"In the clique": Popular culture, constructions of place, and the everydaylives of urban youth

This study focuses on two teens, Tony and Rufus, and how they used key popu lar texts to construct a sense of place in the small city where this resear ch was conducted. These two teens mobilized these popular texts in very spe cific ways, both finding specific thematic links between and across them an d also using them to index their relationships with biological and extended family in this city and "down South." This study highlights the complex, e mergent, and messy relationships many young people have with popular cultur e.