NCJ Number
163203
Date Published
1996
Length
33 pages
Annotation
This paper provides an overview of previous explanations for the existence of youth subcultures and proposes a useful explanatory theory for current social influences on youth.
Abstract
The discussion notes the pioneering and enduring work of the Chicago School of Sociology in the 1920's and 1930's, as well as the U.S. subcultural theorists in the 1940's and 1950's. The authors then identify how the Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS) developed a neo-Marxist version of subcultural theory in the 1970's to explain how successive groups of British working class youth have consciously or subconsciously identified problems in relation to a changing economy and sought their own solutions. The authors propose that the analysis favored by the Birmingham CCCS is still a useful explanatory tool when adapted to take account of the wide range of competing subcultural groups that currently exist in postmodern society. These separate groups of youth have had very different experiences of the radical economic change that has occurred in Britain in the last 20 years, and they have each developed distinctive subcultural solutions for coping with this transformation. It is further suggested that many contemporary youth are able to choose a subcultural solution to their subjective socioeconomic problem from some of the alternatives available. The paper concludes by identifying some of the key youth subcultures in Britain in the 1990's, discusses their chosen subcultural solution to their predicament, and locates some of the points of intersection between different groupings. 49 references