NCJ Number
76079
Journal
Youth and Society Volume: 9 Issue: 4 Dated: (June 1978) Pages: 343-372
Date Published
1978
Length
30 pages
Annotation
This paper reviews recent British theoretical, descriptive, and empirical literature focusing on postwar deviant British youth groups, such as the Teddy Boys, Mods, Rockers, and Skinheads.
Abstract
The paper's underlying theme is that the varieties of youth culture represented by these groups symbolize collective solutions to problems facing working-class youths at school and later at work. A number of British studies indicate that these youth cultures have been created as responses to irrelevant schooling and meaningless work, to which youths comply from necessity rather than from moral endorsement. These subcultures' patterns are based on 'dissociation' from conventional values and on pursuit of particular leisure patterns as sources of satisfaction and are not viewed by British the theorists as being based on status frustration and delinquency. By treating leisure and lifestyle as central aspects of subcultural analysis, these theorists view youthful deviance as meaningful to the actors involved in that leisure styles can provide partial solutions to the shared problems of working-class adolescents. Different subcultures reflect the different segments of the working class. For example, the Mods, who came from the skilled and semiskilled working class, adopted a parody of the style of the upwardly mobile. In contrast, the Skinheads, who came from the unskilled working class, reaffirmed and exaggerated traditional proletarian traits and behaviors. British researchers have generally overlooked the differences among various subgroups within the working class. Despite theoretical and empirical weaknesses, the recent work in subcultural theory should provide the cornerstone for future research on the sociology of youth. Notes and 45 references are provided.