Spectacular Youth Subcultures Flashcards
Teddy Boys
Abrams - teddy boy subculture emerged because youths had ‘affluence without responsibility’ and they spent their disposable income on fashion: music and going out. They also gained status through their style and their aggressive behaviour
Hall and Jefferson- Teddy boys formed a rebellious subculture as a response to the destruction of their communities after WW2. They aggressively defended their territory against developers and migrants.
Hippies
Hall (Marxist)
- hippies were opposed to capitalism and wanted to live an alternate communal lifestyle based around nature and values such as freedom and dress live. Many took drugs and wore bright colours, kaftans and sandals. They wanted to oppose mainstream culture.
Brake (Marxist) - hippes were mainly middle class and were forming a resistance to their parents middle class values and the consumer culture which surrounds them. They did this by taking drugs such as LSD, listened to chilled out music at festivals and had anti war attitudes
Skinheads
Hebdige (Marxist) - skinhead dress was an attempt to recreate an inherited, exaggerated sense of working class style. (DM's, jeans and Ben Sherman shirts. Working class youths established this sense of style as a way of asserting their masculine identity that they lost as a result of high unemployment. This identity allowed them to be deluded that they were in steady jobs and were the breadwinner
Clarke (Marxist)
- key characteristic is territoriality
- negative towards outsiders of their wc communities (socialised in pubs, on street corners and at football matches)
Mods
Phil Cohen - claimed that the mods were working class but tried to imitate the style of the middle classes. (By adopting their smart ways of dressing and making it their own) they often had a hedonistic lifestyle which involved drugs, dancing and fashion- tried to escape the alienation and boredom of their routing and repetitive wc jobs by partying at the weekends
Hebdige
- commented on style of Mods - found they were neat in appearance and took time to look respectable. Also had upwardly mobile aspirations and aimed to gain the consumer status of the middle class
Had disposable income - could afford scooters and travel.
Rockers
Stan Cohen (interactionist)
- examined relationship between mods and rockers and noticed that reported clashes between then were exaggerated by the media though deviancy amplification.
- media presented both groups as ‘folk devils’ which created a wider moral panic and hostility between them.
- wore leather and roads motorbikes and aimed to stand out as different compared to previous generations
- disposable income meant that they could afford motorbikes and travel
Rastafarians
Hebdige
- Rastafarianism emerged in Britain due disappointment of racism and high unemployment in the 1970s
Alienations from British culture.
Sivanandan
- Jamaican culture of Rastafarians and rude boys gave black British youths a source of identity that was distinctive from white people.
They felt repressed by Britains economic policies and felt their fight against capitalism and racism was a continuation of their struggle against the white slaver owner
Cashmore and Troyna
- explained that Rastafarians faced racism within Britain and therefore exercised cultural resistance by turning inwards and strengthening their own culture. They did this through forming their own communities and generally only socialising with each other.
Punks
Frith- punk was created as a form of resistance to the alienation working class youths felt and also as a response to unemployment.
Hebdige- the punk subculture adopted an element of the Rastafarian opposition to being seen as British. They attacked notions of being British (queen, Union Jack) - punk - desire to act out Used 'bricolage' where they took objects and adapted them to attach new meanings to them- did this as a form of expression of resistance to societies ruling class norms and values
