The Sociology of Youth Subcultures

Abstract

The main theme in the sociology of youth subcultures is the reladon between social class and everyday experience. There are many ways of thinking about social class. In the work of the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu the main factors involved are parents' occupation and level of education. These have signilicant effects on the life chances of their children. Social class is not a social group: the idea is not that working class kids or middle class kids only hang out together. There may be some of this in any school or town. Social class is a structure. It is shown to exist by sociological research and many people may only be partly aware of these structures or may lack the vocabulary to talk about them. It is often the case that people blame themselves—their bad school grades or dead-end job—for what are, at least in part, the effects of a system of social class that has had significant effects on their lives. The main point of Bourdieu's research is to show that many kids never had a fair chance from the beginning. I n spite of talk about globalizadon there are significant differences between different sociedes. Social class works differently in France, Mexico and the U.S. For example, the educadon system is different in each country. In studying issues of youth culture, it is important to take these differences into account. The system of social class in each country is always experienced in complex ways. These include differences between living in the city, a provincial town or the country. In many societies—including the United States—social class is lived out as differences in ethnicity. In most societies there are also significant gender differences. We wdll expect to find the effects of these differences in youth subcultures. In American sociology in the 1950s—a very conservadve time in academic research—research on youth gangs and deviance indirectly showed the effects of class. It was argued that youth who cannot achieve according to social norms, who cannot do well in school or find good jobs, create subcultures. These in turn have their own roles and norms which these youth can fulfill. The idea was that youth who do badly at school create their own litde societies in which they can achieve status by smoking, being tough or engaging in petty crime. This actually extends beyond youth. Black men who were in effect excluded from good jobs in straight society could perhaps achieve success in their own terms through a deviant career as a jazz musician. British research on subcultures in the 1970s had as its goal to argue against