This book represents a conceptual elaboration and empirical investigation of a relatively neglected area of attention in Czech youth research: Czech ‘mainstream’ youth as ‘consumers’. The objective is to ascertain the extent to which the concept of ‘mainstream’ youth offers a valuable lens for understanding young people’s relationship to social change and how it might be relevant for further youth research in the Czech Republic. Based on a qualitative research study concerned with the meaning of consumer lifestyles in the lives of ‘ordinary’ young people, this book challenges the orthodox understanding of a passively conforming ‘mainstream’ that prevails in youth research in the Czech Republic. Instead, it highlights the centrality of reflexivity in young consumers and their active engagement with late modern consumer culture and social life through the notion of a paradox of choice. This book thus serves as both complement and critique, establishing a position alongside and against a more typical focus in Czech academic studies on marginal and extreme youth cultures.
