2.The most effective way to understand contemporary culture is to analyze the trends of its youth.

One of the effective ways to observe a contemporary culture, is to take the trends of youth into consideration. Nevertheless, with the drawbacks in such a method, it is not the best way to “understand” the culture of a society.

To begin with, youths’ trends can lead us to observe the present culture and where it is heading for. Trends of youths are taking shape in response to the contemporary situation and thus reflects the contemporary culture. In the era from 1980 to 1989 in the western part of the world a generation was evolving, and it was observing the big global changes like ending the cold war, the Reform of Communism in Russia, and so on. The new generation was aware of the great changes and the cultural transformation in that period was evident in their trend. For instance, in music, the genres pop or hip-hop/rap highlighted the political and social problems prevalent in the society such as racism, famine, war, drugs, political unrest, and outbreak of disease such aids, and so on. This generation is called Gen-x whose trend reflected the cultural zeitgeist of their time.

However, the study of youths’ trends has its own drawbacks toward understanding the contemporary culture of a nation. Youth trends are heterogeneous and fickle and are influenced by the other cultures, and they cannot always be a representative of the contemporary culture of a society. In Iran, youths have a different ideas and so their trend is quite diverse. Resorting to just such a trend, we cannot even put them in the same society; some are religious and seek the religious trends, some are nationalists and their trend is more based on the Persian Empire, some are indifferent and their trend is influenced by Michael Jackson, Britney Spears and in one word the western culture.

Finally, Study of the youth trend cannot reveal the historical roots of a contemporary culture to understand it. Here other methods such as study of history comes in handy. For instance, as the Iranian history is overwhelmed with the centuries of pain, the Iranian culture respects lamentation as the catharsis of painful emotions. Now to understand this fact, pursuing the trend of the Iranian youth, would not help, since lamentation is a centuries-old culture, not something that is picked by the youths as their trend. Clearly, the study of youth trend cannot always guide us in understanding a centuries-old culture.

In short, the study of youth’s trend can reflect the contemporary culture, but to achieve a deep understanding of a culture it is not a reliable method. As mentioned, youth trend can be too heterogeneous, and also cannot depict the historical roots of a contemporary culture in order to understand it.