Anastasia Wakengut

This empirical study analyzes the relationships between popular music and identity constructions of young adults in post-Soviet Belarus. Popular music as a discursive signifying practice plays a great role in the construction of meanings and identities. The focus of this study is on young people’s discourses and practices in specific Belarusian contexts, in which various popular music forms and youth cultures are negotiated, (re)interpreted and (re)attributed with (new) ideas, symbols and meanings. The study analyzes the ways in which young Belarusians articulate sameness and difference and construct identities on lines of social group, community, society, culture and nation. The project was conducted in the framework of the interdisciplinary post-graduate studies programme “The Construction of Identities of Young Adults in a Post-Socialist Society in Transformation: The Case of Belarus.” The empirical data were collected in a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods, and...

In Belarus, the state between “East and West,” issues of national identity remain a topic of great importance. In this article, I identify the discourse on Belarusian music taking place among young Belarusian adults. This discourse is centered on three major aspects: the very existence of a distinct Belarusian music, its authenticity, and the aspect of language. The article aims to show that the discourse, characterized by young people’s ambivalent perceptions of Belarusian culture and music, reflects the ongoing process of the search for identity. The complexity of the notion of Belarusian culture and the ambiguity of the term “Belarusian identity” is linked with the issue of the Belarusian language, which occupies a marginal position in Belarus. In this article, I analyze the interconnection of the perceptions of music, culture and language in Belarus, and identify the functions which Belarusian music fulfills, both for Belarusian- and Russian-speaking Belarusians.

The Rastafari movement arose in Jamaica in the 1930s and spread from that small island to a variety of areas around the world. Having emerged as a response to colonial legacies, racialization, and racial oppression, the movement of marginalized black Jamaicans transcended its local Caribbean borders and became a way of life for people of very diverse cultural origins. Rastafari, born within a tradition of resistance in Jamaica, helped its adherents reconstruct their "black consciousness" and African heritage. The worldview of the Afro-Caribbean diaspora challenged established colonial views in the struggle for social justice. Also for many people in the West, this worldview became a source of spirituality as well as a philosophy criticizing Eurocentric assumptions of superiority. The Rastafari philosophy spread in Europe, producing a multicultural phenomenon. I focus on Rastafari in Germany, its peculiarities and similarities to, as well as its differences from, the Jamaican movement. This study poses questions about identity in the Rastafari movement in Germany and explores crucial issues in Rastafari, such as identity transformation, identity work, self-identification, representation, cultural resistance, and globalization. My argument is that "Africanness" and "black consciousness" can be adjusted and interpreted in a European context as a cluster of ideas and symbols that offer German Rastafarians identification and embody social justice.

This empirical study analyzes the relationships between popular music and identity constructions of young adults in post-Soviet Belarus. Popular music as a discursive signifying practice plays a great role in the construction of meanings and identities. The focus of this study is on young people’s discourses and practices in specific Belarusian contexts, in which various popular music forms and youth cultures are negotiated, (re)interpreted and (re)attributed with (new) ideas, symbols and meanings. The study analyzes the ways in which young Belarusians articulate sameness and difference and construct identities on lines of social group, community, society, culture and nation. The project was conducted in the framework of the interdisciplinary post-graduate studies programme “The Construction of Identities of Young Adults in a Post-Socialist Society in Transformation: The Case of Belarus.” The empirical data were collected in a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods, and subsequently analyzed and interpreted from various academic perspectives (values, language, literature, clothing, music).