Hip hop, circulation, and the associational life of Peruvian youth

Kyle E Jones, Purdue University

Abstract

This dissertation investigates the ways that hip hop has traveled across Peru’s cities and among its young people to become a pervasive part of contemporary Peruvian society. It is based on traditional and participatory ethnographic methods carried out over sixteen months between 2010-2014 across the cities of Huancayo, Cusco, and Lima, Peru. Through this multi-locale methodology, this study takes a decentered view of globalized culture within the nation to examine the on-the-ground ways that youth created circuits of hip hop across Peru, and in doing so shaped how hip hop and how they themselves entered into the country’s public spaces and debates. This exploration of youth lives and hip hop circuits focuses on four main analytical themes. First, this dissertation links urban and media infrastructures, such as internet cafes and city parks, with the smaller-scale sites developed by hiphoperos (those who practice or identify with hip hop culture in Peru), such as home studios and events. I argue that these physical spaces and the technologies typically used in them, such as personal computers, cell phones, audio recording devices, or USB boomboxes, comprised a foundational infrastructure for the production and dissemination of hip hop culture in Peru. However, I further argue that gendered practices of youth sociality surrounding these infrastructures, as well as patterns of mobility among youth themselves, propelled hip hop’s travel throughout Peru. These circulations located hip hop within the broader milieu of Peru’s rapidly changing signifiers of social class and identity, even as hip hop itself remained largely on the margins of public awareness and industry radars until recent years. Second, this dissertation examines young people’s experiences of circulation and immobility in the context of their travels to perform in other cities. I argue that the valued social and economic relationships underpin Peru’s hip hop circuits, and entail young people’s assessments of desires to alter social status and life opportunities. For young men in particular, relationships built through hip hop gained strength in how they elaborated masculine gender ideologies in the context of Peru’s changing economy. Third, it examines how hiphoperos organized themselves into various kinds of collectivities, such as self-described movements, collectives, associations, or federations. Through an examination of two cases, I argue that a central component of these collectivities was their flexibility as they were put to use across personal, cultural political, and activist aims. The formation and fracturing of Peru’s hip hop collectivities bear witness to the terms of authenticity and social distinction, as well as the anxieties surrounding the country’s unprecedentedly large youth population stemming from the lingering anxieties of internal conflict and a fragile, optimistic sense of the future. Lastly, it explores the practices and negotiations entailed in hiphoperos’ production of hip hop events, which constituted a driving force in the circulation of hip hop and the formation of its collectivities. I argue that hip hop events (e.g. concerts, workshops, weekly gatherings) were moments of intensified mediation and concretization where the materials, sentiments, and meanings of hip hop, associational life, and youth public and social relations were pulled together and provisionally defined. Focusing in particular on media production and procurement of resources and sponsorship for events, I demonstrate how hiphoperos’ negotiate and make claims to markers of status and difference to build their audiences, defining hip hop to themselves and others. Through event production, hiphoperos worked across competing social domains to directly affect the ways hip hop entered into public city and discursive spaces, and was capable of fostering larger collective formations and interpersonal networks. Taken together, these themes illustrate the dynamic associational life that animates youth lives and hip hop in contemporary Peru, highlighting the heterogeneity and deeply social nature of their practices and organization. Analyzing hip hop in this way offers a lens through which to understand the experiences and perspectives of many youth in Peru and elsewhere, and how they are leaving their mark in societies undergoing rapid political, economic, and sociocultural changes.

Degree

Ph.D.

Advisors

Kelly, Purdue University.

Subject Area

Cultural anthropology|Social research|Music|Latin American Studies

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