2.

The sociological, subcultural and post- subcultural studies

on youth
Research perspectives: centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies 1964-2002

 The cultural classification of people into social categories (youth)

 The demarcation of class, race and gender
 The questions of space, style, taste, media and meaning
 The place of consumption within capitalist consumer societies
 The question of ‘resistance’
 Ambivalence: a utopian image of the future and a potential threat to
existing norms

1. Research perspectives: pre- CCCS

Two contrasting strands:

1. Notion of a general, ‘classless’ youth cultural experience or a distinctive

generational experience. Social: agencies of socialisation: help young people to
learn how to become adults. For the individual, psychological support.
2. American tradition of research into working-class delinquent youth subcultures.
The Chicago school of Sociology: exploration of juvenile delinquency, urban
sociology and social interactionism (Blumer) .

2. Functionalism (functional psychology)

 Talcott Parsons: rite of passage role YC (a bridge between childhood and

adulthood)
 Schmuel Eisenstadt: important psychological function of peer groups.
Sense of community, togetherness.

3. More contemporary thinkers in sociology: ‘liquid modernity’, ‘at the centre

of all protest movements is a new sociological type: the graduate with no future’,
new forms of activism like cyberprotest.

4. Critical Cultural Studies approach: Marxist Sociology:

 Social class as the most crucial basis for division in society.

 Criticism of functionalist approach and functionalists’ overemphasis of
shared functions of youth culture.
 Marxist Sociology + Semiotics (meaning making of science).
  Richard Hoggart wrote The Uses of Literacy, Phil Cohen and Angela
McRobbie (she is concentrating on the gender aspect, girls in the work
world).

5. Subculture

 Responses of a group are at odds with both parent and hegemonic culture
+ these responses are seen by a group as a way of life = subculture.
 Subcultural values can either affirm the overarching class culture
(skinheads) or oppose it (mods mod Culture).

6. Influences
- Chicago School, Frankfurt School and Gramschi’s Theory of Hegemony.
- Becoming deviant is the result of being labelled as such:

 Some more oppositional groups (those who take an oppositional stance

agintst society proper) are more likely to be labelled- working class youth
is in this disadvantageous position
 Youth subculture (ritual) as a response (symbolic resistance) to class
oppression (explicitly political orientation).
 Young people’s experience as the experience of the stat’es attempt to
ensure their contribution to the reproduction of capitalism.
- Youth’s basic orientation towards popular culture:

 A combination of mass-market manipulation and genuine expression

through reappropiation.

7. The centrality of class/ class conflict

- Plurality of cultures within a dominan, hegemonic culture are largely
determined by class.
2 types of parent culture:
- class-specific expressions
- class-based responses to hegemonic culture- based cultural choices
available for appropriation
Parent culture is not the relation between adults (parents) and their
offspring; is not a subculture.
- Is the culture of the parents being working class.
8. 3 Analytic tools

 Bricolage: idea of creating something new, unconnected and simple.

Previously unconnected symbols are used to create new meaning. Punk
Style.
 Style: a bricolage of symbols constituting a coherent and meaningful
expression of subcultural values, style as a signifying practice.
 Homology: social group plus their preferred cultural item.

9. Criticism of CCCS
- Tends to read meanings into the behaviour and styles of young people which
they themselves would not recognize (Phil Cohen).
- Ignores the experience of ‘ordinary youth’.
- Focus on the experience of white working-class youths at the expense of other
groups.
- Focus on class relations within the constraints of their time.
- Focus on male youth

10. Research perspectives: post-CCCS

Postmodernism; Post- subculturalism

- Diversity choice, freedom, fragmentation individualisation/ postmodern

hyperindividualism, consumerism.

11. Subculture

 Subculture is not an authentic object but was brought about by a

subcultural theorist.
 Youth subcultures are magical- essentially illusion
 A trick that youth use to convince themselves that they are different and
unique to their parents
 Sense of community, solidarity to offset the sense of alienation and
frustration.
 Rebellion in the form of appearance and behaviour= a chance to kick back
at society
 Doesn’t lead to substantial change.
 No subcultural solution to working class youth unemployment, educational
disadvantage, dead-end jobs, low pay and the loss of skills (Michael Brake
in the following).
#postmodernism #diversitychoice #freedom #fragmentationIndividualisation

Youth doesn’t fit into identifiable youth subcultures/ Stylistic non-

conformity

 The hipness of British rave culture: who is hip/ who is unhip?

 Club cultures as taste cultures brought rogether by micro-media (flyers,
listings); renamed as movements by mass media (tabloids).
 What is mainstream? What is alternative?
 Youth culture= melting pot of subcultures
 Factors shaping the personal standing of clubbers: outfit
 Subcultural capital: factors shaping the personal standing of clubbers:
outfit, number of records. As the cultural knowledge and commodities
acquired by members of a subculture, raising their status and helping
differentiate themselves from members of other groups.

 Bourdieu: cultural capital. Knowledge that resides in us.

 NEO-Tribe versus subculture: fluidity, mobility, escapism, fun,
hedonism, consumerism, body cultures, political movements…
 Post-rave cultures/ neo-tribes, transitory tribes: ‘unity of identity’, and in
particular an identification with a specific subcultural grouping, appear to
be far less significant in contemporary youth culture than has been
recognised by theorists of youth culture.