Youth Subcultures

Question 1

Eisenstadt

Answer 1

Youth subcultures help with identity issues and allow youth to find their own sense of identity

Question 2

Bachelor

Answer 2

Girls on the whole are not involved in girl gangs

Question 3

Phil Cohen

Answer 3

Skinheads use an aggressive image to resist the fragmentation and decline of working class communities

Question 4

Roberts

Answer 4

Youth subcultures have emerged from the abrupt transitions in the 1950’s to gradual transitions in the 1970’s and now we have lengthy transitions as young people find it harder to access adult world due to housing and job shortages

Question 5

Albert Cohen

Answer 5

Youth subcultures help with the issue of status and power, they join subcultures to resolve status frustration. W/C boys strove to emulate M/C values but lacked the means so joined subcultures to get status

Question 6

Cloward and Ohlin

Answer 6

Youth subcultures help them to overcome the issues of money by using the illegitimate opportunity structure by joining criminal, conflict or retreatist subcultures

Question 7

Hebdige

Answer 7

Studied punks in 1979 and used semiotics to analyse what punk clothing meant. Items where stolen from mainstream culture and were used as a resistance to capitalism

Question 8

Willis

Answer 8

Found an anti-school subculture amongst W/C boys and found they valued ‘having a laff’ above conformity and academic progress. They realised they were most likely going to end up in dead end jobs no matter how well they did in school

Question 9

Jackson

Answer 9

Studied lads and ladettes and found that girls were under pressure to be popular so would act up to avoid being seen as ‘uncool’

Question 10

Decker and Van Winkle

Answer 10

Argue the reasons for joining gangs consists of both pushes and pulls. The pulls are about the attractiveness of the gang and feelings of exclusion and marginalisation may push youths from the underclass towards status and identity that gangs can provide

Question 11

Alexander

Answer 11

Studied Asian gangs and argued that the myth of the ‘Asian gang’ was created not the media and was fuelled by general islamophobia. These stereotypes were also picked up on by teachers who projected the gang label into groups of friends who shared an ethnicity and common identity

Question 12

Harding

Answer 12

Argues that girls in a gang can carve out roles, they may never become leaders but will become fixers

Question 13

Batchelor et al.

Answer 13

Found no evidence of girl gangs, they studied 800 girls and none of them were in a gang and didn’t know any girls who were