This book is available as open access through the Bloomsbury Open Access programme and is available on www.bloomsburycollections.com. We all know what suburbia is, indeed the majority of us live in it. Yet, despite this ubituity, with no formal definition of the contept, the suburbs have developed in our collective imagination through representations in popular culture, from Terry and June to Desparate Housewives. Rupa Huq examines how suburbia has been depicted in novels, cinema, popular music and on television, charting changing trends both in the suburbs and popular media consumption and production. She looks at the differences in defining suburbia in the US and UK and how characteristics associated with it have shifted in meaning and form.

This lively collection presents a multi-disciplinary, multi-perspectival commentary explaining the what, where, and how of the riots that the austerity-hit UK experienced during the long, hot summer of 2011. It looks beyond London and its Tottenham district where disturbances started, to locations such as Manchester and Birmingham. Parallels are drawn with Cairo during the period of the Arab spring, and even with the Star Wars saga. The book locates the riots in historical context by looking at the previous UK riots of 1981 and 2001, looking at how news cycles and concepts such as that of 'moral panic' have changed in the age of social networking. It is essential reading for anyone interested in contemporary debates in social policy, media studies, anthropology sociology, cultural studies, and human geography. This book was originally published as a special issue of the Journal for Cultural Research.

Presenting a new approach to the study of youth culture and popular music, Beyond Subculture re-examines the link between music and subcultures and asks the question; in an ageing world, can pop music still be an automatic metaphor for youth culture?

Using case studies and first-hand interviews with consumer and producers including Noel Gallagher and Talvin Singh, Rupa Huq investigates a series of musically-centred global youth cultures including hip-hop, electronic dance music and bhangra.

With 'Generation X' becoming an increasingly redundant term, this book will help students redefine their ideas of youth culture and will be an invaluable addition to their studies.

Presenting a new approach to the study of youth culture and popular music, Beyond Subculture re-examines the link between music and subcultures and asks the question; in an ageing world, can pop music still be an automatic metaphor for youth culture?

Using case studies and first-hand interviews with consumer and producers including Noel Gallagher and Talvin Singh, Rupa Huq investigates a series of musically-centred global youth cultures including hip-hop, electronic dance music and bhangra.

With 'Generation X' becoming an increasingly redundant term, this book will help students redefine their ideas of youth culture and will be an invaluable addition to their studies.

This lively collection presents a multi-disciplinary, multi-perspectival commentary explaining the what, where, and how of the riots that the austerity-hit UK experienced during the long, hot summer of 2011. It looks beyond London and its Tottenham district where disturbances started, to locations such as Manchester and Birmingham. Parallels are drawn with Cairo during the period of the Arab spring, and even with the Star Wars saga. The book locates the riots in historical context by looking at the previous UK riots of 1981 and 2001, looking at how news cycles and concepts such as that of 'moral panic' have changed in the age of social networking. It is essential reading for anyone interested in contemporary debates in social policy, media studies, anthropology sociology, cultural studies, and human geography. This book was originally published as a special issue of the Journal for Cultural Research.

'A fascinating exploration of the complexity and diversity of contemporary suburban life. In challenging our view of the suburbs this book challenges our view of England - and in so doing disrupts mainstream political orthodoxy.' Jon Cruddas Suburbs and the relationships that sustain them have been subject to tremendous changes in the last fifty years, with changing work patterns, changing family lives, changing patterns of home ownership and a massive shift in the structural relationships between inner cities and their surrounding urban environment. But this transformation has been largely overlooked, and the suburbs have lived on in the collective imagination as places that are homogenous and/or boring. But suburbs have always come in many shapes and sizes, and this book documents widely varying forms of suburban life to construct a compelling narrative of suburban diversity and variety. Huq demonstrates conclusively that those who still fondly imagine the suburbs as the preserve of maiden aunts on bicycles, the domain of archetypal Englishness - or less fondly as places of stifling conformism and stagnation - are wide of the mark. In this sense her re-imagining of the suburbs is also a re-imagining of Englishness. In an analysis that ranges across gender, ethnicity, class, religion, lifestyle, consumerism, family life, gentrification, property relations, political representation, city life and globalisation, Huq presents a convincing case for the need to radically rethink the way we understand contemporary suburban life. Rupa Huq is Senior Lecturer in Sociology at Kingston University. Her first book, Beyond Subculture: pop, youth and identity in a postcolonial world, was shortlisted for the British Sociological Association's Philip Abrams Memorial Prize. She was Deputy Mayoress of the London Borough of Ealing from 2010 to 2011. She has lived for most of her life in suburbia apart from periods studying at Cambridge and Strasbourg Universities and a stint working at the University of Manchester.

This book is available as open access through the Bloomsbury Open Access programme and is available on www.bloomsburycollections.com. We all know what suburbia is, indeed the majority of us live in it. Yet, despite this ubituity, with no formal definition of the contept, the suburbs have developed in our collective imagination through representations in popular culture, from Terry and June to Desparate Housewives. Rupa Huq examines how suburbia has been depicted in novels, cinema, popular music and on television, charting changing trends both in the suburbs and popular media consumption and production. She looks at the differences in defining suburbia in the US and UK and how characteristics associated with it have shifted in meaning and form.