteme of NEET experience. It is a contextually defined discourse of meaning which, from the perspective of ideological criticism, illuminates the hegemonic hold of the propositional belief taught by formal religious institutions whose values are not evidenced on the Bromford and are only of relevance for other (more powerful) people in other places. There is no sense of ‘believing without belonging’ (Davie, 1994) nor of an individualised post-secular spirituality. Equally although the communal life of the Bromford frames his perceptions there is no hint of Day’s suggestion that ‘belief’ becomes a framework for social identity and belonging. From a ‘nitty-gritty’ hermeneutical perspective we can infer that he does not reject the notion of a ‘God’, but, as a result of his experience of social exclusion he implicitly expresses a hermeneutics of suspicion towards the relevance of the formal faith that he continues to internalise. Is it possible, however, that his graphic critique of the God of formal religion and the praxis of faith communities may pave the way for a clearer articulation of a contextualised counter-hegemonic discourse of meaning that affirms his experience of unemployment and exclusion as the basis for a discourse of empowerment? At this point I have seen no more than hints of such an emergent narrative. Fo rP URL: http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/rcar ee rR MAIN FILE ev iew On ly 15 Culture and Religion Page 16 of 30 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 ‘Bromford’s shit and God’s a Bastard’ For this 16 year old young man there is no future. He told me that he recently scrawled EDL graffiti on a boarded up pub on the estate.21 From a semiotic perspective his words graphically signify socio-political and existential alienation: the community he lives in is ‘shit’ and the God people talk about doesn’t care – He’s a ‘bastard’. In discursive terms the sound-bite expresses an episteme moulded by personal suffering and social exclusion. This young man expresses a fragmentary theodicy: he ‘believes that’ God exists but doesn’t care about his pain. In unlikely language he articulates an ancient human religious discourse which seeks to make sense of the existence and nature of God in the face of human suffering. Within the Judaeo-Christian tradition there have been three broad responses to the question of theodicy. First, suffering is a punishment for sinfulness. Second, unmerited suffering can enable people to develop spiritually or redeem unjust social situations. Third, suffering is the consequence of human free will and the social structures that human beings choose to create to govern society. He does not attempt to answer the problem of the suffering but the uncaring nature of God is clearly juxtaposed with the reality of social exclusion. From the perspective of ideological criticism this fragmentary discourse when allied with the daubing of EDL graffiti on the estate can possibly be seen as the attempt of one powerless NEET to explain suffering by scapegoating the small Muslim community on the estate. Within the Biblical narrative the idea of a scapegoat can be traced back to Leviticus 16:18-22 where Aaron is required to sprinkle blood on a goat, to offer a prayer of confession over the animal and then to send it into the wilderness: ‘The goat shall bear on itself all their iniquities.’ Within much classical Christian theology Jesus becomes a willing scapegoat on the cross, thereby bearing the sins of humanity. Scapegoating heaps blame upon another in an act of existential atonement but can also become an act of projection whereby a whole (often powerless) social group is depicted as the primary cause for suffering. Fo rP URL: http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/rcar ee rR MAIN FILE ev iew On ly 16 Page 17 of 30 Culture and Religion 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 Since its emergence in 2009 the English Defence League has become a powerful street-level social movement which, according to its informal leader Stephen Lennon, seeks to protect England from ‘Islam in its barbaric seventh century form…’ (B.B.C 2, Newsnight, 1 February 2011). Whilst the EDL claims only to oppose ‘radical Islam’ it has increasingly articulated a less nuanced Islamophobic discourse which implicitly blames the Muslim community for apparent social disintegration.22 In his frustration this socially excluded young man has vented his rage in three letters on a boarded up pub: EDL. The act might be described as vandalism or Islamophobia but it could also be viewed as a raw and raging ‘fourth world’ theodicy: ‘You are the cause of my suffering!’ Is this an act of nihilistic frustration, raciological scapegoating or a moment of disturbing and divisive fluency in the face of numbing social exclusion?23 The sound-bite can arguably be viewed as a nascent and ‘nitty-gritty’ religious discourse. However the nature of ‘belief’ here is not personal or propositional but communal and performative. It is an expression of social identity. Day (2010, 21) notes, ‘Belief in social relationships is performed both through belonging and excluding.’ For this young man the experience of deep-seated social exclusion feeds a ragesoaked existential discourse whereby his own sense of marginalisation becomes the raw material from which he builds a contextualised theodicy of exclusion. His scrawled graffiti can conceivably be seen as what Robbins refers to as an ‘essence statement’ and whilst his discourse may not be either a propositional ‘believing that’ or a foundational ‘believing in’ statement his ‘residual religiosity’ carries both individual and social significance. ‘There were devil faces in the dust.’ They have been empty for a couple of years but it was only in March 2011 that two huge tower blocks on the Bromford estate were pulled down with a wrecking ball. As we were walking on the estate one 17 year old said to me, ‘People used to jump off the top of the Fo rP URL: http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/rcar ee rR MAIN FILE ev iew On ly 17 Culture and Religion Page 18 of 30 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 blocks because they were full of bag-heads. There were always condoms on the stairs.’24 One afternoon a local 16 year old told me that when they tower blocks were pulled down, ‘There were devil faces in the dust.’ Another said ‘There’s badness in this place.’ In Foucault’s terms this fragmentary discourse arises from an episteme shaped by life in poor quality housing initially reserved for so called ‘problem families’ and an unsystematised fascination with the supernatural and , in particular, what Patridge (2004, 62ff) calls ‘occulture’. Another 21 year old young man suggested to me that there was ‘a presence’ in the blocks and ‘faces in the windows’. Such ‘sound-bites’ should not be viewed as clear evidence of any of the forms of ‘belief’ discussed above. In light of my rooting in grounded theory and nitty-gritty hermeneutics I cannot shoe-horn them into existing templates of ‘belief’ or ‘religion’, even though they do offer echoes of the heterodox common religion to which Davie (1994) refers. I have not seen evidence that suggests that this fascination with the supernatural has any significant impact on the choices, ethics or everyday lives of young men on the Bromford. What I do suggest is that such fascination subverts still further suggestions that urban estates like the Bromford are secular spaces. ‘I believe in the Bromford. In my music I’m trying to lay down our story’ It was in one of the tower blocks that dominate the Bromford that two young men recently talked to me about life on the estate, the children’s parties they went to when they were little, the friendship and value they find on the street with their mates and their hopes for the future. And then they played music…not someone else’s track but their own. Their sense of place, rootedness and hope is tied to the tower blocks and alleyways of the Bromford and so is their use of ‘grime’ as a means of exploring and expressing their story and a possible future.25 The discourse of meaning hinted at within this sound-bite is multifaceted and arguably bears within it the seeds of a nitty-gritty NEET spirituality. From a semiotic perspective an ethic of belonging (‘I believe in the Bromford’) and the capacity of popular culture to articulate 18 URL: http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/rcar Fo rP ee rR MAIN FILE ev iew On ly Page 19 of 30 Culture and Religion 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 individualised and communal existential discourses of meaning (‘in my music I’m trying to lay down our story’) are powerfully signified (Beaudoin, 1998 and Lynch 2005). A double discourse of meaning is alluded to within this sound-bite. At a core level there is an organic discourse that emphasises the existential importance of place and rootedness. Here is a nittygritty NEET example of the socialised belief to which Day (2010) refers; a hopeful narrative that arises from communal experience and weaves a non-dogmatic discourse of meaning characterised by an implicit ethic of community building and the individualised ‘Generation X’ spiritualities of an older generation (Lynch, 2002,54ff). A second discourse exemplifies aspects of what Day (2010, 13ff) refers to as performative belief. Arising from an organic engagement with ‘Bromford life’ these two young NEETs could possibly be viewed in Gramsci’s (1971, 10ff and 418) terms as ‘nitty-gritty’ organic intellectuals, weaving a narrative of performed communal meaning through their music: sharing and interpreting the NEET experience on this Birmingham estate. In Gramsci’s (191, 10) words they participate in the life of the Bromford as ‘organiser[s], permanent persuader[s] and not just as…simple orator[s].’ In Foucault’s terms they articulate an episteme that they know intimately and, as Gramsci (1971, 418) argues feel the ‘elemental passions of the people.’ On the basis of my alignment with grounded theory and nitty-gritty hermeneutics I suggest that we cannot speak of theirs as an implicit religious discourse, nor would it be reasonable to squeeze their reflection into either a ‘believing without belonging’ or a common religion template. However, these two men do not articulate an avowedly secular narrative wherein notions of the spiritual are explicitly bracketed out of the search for meaning. In this Bromford soundbite perhaps what is hinted at is a post-religious but also post-secular discourse of meaning. ‘If you don’t get killed you get locked away but there’s always a different path to take.’ Tek9 was 16 when his brother was sent to prison. He felt lost and angry but his talent for lyrics gave him a way of expressing his feelings and the life of the Bromford. In the track 19 URL: http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/rcar Fo rP ee rR MAIN FILE ev iew On ly Culture and Religion Page 20 of 30 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 ‘What’s Going On These Days?’ Tek9 raps about violence, hopelessness, fear, drugs and gang culture.26 An array of signifiers is deployed to signify a four pronged nitty-gritty discourse of contextualised meaning. First in relation to socio-economic exclusion: ‘I’m from Bromford. They call it the slum…’ and ‘working for minimum wage.’ Second with reference to teenage life on the street and existential youth exclusion: ‘Every day is a struggle for a teenager trying to raise a kid when you live in the slum’, ‘People look at us and treat like slaves…’ and ‘…age of eleven they call you a thug, age of twelve you walk in the slum, at thirteen you’re dead and gone.’ Third in relation to social analysis and resistance to a repeating cycle of alienation: ‘You’re destroying the city. It’s about time you showed some pity…It’s about time you change what you’re doing. If you got talent then use it. Don’t sell drugs sell music. You only have one life so don’t lose it.’ Finally possible existential emancipation is signified: ‘So what’s going on these days if you don’t get killed you get locked away but there’s always a different path to take.’ Tek9 articulates youth experience on the raw underside of the city. Like the young men who spoke about telling the Bromford story in their music Tek9 can arguably be viewed as an emergent organic intellectual. However I would argue it is possible to go a step further and suggest that the discourse of meaning which Tek9 expresses bears some of the characteristics which West (1999) and Said (1994) relate to political intellectuals. He ‘…speak[s] a truth that allows suffering to speak [to]…create a vision of the world that puts into the limelight the social misery that is usually hidden’ (West, 1999, 551). Duncombe (2002, 8), like Gilroy (1987 and 1993) and Hall (2001), comments on the potential for ‘cultural resistance’ within popular culture. The act of creation can enable marginalised communities to forge a free existential space from which a new liberative ‘nitty-gritty’ discourse can emerge. Through his use of popular culture Tek9 has begun to fashion a discourse of meaning which adopts an unstated hermeneutics of suspicion towards existing patterns of socio-economic and existential NEET social exclusion, Fo rP URL: http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/rcar ee rR MAIN FILE ev iew On ly 20 Page 21 of 30 Culture and Religion 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 enabling him to begin to articulate a nitty-gritty discourse of existential resistance and ‘performative’ hope that may bear the seeds of an organic NEET spirituality which, whilst not an example of any of the analyses of ‘belief’ above, does bear some of the hallmarks of the liberative spiritualities articulated in different contexts by Beckford (2000 and 2006), Sobrino (1988), Galilea (1989) and Soelle (1993). Fo Conclusion In this article I have drawn upon the NEET discourses of meaning identified during my ethnographic fieldwork on a large urban housing estate to establish a dialogue between analyses of social exclusion amongst unemployed young men, understandings of human discourse as a vehicle for the expression of meaning and recent debates about the nature of ‘belief’. Previous analyses of social exclusion and NEET experience have rarely engaged with the discourses of meaning that have arisen from this experience and contemporary debates about ‘belief’ in contemporary urban societies have paid insufficient attention to the impact that social exclusion has on the resultant discourse and its relationship to existing understandings of ‘belief’. In this article I have sought to bridge this gap with reference to an often overlooked social group, unemployed young white men. Rooted in grounded theory and nitty-gritty hermeneutics I have strived to allow the pattern and nature of NEET discourses of meaning to emerge naturally from fieldwork. As a result I have suggested that, although aspects of Day’s ‘believing in belonging’ motif and Davies’ identification of the ongoing importance of heterogeneous ‘common religion’ have become apparent, the discourses of meaning being articulated by these young men cannot credibly be squeezed into any existing framing of the word ‘belief’. Equally the suggestions of figures like Bruce and Voas and Crockett that these young men inhabit a secular landscape and that their ‘residual religiosity’ has little personal or social significance bear no resemblance to the post-religious but unsecularised discourses of meaning which these young 21 URL: http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/rcar rP ee rR MAIN FILE ev iew On ly Culture and Religion Page 22 of 30 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 men have expressed. This is not a new religious discourse and these young men cannot credibly be described as ‘NEET believers’. Theirs is a messy, contradictory and nitty-gritty discourse of meaning which, although unsystematised and fragmentary provides a focus for solidarity in the face of alienating social exclusion. It is a neglected discourse that arises from the experience of young men on ignored urban estates that presents a world of meaning to those with power that is barely recognised beyond the world of the much maligned but rarely understood NEETs of popular political discourse. The articulation of hope resistance by Tek9 needs to be heard for it may bear within it the seeds of an organic and liberative NEET spirituality: ‘…every day I pray, pray and hope for a better day…If you don’t get killed you get locked away but it don’t have to be that way. There’s always a different path to take…’ Fo rP URL: http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/rcar ee rR MAIN FILE ev iew On ly 22 Page 23 of 30 Culture and Religion 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 Endnotes These short quotations were all drawn from conversations with young men on the Bromford estate between December 2010 and March 2011, with the exception of the final quotation which is taken from a ‘grime’ rap track ‘So What’s Going On These Days?’ by Tek9 which he wrote and uploaded himself onto You Tube during 2010. See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ACN7mlYrlZ0. 2 Elizabeth Olson, Giselle Vincett (both Edinburgh University), Peter Hopkins (Newcastle University and Rachel Pain (Durham University), 'Marginalized Spiritualities: faith and religion among young people in socially deprived Britain' 2009-2010 AHRC/ESRC Religion and Society project in Glasgow and Manchester. 3 The acronym N.E.E.T refers to young adults who are Not in Education, Employment or Training. 4 In the second phase of my research participant observation will be supplemented by focus group sessions and semi-structured interviews, leading to a day-long graffiti-art project in summer 2011 when local youth will work alongside a Birmingham based graffiti artist to paint their spirituality onto a large wall at the centre of the estate. 5 On the Bromford estate there are three small general food stores, two pubs, four take-away restaurants, a small children’s play area and one doctor’s surgery. A Roman Catholic Church and an Anglican/United Reformed Church Local Ecumenical Project stand on the edge of the estate. 6 Web site: http://ebriefing.bgfl.org/content/resources/resource.cfm?id=8153&key=&zz=20110322115248679&zs=n Birmingham City Council, Unemployment Briefing, March 2011, accessed 18 April 2011. The Bromford estate forms part of the Hodge Hill local government ward. The Indices of Deprivation are published by the UK government department of Communities and Local Government. 7 The diseases highlighted by the paper include chronic liver disease including cirrhosis, coronary heart disease, breast cancer and lung cancer. 8 Web site http://www.neighbourhood.statistics.gov.uk/dissemination/LeadTableView.do?a=7&b=293447&c=B36+8SL&d =141&e=10&g=371324&i=1001x1003x1004&m=0&r=0&s=1302878794984&enc=1&dsFamilyId=2307 accessed 15 April 2011. 9 All of the images in this article are photographs taken by myself on the Bromford estate between December 2010 and June 2011. 10 The term ‘Status Zer0’ was probably first used in 1993 as part of a study in South Glamorgan, Wales led by the sociologist and specialist in ‘youth studies’ Howard Williamson. 11 Williamson suggests that the term NEET was first used within the Home Office of the British government in 1996. 12 Web site, http://www.education.gov.uk/rsgateway/DB/STR/d000987/osr05-2011.pdf, Department for th Education quarterly labour force survey for the 4 quarter of 2010, (published 24 February 2011), accessed 17 April 2011. In February 2011 15.6% (938,000) of 16-24 year olds in the UK were NEET. 13 The term ‘broken Britain’ has characterised the social policy of the British Conservative party since its use by David Cameron in the Glasgow East by-election in July 2008 and the publication of Conservative social policy initiatives in June 2008. It has more recently been contrasted by Cameron’s idea of an active ‘big society’. Web site: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7471370.stm. See too Philip Blond, Red Tory: How Left and Right have Broken Britain and How we can Fix It. London: Faber and Faber, 2010. For examples of media representation of NEETs see the following web sites http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-389799/Teendrifters-cost-taxpayers-20billion.html#ixzz1JngFz67E, (9 June 2006), http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/6439923/Quarter-of-care-children-end-up-as-neets.html, (26 October 2009), http://www.thetelegraphandargus.co.uk/news/local/localbrad/8875186.Alarm_over_Bradford_district_s_11_ 000__Neets (25 February 2011) and http://www.bedfordshire-news.co.uk/News/Nursery-neets-struggle-atschool-13829.xnf?BodyFormat, all accessed 17 April 2011. 14 Initially the term social exclusion in the UK was largely confined to the ‘New Labour’ government (19972010) which established the ‘Social Exclusion Unit’ in 1997 but was re-framed as the Social Exclusion Taskforce in 2006. Following the election of the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government in the UK in 2010 this was subsumed within a new ‘Office for Civil Society’. Web site: http://www.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/resourcelibrary/office-civil-society-structure-finalised accessed 24 April 2011. 15 Web site http://www.archive.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/seu accessed 10 April 2011. 16 Web site http://www.worthunlimited.co.uk/eastbirminghamandsolihull.html accessed 15 April 2011. 1 Fo rP URL: http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/rcar ee rR MAIN FILE ev iew On ly 23 Culture and Religion Page 24 of 30 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 17 The shahadah (the declaration of faith) is one of the Five Pillars of Islam and is a key expression of a person’s Muslim identity: ‘There is no God but Allah and Muhammad is His Prophet.’ 18 Examples of such faith-based social movements and campaigns for social justice include the London Citizens community organising network, Jubilee 2000, Church Action on Poverty. 19 Skinnyman, Council Estate of Mind (from the album of the same name). London: Low Life Records, 2004. 20 Semiotics has its roots in the linguistic structuralism of Ferdinand de Saussure and revolves around a process of signification which constructs connections between signs or signifiers within a text and the experience or idea which the signifier illuminates, the signified. 21 ‘EDL’ stands for the English Defence League. See the group’s web site: http://www.englishdefenceleague.org. 22 Web site http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/newsnight/9385015.stm accessed 3 May 2011. 23 In Jamaican patois the word ‘rahtid’ can be used as a swear word or an expression of disgust. However it can also signify a deep-seated and morally justifiable rage. 24 The word ‘bag-head’ is a reference to people who are addicted to crack cocaine. 25 ‘Grime’ is an indigenous UK form of rap music which emerged out of British housing estates and the UK st Garage and dance music scene in the early 21 century. 26 Web site http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ACN7mlYrlZ0 accessed 5 May 2011. Tek9 wrote this track in 2009. Fo rP ee rR ev iew On ly 24 URL: http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/rcar References Audit Commission. Against the Odds: Re-engaging Young People in education, employment or Training. London: Local Government Organisation, 2010. Baker, Andrew; Singh Mohan and Begaj Irena. Firs and Bromford Health Profile 2010, Birmingham City Council, 2010. Baker, Christopher Richard. The Hybrid Church in the City: Third Space Thinking. London: SCM Press, 2009. Beaudoin, Tom. Virtual Faith: The Irreverent Spiritual Quest of Generation X. Chichester: JosseyBass, 1998. Beckford, Robert. 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Oxford: Blackwell, 2005. 26 URL: http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/rcar Fo rP ee rR MAIN FILE ev iew On ly Page 27 of 30 Culture and Religion 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 __________ The New Spirituality: An Introduction to Progressive Belief in the Twenty-First Century. London: I.B. Tauris, 2007. Macdonald, Robert and Marsh, Jane. 'Disconnected Youth?' Journal of Youth Studies, 4: 4, 373-391, 2001. _________Disconnected Youth? Growing up in Britain’s Poor Neighbourhoods, Hants: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005. Madison, D. Soyini. Critical Ethnography: Method, Ethics and Performance, London: Sage Publications, 2005. Moltmann, Jürgen. Theology of hope: on the ground and the implications of a Christian eschatology. London: SCM Press, 1967. Partridge, Christopher. The Re-enchantment of the West: Alternative Spiritualities, Sacralization, Popular Culture and Occulture. London: T&T Clark, 2004. ________The Re-enchantment of the West Volume 2: Alternative Spiritualities, Sacralization, Popular Culture and Occulture. London: T&T Clark, 2005 Pinn, Anthony. Why Lord? Suffering and Evil in Black Theology. New York: Continuum, 1991. Reason, Peter and Bradbury, Hilary Ed. Handbook of Action Research, London: Sage, 2006. Robbins, Joel. ‘Continuity Thinking and the Problem of Christian Culture: Belief, Time, and the Anthropology of Christianity’ in Current Anthropology, volume 48, number 1, pp5-38, 2007. Said, Edward, Representations of the Intellectual: The 1993 Reith Lectures. London: Vintage Press, 1994. Savage, Sarah; Collins-Mayo, Sylvia; Mayo, Bob and Cray, Graham. Making Sense of Generation Y: The World View of 15- to 25-year-olds, London: Church House Publishing, 2006. Smith, Christian and Denton, Melinda Lundquist, Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005. Soelle, Dorothy. (transl. Bakto, Marc). On Earth as in Heaven – A Liberation Spirituality of Sharing. Louisville, Kentucky: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1993. Stringer, Ernest T. (1999) Action Research, 2nd Edition. London: Sage Publications. Thwaites, T; Davis, L and Mules, W. Introducing Cultural and Media Studies: A Semiotic Approach. Basingstoke, Palgrave Press, 2000. Voas, David and Crockett, Alasdair. ‘Religion in Britain: Neither Believing nor Belonging’ in Sociology, 39:11, 2005, London: Sage, pp11-28. Weber, Max. The Sociology of Religion. Boston, Massachusetts: Beacon Press, 1964. __________ The Protestant Ethic and Spirit of Capitalism. Oxford: Blackwell, 2002. West, Cornel. The Cornel West Reader. New York: Basic Civitas Books, 1999. Williamson, Howard. Youth and Policy: Contexts and Consequences. Aldershot: Ashgate, 1997. Fo rP URL: http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/rcar ee rR MAIN FILE ev iew On ly 27 Culture and Religion Page 28 of 30 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 _________________ ‘Neet Acronym is far from a neat description’ in T.E.S Cymru on 5 March 2010, web site http://www.tes.co.uk/article.aspx?storycode=6038266 accessed 1 April 2011. Fo rP URL: http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/rcar ee rR MAIN FILE ev iew On ly 28 Page 29 of 30 Culture and Religion 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 ‘NEET Believers?’ – FIGURES AND TABLES FILE Economic factors Unemployment Poverty Inequality Not in training Poor housing Fo rP Cultural/Political factors No political participation No civic engagement Racism/Religious prejudice Perception of youth as problem Gendered prejudice URL: http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/rcar ee rR Social factors Figure 11 Moral factors ev Low skills/education Family breakdown Teenage pregnancy iew Live in high crime area Isolation Anti-social behaviour Poor health Drugs/Alcohol On Role models/Parenting ly Existential alienation Table 1 Culture and Religion Page 30 of 30 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 Fo rP ee rR ev iew 1 Figure 2 All of the images in this article are photographs taken by myself on the Bromford estate between December 2010 and June 2011. URL: http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/rcar On ly