The author questions a dominant theme in the discourse about "the underclass" and "problem youth," that is, that young Australians are following in the footsteps of the United States and that Australia is seeing the emergence of an American-style "juvenile underclass" influenced and absorbed by criminal and violent role models. Instead, the author argues that there are significant differences between the American and Australian experiences, despite the apparent global uniformity and universality of lifestyles. The identity formation of many young Australians depends on what they learn within their local and immediate cultural settings. Local settings, despite the coordinating and universalizing conditions of modernity, offer an array of localized choices anchored in cultural contexts significantly different from those in the United States. 57 notes