A return to the Chicago school? From the ‘subculture’ of taxi dancers to the contemporary lap dancer

Abstract

There has been much debate about the study of British youth cultures, often involving the analysis and critique of two dominant theoretical frameworks: the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS) ‘subcultural’ position and the ‘post-subcultural’ position. This paper, will engage in this debate by offering an alternative set of arguments, drawing attention to the early empirical contribution made by the Chicago school of sociology to the study of youth, and the inadvertent role some of their work played in developing the first model of ‘subculture’. To demonstrate this, the work of Cressey (1932), who explored the ‘social world’ of young female taxi-hall dancers, will be considered, and in highlighting its relevance to the study of contemporary youth cultures, his work will be discussed in relation to a recent ethnography of lap dancing in which a hierarchical occupational subculture of dancers has been identified. Both Cressey's (1932) ‘social world’ of taxi dancers and the subculture of the contemporary lap dancers, share similar features that define the unique, enclosed worlds of which each respective group is part. By drawing on Cressey (1932) and this recent study of lap dancers, not only are mainstream notions of youth culture questioned, but it is suggested that modes of work, as well as leisure, may hold ‘cultural’ significance.