Youth Culture Flashcards
Parsons
Parsons was a functionalist
Argues that a cultural anomie is the biggest threat to an industrialised society
Youth culture has the function of bridging the gap between ascribed childhood and achieved adulthood and transfers values from one generation to the next avoiding a cultural anomie
It replaces the rite of passage found in tribes as industrialised society is more complex than tribal society and therefore requires more time to learn the values of functional adulthood
One criticism of parsons theory is the growing number of NEETS who don’t transition into functional adulthood
Eisenstadt
Eisenstadt was a functionalist
Argues that youth is a particularly stressful and collective experience and that a like minded peer group can help one over come the stresses (GCSEs, Part time work and body changes)
Once someone overcomes the difficulties they can transition from ascribed childhood status to achieved adulthood status in their own right
This theory does not take into account that some youth face stresses a peer group alone can not overcome
Albert Cohen
Albert Cohen is a functionalist subcultural theorist
Argues that WC males fail in education and therefore get frustrated with their low status
They then join delinquent subcultures in order to solve their status frustration as delinquency is valued by delinquent subcultures
delinquent Subcultures therefore serve the function of solving status frustration
One advantage of this theory is it does recognise delinquent subcultures and offers an explanation for why young people join them
This theory can be seen as deterministic because it argues that our place in society decides our behaviour and ignores that some WC males do well in education and some do not join delinquent subcultures
McRobbie and Garber
McRobbie is a feminist
Argues that girls are absent from youth culture as they cannot join them
McRobbie argues that girls expirence a tougher level of social control than boys because their seen as more vulnerable by their parents
Girls therefore partake in bedroom culture which occurs in the privacy and protection of their own homes and consists of talking, reading magazines and doing makeup.
One Criticism of McRobbie is that now due to the internet and social media, girls are able to join online subcultures and youth movements even if they are physically confined to their bedroom by their parents
This theory also ignore lots of photographic evidence which shows that some girls did take part in youth cultures
Osgerby
Osgerby was a feminist
She argues that girls chose not to take part in youth subcultures
Before the 1950’s, males were expected to be chivalrous gentlemen towards females in order to be respected, however, by the 1970’s, males gained status in youth subcultures for sexist and aggressive behaviour towards women
Women therefore became reluctant to take part in visible youth cultures due to sexist attitudes
This theory is still relevant today, the national union of student found that 1/4 of women at university had received unwanted sexual advancements showing that attitudes towards women amongst male young people have remained
Archer
Archer was a postmodern feminist
She argues that girls do in fact partake in youth subcultures
She researched girls in riot gangs and found that the girls found gang culture empowering in communities where they had less status
One Criticism of Archer is that she only conducted secondary research and therefore the findings are less valid
Another is that traditional feminist would argue that the girls who join gangs is not to feel empowered but for protection where they would typically not be protected from law enforcement in dangerous communities
Phil Cohen
Phil Cohen was a Neo-Marxist
He argues that spectacular subcultures were a resistance against capitalist inequality and middle class hegemony
He researched the skinheads and argues that they were an inarticulate way of resisting capitalism through their exaggeration of working class masculinity in order to magically recover the tradition working class community from extinction
One Criticism of Phil Cohen is that it could be seen as a justification for racism as a way of resisting capitalism
Hall and Jefferson
Hall and Jefferson were Neo-Marxists
They argued that youth subcultures were a way of resisting capitalist inequality as an inarticulate way of blurring the lines between social class through style
The researched the teddy boys and argued that their Edwardian style with a twist was a way of blurring the lines between classes
One Criticism of this is that the CCCS only conducted secondary research and may be analysing behaviours that was never intended (maybe they just wanted to dress in a particular way and not resist capitalism?)
Brake
Brake was a Neo-Marxist
He argued that in reality, young people could not alter the power differences in society and the WC had bleak prospects in the current system
He argued that subcultures are a trick in which one can convince themselves that their generation will be different from their parents however it was only an illusion as it cannot he sustained in reality and eventually they will conform to capitalist oppression.
Punk culture although it did have distinct anti-capitalist and anti-consumerist values in the 1970’s, nowadays adopting punk style actually benefits capitalism through spending money
Hall et al
Hall was a Neo-Marxist
He and others argued that due to political issues and a poorly performing economy, the media diverted the public attention away from the issues with capitalism and prompted racism
Black people became demonised as criminals which marginalised them and made them unemployed
The black males became aware of what the government and the media was doing and started to protest the racism and capitalism through crime
Bennett
Bennett is a postmodernist
Built on the finding of maffesoli and argues that youth culture is now fluid not fixed and constructed not given
He conducted ethnographic research on clubbing culture in Newcastle upon Tyne and found no evidence for youth subcultures
Instead he discovered short term youth groupings based solely on leisure and spending interests which he named Neo-tribes
His research says that neo tribes had no shared values but ignores that drug use is common in this setting
He also fails to recognise that their are still some identifiable youth subcultures like goths, emo, scene etc.
Katz and Lyng
Katz and Lyng are postmodernists
They argue that the globalised media portrays crime and delinquency as exciting and seductive in modern action films
Young people recreate such behaviour as an attempt to construct their own identity
Showing evidence for Neotribes as it’s suggests that identity is constructed and not given by social factors
This theory takes into account the influence of globalisation and gives and explanation for youth deviance
Luke and Luke
Luke and Luke are postmodernists
They argue that due to the internet and globalisation, youth culture is now fluid and anyone can adopt aspects of different local cultures
Cultural hybridity is when global culture joins with local values creating fluid movements such as Korean pop music or British Muslims
Cultural hybridity provides evidence for neo tribes as it suggests that youth culture is fluid nowadays
There are many different example of cultural hybridity demonstrating its a valid aspect of youth culture today
Stanley Cohen
Stanley Cohen is an interactionist
He argues that following a minor conflict between the mods and rockers on Brighton beach the media exaggerated and labelled them “folk devils” which amplified the violence and caused many young people to go and partake in the conflict
He concluded that young people enjoy the deviant labels that are imposed on them and it creates a self-fulfilling prophecy
Stanley Cohen has been criticised as it cannot explain the original conflict or acts of deviance
Jock Young
Jock Young was an interactionist
He researched the hippies in Notting hill and argued that its common for young people to partake in mild recreational drug use
He believes that the media labelled the hippies as drug users which made the police target the group causing them to take their problem underground as they felt marginalised.
the deviance amplified and they moved onto harder drug use. Drug use became a central part of their culture and gained master status
Jock Young’s research demonstrates how police involvement may amplify deviance rather than stop it from occurring
Jock Young’s research is small scale and cannot be replicated therefore lacks reliability
