154 people employing a plethora of strategies ranging from partial abstinence from it,
to active boycotts, to DIY alternatives and consciousness raising activities. Overall, the socio-cultural views and practices discussed in this section run counter to the
more uncritical, materialistic, apathetic, and self-interested discourses and dispositions promoted by the neoliberal culture that they are, nonetheless,
surrounded by.
5.2 Schema Mapping: Operationalized Framework:
In Chapters 2 and 4, I argued that socio-cognitive dispositions, when specifically referring to an individual’s instantly and discursively expressed
attitudes, affects, inclinations, preferences, and practices, are some of the empirically observable, manifested, and articulated content that correspond to an
i ndividual’s schemata Bourdieu, 1990; van Dijk, 1997. In the context of socio-
cultural and political-economic knowledge, discourses, and socialization, thinking in terms of schemata can help us to understand and map out some of the
substantive content, context and structure of a young person’s frameworks for making sense of the societal discourses and practices that they have been exposed
to throughout their lives, and more specifically, how they store, process, react to, and make meaning of those discourses and practices. For instance, some of the
extracts discussed in the previous section, suggest that the
CriticalPolitical
young people’s schemata are organized in such a way that cultural ideas and artefacts like
‘brands’, ‘clothes’, and ‘shopping malls’, are associated, networked, and encoded
with political- economic concepts such as corporations’, ‘labour and environmental
exploitation’, and ‘consumerism’. So, for example, whenever their schemata for say music were activated via my questioning, their inner thought processes
automatically drew on their specific semantic and lexical networks of associated and relevant concepts,
46
that resulted in them tending to dichotomize music by framing it negatively as mainstream as associated with bland materialistic
discourses and superficial lyrics, andor positively as non-mainstream, associating it with more empowering and socially and politically conscious discourses and
lyrics e.g., see Figure 5.1
Luz’s Music Schemata below.
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As Ferguson Bargh 2004, p. 33 note, “research suggests that the perception of any social
stimulus will inevitably activate in memory a diverse array of related knowledge”.
155 In the following sections, I will analyze some of the substantive content of
these you ng people’s schemata for political-economic knowledge. In doing so, I
seek to highlight their extensive knowledge of political-economic topics specifically welfare, voting, and political-economic systems and their abilities to
quickly recall substantial, detailed, and relevant information. Moreover, by drawing out the range of their political-economic knowledge, conceptual
associations, and opinions, I can more explicitly highlight how these correspond to, andor diverge from, neoliberal discourses. From this, I can then provisionally
situate their political orientations along a theoretical spectrum of neoliberal interpellation, i.e., the extent to which their political-economic schemata highly,
moderately, or weakly reflect or contest dominant neoliberal discourses. Lastly,
the schemata diagram shown below,
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along with the others that will be illustrated throughout the rest of this thesis, are operationalized illustrations that are based on,
and that roughly follow, Lodge and colleagues’ 1991, p. 1360 hypothetical
memory structure, and the following framework set by Torney-Purta 1992, p. 12- 13:
A framework for understanding the content and structure of a young
person’s cognitive representations of politics should meet several criteria: first, it should be appropriate to political situations that usually lack clear
structure and political problems that lack agreed-upon solutions; second, it should take account of the role of discourse and dialogue about social
representations; and, third, it should integrate attitudes with cognition.
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This figure represents a major portion of Luz’s South-Central LA Participant actual thought processes and conceptual connections which comprise her more unconscious and affect loaded
critical and political dispositions, as well as her conscious reflections about her music preferences, as evidenced from her responses to questions concerning music. As demonstrated in this figure,
and as is the case with the other CriticalPolitical young people, socio-cultural preferences, experiences, and discourses are intimately and intricately intertwined with political-economic
knowledge and serve to mutually reinforce each other. I do not have enough data to state whether
these young people’s media preferences influence their politics, or vice versa. However, the point is that, as the figure demonstrates, they are intimately interconnected.
156
Figure 5.1: Luz’s Music Schemata and Schemata Key
157
5.3 Welfare And Poverty Schemata:
