‘Well, it's Saturday night an’ I just got paid’: Youth, consumerism and hegemony in post‐war britain

Abstract

This article explores the development and significance of youth culture in Britain after the Second World War. Using both national sources and material drawn from a specific locality changes in young people's cultural responses are contextualised within the wider transformation of British social and economic life and the rise of a ‘consumer culture’ during the 1950s and early 1960s. In particular, the ‘ideological’ function of the imagery of ‘youth’ is examined and related to dominant explanations of shifts in class relations in post‐war society. The ‘meaning’ of young people's cultural formations is also considered and related to the wider struggles characteristic of the terrain of popular culture. Generally, the article is influenced and informed by ‘sub‐cultural’ approaches to the analysis of youth and draws upon recent advances in the analysis of consumption to ‘regenerate’ sub‐cultural theory, addressing criticisms that have been made of this perspective since it appeared in the 1970s.