From the Juke Box Boys to Revolting Students: Richard Hoggart and the Study of British Youth Culture

Abstract

Richard Hoggart’s academic career during the 1950s and 1960s coincided with the emergence of distinctive national and international youth cultures in Britain and across the world. Hoggart, first as a provincial WEA tutor in the 1950s and then as a Professor at The University of Birmingham during the 1960s, had first-hand knowledge of some of the most significant youth movements and cultures to emerge in the post-war period; from the Teddy Boys of the early 1950s to the global student revolts of the late 1960s. Moreover, his work is infused with references to Youth Culture. These range chronologically from his vivid description of ‘juke box boys’ lounging in the milk bars of Northern England, and described in The Uses of Literacy (1957) — ‘boys aged between fifteen and twenty, with drape suits, picture ties and an American slouch’ — to the early identification of the teenage consumer in the Albemarle Report of 1960, which he co-wrote with Leslie Paul, and on into the late 1960s and beyond. He wrote about provincial Youth Culture in the ‘Swinging’ Sixties; about the student protest movements of the late 1960s and even, briefly, about Oxbridge youth under Thatcherism.KeywordsLabour PartyYouth CultureYouth LeaderInaugural LectureYouth MovementThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.