Young People Participating in Society: Cultural, Political and Economic Perspectives on Youth Culture Sticker Art in St. Petersburg

This dissertation aims to scrutinize the role of alternative youth culture in assisting young people in finding their way to live and act meaningfully in a non-democratic society, which is often perceived as unjust, suppressive and alienating. I investigate the empirical case of the sticker artists’ community in St. Petersburg (Russia), based on the ethnographic data collected from 2016 to 2021.

DIY and alternative youth cultures are often recognized as spaces where young people can find like-minded peers, create alternative imaginaries and subvert dominant norms, values and lifestyles. Consequently, mainstream society and authority often interpret the diverse aesthetic and stylistic expressions, usually inherent in youth cultures as deviance or a certain moral, symbolic or even legal threat. Sticker art is a less known and less “deviant” manifestation of graffiti and street art cultures, which is constituted by practices of creating and distributing in the city small adhesive vinyl or plain papers with the frontside depicting a character, tag, slogan, or anything that fits the size. Artists usually put their stickers on different surfaces of urban infrastructures and share photos and videos of stickers on visual social media. In the context of the zero-tolerance policy against street art and graffiti in St. Petersburg, stickers as minor urban interventions are more available tools, utilized for exercising creativity, self-expression and redefinition of urban space.

This study scrutinizes relationships arising between sticker art culture and social structures of the non-democratic society, and how individual youth biographies evolve out of these relationships. Considering a horizontal network of young people who are united by a passion for sticker art, I aim to capture both shared collective and unique individual experiences of social, political, economic and cultural engagement and disengagement, embodied in the access to different recourses and to the public space. Theoretically, the study approaches how sticker artists relate to society through a perspective of societal participation. This dissertation defines societal participation as dynamic, affective and relational engagement and disengagement with discourses, and formal and informal institutions, manifested through actions and inactions. The research emphasizes the perspective of young people and therefore approaches societal participation critically, taking into account the normative and disciplining definitions of “good citizens”.

The dissertation is composed of three articles published in peer-reviewed journals and the introductory chapter summarizes those publications and places them in the broader academic discussion. The first article examines how participation in sticker art activities mediates artists' cultural imaginaries and through that affects their belonging to the city. The second article scrutinizes the relationship between engagement in sticker art and employment–economic participation. The third article focuses on the politics of youth culture sticker art and the political subjectivities of sticker artists.