Evaluate The View That There Is No Single Youth Culture In Modern Society Rather There Is A Variety Of Different Youth Cultures Essay
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Youth culture and youth subcultures have been a subject of research since the early 1930s. It is most certainly true today that there is not one singular youth culture but a variety of different youth subcultures. The 90's can not be described as the same as the 60's or 70's or even the 80's.There are many reasons put forward by sociologists for this such as there are more styles available today, media influences us more and there is a higher disposable income per household to spend on fashions. This paper will explore the reasons behind the existence of youth cultures in previous years and why the same format has not occured in the 1990's.
Defining youthı can be difficult and is described in the Concise Oxford Dictionary as: ³the state of being young, the period between childhood and adult age² - Oxford Dictionary (1990). This would indicate that youth is described as an age group and people can be distinguished by the different age groups. However, it could be questioned that not all children stop being children at the same time. Frith describes youth as ³not simply an age group, but the social organization of an age group² Sociologists of youth, according to Frith, describe youth culture as ³the way of life shared by young people².
Subculture, as defined in the Concise Oxford Dictionary, is a cultural group within a larger culture often having beliefs or interests at variance with those of the larger cultureı. This would imply that a subculture is a subdivision of a national culture; it exists between the parameters of certain cultures. TalcottParsons saw youth subcultures usually having important positive functions in easing the transition from childhood to full adult life in marriage and occupational status. It would appear that the majority of people leave these youth subcultures at some latter point, often at the point of marriage, therefore Parsons theory could be justified.
Empirical observation carried out by sociologists find that youth sub-cultures have a distinct individual style. They have certain ways of dressing (i.e. shoes, clothing and hairstyles),speaking (i.e. slang), listening to music and gathering in similar places i.e. bikers at race meetings and bars and ravers at dance clubs or outdoor raves. It is then assumed that shared activities reflect shared values. Firth states that ³culture is all learned behavior which has been socially acquired²
To concentrate on the bikers of the 60's seems fitting. This was one large youth culture and still exists is a smaller section of society. It could be said that not all bikers today share the same values and enjoy the same activities as do the 60s style of bikers. This could be because members of the subculture break away from a particular group or
never joinı in the first place. Age could have implications here; the transition from youth to adult may determine how long a member stays in one particular subculture. Although there are variants of bike-boys they were broadly from a working class background and were seen as outsiders and loners linked by the love of motor-bikes and heavy rock music. Their style was masculine and their appearance was aggressive. The motor-cycle gear looked tough with its leather studs, denim and heavy leather boots. Hair was worn long in a greasy swept-back style and many were tattooed on the hands, arms and chest. A typical evening for the bike boys would consist of permutations of the same activities: a drink and a game of darts in their local pub, a game of pinball and a coffee in the coffee bar and general horseplay and chatter in a club.
Paul Willis conducted an ethnographic study of a group of bikers during the 70s and described the group as being almost all male and from typical working class backgrounds. The composition of Willisıs group revealed members working backgrounds included scaffolders, foundry workers, students, a milkman and a number of unemployed. However, it could be argued that todayıs bikers come from a variety of class and professional backgrounds from bricklayers to bankers. In Britain, the general fears about young people and youth subcultures have been focused on working class youth styles. The young people concerned, according to
Frith ³come from working class families and neighbourhoods, have a working class experience of growing up, in lower stream of school and leave as soon as possible often becoming unemployed or going through a succession on dead-end jobs.ı This appeared to be the case in Willisıs study which seemed to follow a Marxist perspective. However different youth groups are from each other, i.e. bikers as opposed to the more recentı ravers, they appear to outrage straightı society and are often labelled deviant or delinquent. Youth has been
seen as a social problemı for at least one hundred years. Analysis of youth culture in Britain has been influenced mainly by Marxist thought. Marx believed all cultures are produced by social conditionsı and that these social conditionsı depend upon social class and the problems social class provides; age, according to Marx, was also a contributor. It is fair to say that social conditions have greatly improved in Britain since the 1960's and social class seems almost a thing of the past with John Major's 'classless society' and Tony Blair claiming that we are 'all middle class'. If a youth culture is attatched to a social class and social classes are now partly disintegrated then this explains why there has been no substantial youth culture in a decade. Although bikers, as a subculture, still exist today, it would appear
that changes have been made as to the composition of members within the subculture; their values, beliefs and shared activities.
The 'ravers' from the eighties are a good example of another post-war youth culture. During the late 80s, young people with bandannas, brightly coloured clothes and a crazed look in their eyes were being presented as the next youth subculture. For the ravers (also known as clubbers) the shared experience is attending a rave and possibly taking ecstasy which has
become synonymous with the rave culture. This is often the only thing ravers have in common with each other unlike other subcultures. These parties, where extensive use of strobe lighting and psychedelic imagery was used, were attended by young males and females
stereotypically dressed in baggy oversized T-shirts, track suits and baggy jeans. The...
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