This paper aims to explore some central aspects of identity management and status maintenance among a group of lower-income Surinamese youth (14-22 years of age) in their urban Paramaribo neighborhoods. Attention will focus on 'streetcorner', specific contexts where boys and young men, with individual style and 'flair', act out public dramas that are supportive of reputations which they perceive to be unvalued or unrecognized by persons of more 'respectable' society. Style, in this case, cannot

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... be seen in isolation from the groups' position in, relation to and perception of the terrain of national urban society. In lower-income Paramaribo, these factors are complicated by the young men's age and class position and the complex patterns of continuity and dysjuncture between youth sub-culture and the traditional parent culture of which they are still a part.