Youth Culture, Popular Music and Identity in 1960s France. A Case Study of the Magazine Salut les copains! (1962-76)

This single-authored book project focuses on the long-running youth magazine Salut les copains! (SLC), which was published in France from 1962 to 1976, a period of rapid and turbulent social and cultural change. Although SLC is often cited as the epitome of youth culture during the period, a full-length study of this highly significant publication has never been undertaken.

While cultural commentators have so far viewed SLC in rather unproblematic terms as a neutral, apolitical vehicle for French pop music, I argue that this youth publication provides us with a unique vantage point from which to examine many of the tensions and conflicts that were taking place in French society and culture during the 1960s and 1970s: cultural/musical, national, generational and gendered.

My study will shed new light on the social and cultural transformations taking place not only in France but also throughout the Western world. The outcomes will be of particular interest not only to scholars, postgraduate, and undergraduate students in modern and contemporary French Studies, but also to those working in Popular Music Studies, interdisciplinary and comparative
Cultural Studies, Media Studies, Youth Studies, as well as to readers interested more generally in issues of representation and identity.