London School of Economics

New Movements in the Sociology of Youth: A Critique

Author(s): David M. Smith
Source: The British Journal of Sociology, Vol. 32, No. 2 (Jun., 1981), pp. 239-251
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David M. Smith

New movements in the sociology of youth:

a critique

INT ROD UCTION

The Sociology of Youth was dominated for many years by two

theoretical approaches: structural-functionalism and various forms
of idealist analyses. It was structural-functional theory which intro-
duced us to the concept of Youth Culture and subsequently youth
subcultures.l The term Youth Culture was itself taken up in a more
radical way2 and subsequently the concept of Counter-Culture
developed.3 Opposing both of these positions, though sometimes
confusingly intermingled with some forms of the Counter-Culture
stance,4 was a critique by Neomarxists.5 However the quality of
this debate was generally poor and relied heavily upon the concept
of youth class.6 In many ways these debates relate directly to the
'heady' days of the 1960s when the prospect of youth as a genuine
source of radical social change was taken very seriously by the media
and more generally in the public domain. With the decline of public
interest so academic interest has also been reduced within these
schools.7
Nevertheless, the study of youth has continued to thrive in British
Sociology, though with a quite different theoretical emphasis. The
origin of this 'new wave' undoubtedly is to be found in the debates
of the National Deviancy Conference. The National Deviancy Con-
ference emphasized two theoretical trends within Sociology. The
first to dominate its discussions was social reaction theory. This can
be seen most clearly in Stan Cohen's early influence.8 The significance
of this position for our present concerns is its rediscovery of the
conceptualization of subcultures as 'problem solving'.9 The 'problem
solving' approach to subcultures was already established in the
traditional literature through the work of Albert Cohen,l° but it
takes on a special significance in this context because of the second
theoretical position introduced into National Deviancy Conference
Debates. This second strand was Marxism. There is a controversy
as to the legitimacy of this kind of Marxist analysis.ll However its

British Journal of Sociology Volume 32 Number 2 June 81

i)R.K.P. 1981 0007 1315/81 /3101-0239 $1 .50/1

239

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 David M. Smith

240

impact cannot be underestimated. It not only reintroduced class as

a major explanatory variable in the analysis of youth; but class
defined in Marxist terms. It is from these two theoretical strands
in National Deviancy Conference debates that the 'New Wave' Socio-
logy of Youth has arisen. It has come to dominate both theoretical
discussion and empirical work in Britain in the late 19 7 Os. The
authors of this body of work do not hold a uniform position. In
particular there are disagreements between Murdock on the one
hand, with his emphasis on 'problem solving' and Hall and his col-
leagues on the other with their emphasis on class.12 Yet as a whole it
presents an important change in direction for the Sociology of Youth.
In this paper I shall argue that this school has made an important
contribution to the sociological study of young people. However,
I shall also argue that it possesses serious conceptual and method-
ological limitations which threaten to undermine the significance
of that contribution.

YOUTH, SUBCULTURES AND CLASS

Although I have acknowledged differences within the school, for the

sake of convenience I shall concentrate on the position as articulated
in the work emanating from the Centre for Contemporary Cultural
Studies at Birmingham University and their journal \Morking Papers
in Cultural Studies. In one volume of the journall3 they state:
our subject . . . is Youth Culture: our object, to explain them as
a phenomenon, and their appearance in the post-war period. 14
By 'Youth Culture' they mean the 'cultural aspects of youth'.15 By
culture they mean 'the level at which social groups develop distinct
patterns of life, and give expressive form to their social and material
life-experience . . . "Culture" is the practice which realises or objec-
tivates group-life in meaningful shape and form'.l6 Thus the culture
of 'the group or class is the peculiar and distinctive way of life of
the group or class, the meanings, values and ideas embodied in
institutions, in social relations, in systems of beliefs, in mores and
customs, in the uses of objects and material life . . . Culture is the
way the social relations of a group are structured and shaped, but
it is also the way these shapes are experienced, understood and
interpreted'. 1 7
Each individual is born into a particular cultural context. These
existing cultural patterns 'form a sort of historical reservoir -a
pre-constituted field of possibles-which groups take up, transform,
develop. sl 8 So, to quote Marx:
Men make their own history, but they do not make it just as they
please; they do not make it under circumstances chosen by them-

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New movements in the sociology of youth

142
selves; but under circumstances directly encountered, given and
transmitted from the past.l9

Despite the importance of the ideological hegemony of the ruling

class to a Marxist analysis of contemporary society 'in so far as
there is more than one fundamental class in a society . . . there will
be more than one major cultural configuration in play at a particular
moment'.20 However, 'when one culture gains ascendancy over the
other, and when the subordinate culture experiences itself in terms
prescribed by the dominant culture, then the dominant culture has
also become the basis of the dominant ideology'.2l
They make an important distinction between the notions of
'culture' and 'cultures'. 'The singular term "culture" can only indicate,
in the most general and abstract way, the large cultural configurations
at play in a society at any historical moment'.22 Cultures 'always
stand in relations of domination - and subordination -to one-
another, are always, in some sense, in struggle with one-another'.23 In
contemporary societies these cultures 'will be, in a fundamental
though often mediated way, zclass cultures"'.24 \Vithin these larger
cultural networks there exist 'smaller more localised and differentiated
structures'25 which they term 'subcultures'. These subcultures though
differing in important ways will also share some things in common
with the larger culture. However they limit their discussion primarily
to those subcultures 'which have reasonably tight boundaries, dis-
tinctive shapes, which have cohered around particular activities, focal
concerns and territorial spaces'.26 It is to these kinds of subcultures
that they refer when they write of youth-subcultures. Indeed they
limit their analysis further than that for while they recognize that
there are persistent and regular features of the wider class-culture-
like the culture of delinquency-which are subcultures, their own
concern is with those subcultures which only arise at particular
historical moments and 'then they fade, disappear or are so widely
diffused that they lose their distinctiveness'.27 The youth subcultures
with which they are dealing are then short term subcultures, which
involve numbers of young people, and act to differentiate these
young people from others in the same class situation whilst at the
same time springing from that very same class situation.
While they distinguish these subcultures of youth from the wider
class culture they nevertheless wish to stress the similarity of class
position and so the equally 'subordinate and subordinated' nature
of both types of subculture. As they put it 'the young inherit a cul-
tural orientation from their parents towards a "problematic" com-
mon to the class as a whole which is likely to weigh, shape and
signify the meanings they then attach to different areas of their
social life'.28 It is within this cultural context that specific youth
cultures arise, and the relation between class and subcultures they see

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 242 David M. Smith

as a dynamic one. The function of working-class culture is to 'win

space' from the dominant culture. What they mean by this is what
Parkin calls 'negotiated solutions',29 that is to say that working-class
culture modifies the dominant values without actually attempting
outright to reject them. Clarke et al.'s example of this is the accept-
ance of the rule of law but an ambivalence in face-to-face encounters
with the ugholders of law (i.e. the police). Subcultures within the
working-class also 'win space' for the young. The difference between
the response of young and adult lies in the different generational
experience of the young:

youth encounters the problematic of its class culture in different

sets of institutions and experiences from those of its parents,
and when youth encounters the same structures, it encounters
them at cructally different points in its biographical careers.30

These institutions are those of education, work and leisure. Yet when
they come to identify aspects of 'generational specificity' in relation
to these areas of life it is clear that they do not mean generation,3l
but are referring to different age-status groups and their different
institutional locations. Thus what is distinctive about youth's
relationship to education is that they attend school and parents
have only peripheral contact; the young face tlle problem of choos-
ing and entering jobs and learning the cultures of work whereas for
adults work is a routine aspect of life. In leisure the differences lie
in the institutions chosen by youth for their leisure ('caffs', discos,
youth clubs, 'all nighters' etc.). From these institutional differences
they argue a 'generational consciousness' may arise. They distinguish
this from the similar kind of notion associated with Youth Culture
research and with counter-cultures by arguing that it is mediated
by class. Thus the upwardly mobile working-class young will be more
strongly associated with generational consciousness than others. As
Phil Cohen says, subculture is 'a compromise between the need to
create autonomy, difference from parents and the need to maintain
the parental identifications which support them'.32 This generational
consciousness, they argue, took on a peculiarly intense form in the
post-war period sub-cultures, 'which were sharply demarcated -
amongst other factors - by age and generation. Youth felt and:
experienced itself as "different" especially when this difference
was inscribed in activities and interests to which "age", principally,
provided the passport'.33
Youth subcultures form an important part of their analysis of
youth in the context of class. However it must be stressed that they
are arguing that subcultures are only one of many different responses.
What is more, these responses must be understood in terms of the
position of youth. This they distinguish at three different levels:
first the level of structures, by which they mean the basic material

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New movements in the sociology of youth 243

and social conditions of class; secondly, cultures which are 'the

range of socially organised and patterned responses'; thirdly, bio-
graphies, by which they mean the 'careers' of individuals through
these structures and cultures. They also appear to limit the term sub-
cultures to working-cIass youth:

there are some problems in deciding whether we can speak of

middle-class subcultures in the same way and within the same
sort of theoretical framework.34

Though they recognize that some middle-class groups might be dis-

tinct subcultures they concentrate their discussion of middle-class
youth in terms of the Counter-Culture.35

Middle-class culture affords the space and opportunity for sections

of it to 'drop out' of circulation. Working-class youth is persistently
and consistently structured by the dominating alternative rhythm
of Saturday night and Monday morning.36

The Counter-Culture, they argue, is not responsible for the under-

mining of traditional middle-class culture which was 'profoundly,
unhinged . . . by changes within stemming directly from the needs
of the productive system itself'37 but that the emergence of counter-
cultural forms 'mould the picture of the dominant culture to win
over the attachment of a section of its "brightest and best" .38
A number of problems are raised immediately. Three in particular
are worth highlighting: the nature of the subcultures studies; the dif-
ferences of youth styles, and the relationship between youth and
adult responses to class position. The subcultures which they study
are those 'which have reasonably tight boundaries, distinctive shapes,
which have cohered around particular activities, focal concerns and
territorial spaces.' What is more they are located in specific historical
moments 'then, they fade, disappear or are so widely diffused that
they lose their distinctions'. While they exist they share some things
in common with the 'present culture' but are significantly different.
Their definition of subcultures appears to have something in com-
mon with Yinger's concept of Counter-Culture.39 Yet Yinger stresses
that in studying such micro-groups one must be aware of 'non-
cultural aspects of some "norms"-phenomena, that on the surface
seem thoroughly cultural' because 'personality variables are directly
involved in the development and maintenance of the group values.'
His conclusion is that social psychology has much to contribute to
our understanding of such subcultures. It might be that this point
is taken up by Clarke et al. in what they call biographies-the careers
of individuals through structures and cultures-yet the point has
relevance because this part of their work is not developed40 and their
theoretical analysis concentrates upon structural differences and the
functionality of subgroups within particular structural locations,

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244 David M. Smith

particularly class. After all, they are only studying certain kinds of
ephemeral youth styles. The majority of even working-class youth
they accept as conformist. Neither are they interested in long-term
'subcultures' like the so-called delinquent subculture. In identifying
these ephemeral types of youth style as separately worthy of study
they are required to pose the question-why do some young people
adopt these styles and others do not? Precisely this question has
been posed by Murdock in an article with McCron attacking sub-
cultural studies. 'Subcultural studies', they argue, 'start by taking
groups who are already card-carrying members of a particular sub-
culture such as skinheads, bike boys or hippies, and working back-
wards to uncover their class location . . . The problem is not only
to explain why styles such as the mods or the skinheads developed
within particular class strata at the times and in the forms that they
did, but also to explain why adolescents in essentially the same
basic location adopted other modes of negotiation and resolution'.41
Though some work has gone some way towards showing how par-
ticular subcultural styles can be seen as coded expressions of con-
sciousness42 they have not yet answered that question. Murdock and
McCron do argue that subcultures differ from conventional youth
in that 'they tended to orientate themselves around the styles spon-
sored by official youth agencies or mainstream teenage entertain-
ment industry . . . these styles were not remade or adapted to any
great extent, but were taken over more or less intact'.43 However,
they have not, as yet, explained why some youth do and others
don't. Neither do they satisfactorily explain why there is such a
multiplicity of styles.44 They are careful to distinguish between
working-class subcultures and middle-class counter-cultures. Yet
within the working-class there are numerous distinctive youth
styles. There are obvious differences by race and sex and by geo-
graphical location-though as Davies, somewhat unfairly, says 'they
seem to be completely absorbed with Britain south of Hemel Hemp-
stead'.45 There are also distinctive youth subcultures existing side
by side, competing or in conflict with one another. All of these
subcultures are explained in terms of the same relationship to the
'parent' culture. However, there is no explanation of 'why the
"parentn working-class culture produces a variety of distinct adoles-
cent styles which, at any one time, may be competing (even warring)
amongst themselves'.46
There are also problems about the relationship between adult
and youth responses to class location. Clarke et al. argue at some
length that adults and young share the same basic problematic. The
difference in response to that problematic is to be found in 'the
specifically generational experience of the young'.47 Youthful
subcultures then are to be understood in terms of generational
experience. These 'generational' differences are to be found in the

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New movements in the sociology of youth 245

locations within which youth experiences its class problematic. It

does so 'in different sets of institutions and experiences from those
of its parents and when youth encounters the same structures, it
encounters them at crucially different points in its biographical
careers'.48 The institutions concerned are those of education, work
and leisure. As a result of their different experience of these insti-
tutions a 'generational consciousness' may arise. This generational
consciousness took on a peculiarly intense form in the post-war
period subcultures when youth 'experienced itself as "different",
especially when this difference was inscribed in activities and interests
to which "age", principally, provided the passport'.49 Although their
analysis is posed in terms of 'generations', they are in fact discussing
differences in the institutional locations of youth and adults. Youth
exists in different relations to institutions from adults, which leads
to differences in the nature of control and their experience of
control, which in turn may lead to different subcultures. However,
this has nothing to do with generational differences. There may
of course be generational differences in post-war Britain between
youth and adults within the working-class. However the differences
in experience of institutional location clearly relate to age and
not generation. At one point they write of post-war subcultures
as 'sharply demarcated-amongst other factors, by age and gener-
ation',S° but they never in fact distinguish between the two. Even
in Murdock and McCron's article 'Consciousness of Class and Con-
sciousness of Generation',sl where they offer a critique of Mann-
heim's concept of generation, they still use youth and generation
virtually interchangeably.
What their analysis amounts to here is an analysis of youth as
an age-status. It is the age-status which explains the differences
in institutional location. This is important for their analysis in
three ways. First, age-statuses are distinct from other statuses
in that their individual members inevitably pass through them.
There is always youth, but for each youth, the status is transitional.
This provides one possible basis for an attempted explanation of
the ephemeral nature of so many specific youth styles. Secondly,
in failing to make the distinction between age-status and generation
clear they effectively ignore the possible significance of generational
differences. What, for example, is the significance of generation
for change in 'parent' working-class culture as well as youth
subcultures?52 Thirdly, the confusion is significant in terms of
how the position has been developed. Hall et al., for example, argue
elsewhere that 'there can be no "sociology of youth" . . . Youth
as a concept is unthinkable. Even youth as a social category does
not make much empirical sense'. 53 If youth as a social category
does not make much sense, where stands their analysis of age-
status?

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 David M. Smith

246

YOUTH VERSUS CLASS

Their claim that 'youth as a concept is unthinkable',54 is suspect on

other grounds. They claim that youth only has significance 'as a
secondary and dependent or determinate factor affecting the indivi-
dual or group within those social relations which structure not just
their youth but their whole life trajectory'.55
In this paper they are arguing against what they see as Havighurst
and Dreyer's contention that age is the major stratifying factor in
social life:56

that is, the person's age position is what determines his social
position, and all the social, economic, political and cultural
consequences which flow from that.57

They object to this partly as 'a fictitious construction of youth as

a biological or psychological stage of life'58 but more particularly
because 'it involves the elevation of an age and psychological division
of society above other dimensions such as race and class: it reduces
the latter to subordinate variations on the main theme'. 59 Now
whilst one must agree that any analysis of age within a capitalist
society which takes no serious account of class will be of little value,
what they appear to be doing is rejecting an analysis which argues
for the pre-eminence of age at the expense of class with one stressing
the pre-eminence of class at the expense of age; or as Marsland and
Hunter put it:

they seem to us to represent an account of youth which is con-

strained to deny falsely the significance of one set of forces on
social life- the psycho-social forces organised by an age-system
out of fear that their recognition may challenge the determinative
pre-eminence of another set of such forces-those of class.60
Marsland and Hunter turn Hall's criticism upon himself. He and his
associates, they claim, 'treat the concept of class unproblematically.
They assume and assert . . . the general and unconditional pre-eminence
of class forces'.6l What is more, this isn't even good Marxism. There
is no logical need within Marxism to reject youth as a sociological
concept, as a stage of life or as a social category. Youth may not be
a Marxist concept but to reject it as a sociological concept on these
grounds is merely to reject sociology as ideological.62 This does not
appear to be what they are saying in this paper. They appear to reject
youth as a stage of life and as a social category on the grounds that
it must be seen as secondary and subservient to class. Ultimately
a Marxist analysis requires us to understand society in terms of the
relations to the means of production. This means that the analysis
of other social categories has to be understood in terms of these
relations; it does not mean that the social categories must be subsumed

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New movements in the sociology of youth 247

within classes .63 Logically their argument should also apply to

bureaucracy. Yet it is clear that Marxist theory recognizes both
the relationship of bureaucracy to economic power and the signifi-
cance of bureaucracy, per se. 64
It is necessary, on this point, to make distinctions within the
general position, for Murdock and McCron make it clear that the
emphasis on class does not mean 'evacuating age. Clearly age is an
important factor in structuring the social situation of young people.
Some experiences . . . are youth specific . . . It is not therefore a
question of simply substituting class for age at the centre of analyses,
but of examining the relations between class and age, and more
particularly the way in which age acts as a mediation of class'.65 In-
deed they go further than this and argue that 'age mediates the
experiences and responses not only of adolescents but also of adults
within the same class location and structures the relations between
them'.66
Unfortunately, as we have seen, they also fail to distinguish
between age and generation and so their call for a 'structural and
historical analysis' 67 iS somewhat hollow.
Despite what I have argued are major conceptual difficulties
within this perspective, it has been remarkably successful in generat-
ing empirical support.68 However, this empirical material suffers
from precisely these same conceptual problems. The methodological
problem arises out of its roots in the National Deviancy Conference,
for the main methodological thrust of this school has been naturalistic
methods.69 This has led to numerous descriptive studies of small
groups or gangs of working-class youth. However, since each group
studied is bounded by categories of class, age and generation, none of
which are actively pursued in the analysis, the conceptual difficulties
are hidden. These naturalistic studies are organized in such a way
that their thesis cannot be disproved. This methodological emphasis
is particularly serious since their work claims to be socio-historical.
Yet it is so only in a limited degree. It is historical only in so far as
the explanations of youth behaviour and subcultural groupings are
to be understood in terms of a Marxist analysis of a particular stage
of Capitalism. Thus in Murdock's most recent researches he claims
that youth can only be understood in terms of the relationship
between consciousness of class and consciousness of generation.70
However, generation and youth are seen to be synonymous within
a given historical period. Whilst empirically this might be the case-
it is a matter for empirical demonstration-it gets us no further in
understanding the conceptual differences between the two. Their
ability to study social change is therefore extremely limited.
What I find particularly unfortunate about the need to present
the critique is that the CCCS attempt to restore 'class to the centre
of the Sociology of Youth'7l is not in itself original. Sheila Allen,72

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 248 David M. Smith

for example, in a critique of Eisenstadt's work, argues for the over-

riding importance of class analysis in the understanding of young
people. She argues that the problems of youth must not be seen
merely in terms of the status of age categories but as a reflection
of underlying class and other relations.

Age relations (including youth) are part of economic relations

and the political and ideological structures in which they take
place. It is not the relations between ages which explain change
or stability in societies, but change in societies which explains
relations between different ages.73

Explanations based on age, including youth, are regarded as sub-

sidiary to those based on class, on race, on sex. However, she does
not deny all relevance to youth as a social category:

In so far as young people are treated in a similar way, for instance

in highly industrialised societies, the young are excluded from
positions of power, then they can be considered as a meaningful
category as a first approximation.74

However, '(t)heir responses to this exclusion cannot be assumed to

be "standard" regardless of their experience . . . The problem of
youth is that of being expected to be involved but being powerless.
This is not a specific youth problem'.75 Though age is of little
* * ,% * * .

slgnltlcance to ler ana ysls, generatlon 1S rat ler more so.

This is not to say that generational experiences will not differ,

and at times differ markedly, but we add little to our understand-
ing by ascribing such differences to age.76

Though this analysis is considerably less well developed than that

of CCCS, it also avoids some of its worst conceptual difficulties.

CONCLUSIONS

The contribution of the work reviewed to the sociological under-

standing of youth has been considerable. Structural-functional
theory, Counter-Cultural theory and even the 'Youth Class' thesis
all place a gross over-emphasis upon the importance of youth as
a factor in the instigation of social change. Relations of Age or of
Generations are not the fundamental driving force in contemporary
society. Contemporary industrial societies are Capitalist Societies,
or at least some form of neo-Capitalism,77 and as such must be
understood in class terms. When we study contemporary youth we
do so in the context of a class society. We must applaud CCCS in
their stated aim of 'restoring class to the centre of the sociology of
youth'. 78 This is a major contribution.

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New movements in the sociology of youth 249

Indeed it is their very success that creates concern. With a few

exceptions,79 they have come to dominate both theoretical dis-
cussion and empirical research in the sociology of youth. Yet the
position contains serious theoretical and methodological problems
which have not been adequately addressed in the literature. Hall is
correct in calling for a proper understanding of youth in a class
society. However we will not have an adequate sociology of youth in
a class society until these problems have been resolved.

David M. Smith
Dept. of Sociology
Middlesex Polytechnic

NOTES

I should like to acknowledge my col- Economy of Youth', International

league, Keith Fleming, for his reading
and critical comments on a draft of
this paper.
1. See for example: Parsons, T.,
'Age and Sex in the Social Structure
of the United States', American
Sociological Review, vol. 7, October
1942, pp. 604-16; Coleman, J. S.,
The A d olescen t Society, Glencoe ,
Ill., The Free Press, 1961; Sugarman,
B., 'Involvement in Youth Culture,
Academic Achievement and Con-
formity in Schools', British Journal
of Sociology, vol. 18, 1967, pp.
151-64.
2. Wilson, B., The Youth Culture
and the Universities, London, Faber
&Faber,1970.
3. Feuer, L., The Conflict of Gen-
erations, London, Heinemann, 1969;
Reich, C. A., The Greenings of
A merica, Harmondsworth, Allen
Lane, The Penguin Press, 1972;
Roszak, T., The Making of a Counter-
Culture, London, Doubleday, 1969.
4. See for example: Keniston, K.,
'A Second Look at the Uncommitted',
Social Policy, July/August 1971, pp.
6-1<9; Horowitz, I. C. and Friedland,
W. H., The Knowledge Factory:
Student Power and Academic Politics
in America, Chicago, Aldine Press,
1970.
5. The best of which is probably
Marcuse.
6. See for example: Rowntree, J.
and Rowntree, M., 'The Political
Socialist Journal, February, 1968.
7. Though quite important con-
tributions to these major schools have
been made in recent times. See for
example: Marsland, D., Sociological
Explorations in the Service of Youth,
Leicester, Youth Bureau, 1978; Mus-
grove, F., Ecstasy and Holiness:
Counter Culture and the Open Society,
London, Methuen, 1974; Havighurst,
R. J. and Dreyer, P. H. (eds), Youth,
Chicago, National Society for the
Study of Education, 1975.
8. See, for example, the work
reported in Cohen, S., Moral Panics
and Folk Devils, London, MacGibbon
and Kee, 1972. Note also the present
author's 'Adolescence: a study of
stereotyping', Sociological Review,
vol.18, no.2,July 1970,pp.197-211.
9. See for example: Young,J., 'The
Hippies -an essay in the politics of
leisure', in Taylor, I. and Taylor, C.
(eds), Politics and Deviance, Har-
mondsworth, Penguin Press, 1973.
10. Cohen, A. K., Delinquent Boys,
Glencoe, Ill., The Free Press, 1955.
11. See the debate between Taylor
and Walton and Hirst in Taylor, I.,
Walton, P. and Young, J., Critical
Criminology, London, Routledge &
KeganPaul,1973.
12. Some of this debate is sum-
marized in Brake, M., The Sociology
of Youth Culture and Youth Subsul-
tures, London, Routledge & Kegan
Paul, 1980.

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250
13. Working Papers in Cultural
Studies, No. 718, September 1975,
republished in Hall, S. and Jefferson,
T. (eds), Resistance through Ritual,
London, Hutchinson, 1976.
14. Clarke, J., Hall, S., Jefferson, T.
and Roberts, B., 'Subcultures, Cultures
p. 25.
and Class: A theoretical overview', in
Hall and Jefferson (eds), 1976, op.
cit.,p. 9.
15. Ibid, p. 10.
16. Clarke et al., op. cit., p. 10.
17. Op. cit., pp. 10-11. Compare
this with the definition of Kroeber and
Parsons.
p. 206.
18.0p.cit.,p.11
19. Marx, K., 'The Eighteenth Bru-
maire', in Marx-Engels: Selected
Works, vol. 1, London, Lawrence and
Wishart, 1951, p. 225.
20. Clarke et al., op. cit., p. 12.
21. Ibid, p. 12.
22.0p.cit.,p.13.
23. Op. cit., pp. 12-13.
24. Op. cit., p. 13.
25.0p.cit.,p.13.
26. Op. cit., p. 14.
27. Op. cit., p. 15.
28. Op. cit., p. 29. For a fuller
account of how they view working-class
culture as a whole, see Clarke, J.,
et al. (eds), Working-Class Culture,
London, Hutchinson,1979.
29. Parkin, F., Class Inequality and
Political Order, London, MacGibbon
and Kee, 1971.
30. Clarke et al., op. cit., p. 49.
31. At least not in a Mannheimian
sense.
32. Cohen, P., 1972, op. cit., p. 26.
33. Clarke et al., op. cit., p. 52.
34. Ibid, pp. 57-60.
35. Contrast this with the detailed
analysis of working-class youth culture
in Mungham, G. and Pearson, G.,
Working-Class Youth Cultures, op. cit.
Particularly the article: Clarke, J.,
and Jefferson, T., 'Working Class
Youth Cultures', pp. 138-58.
36. Clarke et al., op. cit., p. 61.
37. Ibid, p.65.
38. Op.cit.,p.67.
39. Yinger, M., 'Contra-Culture and
Subculture', American Sociological
Review, vol. 25, 1960, pp. 625-35.
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David M. Smith
40. Though in one piece of work
dealing with biographies their sig-
nificance is underplayed. See Critcher,
C., 'Structures, Cultures and Bio-
graphies', in Hall, S. and Jefferson,
T., 1976, pp. 167-73.
41. Murdock and McCron, op. cit.,
42. See Cohen, P., 1972, op. cit. and
Clarke, J., Hebdige, D. and Jefferson,
T., 'British Youth Cultures, 1950-
1970', Instituto Universitatio Orien-
tale, A nnali Sezione Germanica,
Anglistica, XVll (i) and (ii), 1974.
43. Murdock and McCron, op. cit.,
44. The kind of interactional analy-
sis conducted by Fine and Kleinman
can offer explanations of this but
only at the expense of any significance
for youth at the macro level. See Fine,
G. A. and Kleinman, S., 'Rethinking
Subculture: An Interactional Analysis',
A merican Journal of Sociology, vol .
85, no. 1, July 1979, pp. 1-20.
45. Davies, B., 'Youth Cultures:
Myths and Political Realities', Youth
in Society, no. 16, March/April 1976,
p. 15.
46. Ibid, p. 15.
47. Clarke et al., op. cit., p. 49.
48. Ibid, p. 49.
49. Op.cit.,p.51.
50.0p.cit.,p.45.
51. Murdock and McCron, op. cit.
52. See, for example, the discussion
of conceptual distinctions between age
strata, relations between age strata,
and generations, and the impact of
socio-historical changes upon them, in
Bengtson, V. L. and Starr, J. M., 'Con-
trast and Consensus: a generational
analysis of youth in the 1970's', in
Havighurst, R. J. and Dreyer, P. H.
(eds), Youth, Chicago, National
Society for the Study of Education,
1975, pp. 224-66.
53. Hall, S., Jefferson, T. and
Clarke, J., 'Youth: a stage of life?',
Youth in Society, no. 17, May/June
1976, p. 19.
54. Ibid, p. 19.
55. Ibid,p.l9.
56. Havighurst, R. J. and Dreyer,
P. H. (eds), 1975, op. cit.
New movements in the sociology of youth
57. Hall et al., 19 76 (b), op. cit., p.
17.
58. Ibid, p . 19.
59. Ibid, p. 17.
60. Marsland, D. and Hunter, P.,
'Youth: A Real Force and Essential
Concept?', Youth in Society, July/
August, no. 18, 1976, p. 10.
61. Ibid,p. 11.
62. As in Hirst, P. Q., 'Marx and
Engels on Law, Crime and Morality'
in Taylor, I., Walton, P. and Young,J.,
Critical Criminology, London, Rout-
ledge, 1975. See also: Hirst, P. Q.,
'Radical deviancy theory and Marx-
ism', in Taylor, I., Walton, P. and
Young,J., 1975, op. cit.
63. Jacques, for example, is able to
discuss Youth Culture from a Marxist
perspective without any apparent
contradictions. See Jacques, M.,
'Trends in Youth Culture', Marxism
Today, April 1975, pp. 110-16.
64. Poulantzas, N., Political Power
and Social Classes, London, New Left
Books, 1975.
65. Murdock and McCron, 1976, op .
cit.,p. 10.
66. Ibid, p. 24.
67. Ibid, p . 27.
68. See, for example, the range of
empirical work contained in Mungham,
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251
G. and Pearson, G., 1976, op. cit.
69. See: Roberts, B., 'Naturalistic
Research into Subcultures and De-
viance', in Hall, S. and Jefferson, T.
(eds), 1976, op. cit., pp. 243-52, and
Butters, S., 'The Logic of Enquiry of
Participant Observation', ibid, pp.
253-73.
70. The empirical work on this is
as yet unpublished, though the argu-
ment is contained in Murdock, G. and
McCron, R., 1976,op. cit.
71. Ibid,p. 10.
72. Allen, S., 'Some Theoretical
Problems in the Study of Youth',
Sociological Review, vol. 16, 1968,
pp. 319-31.
73. Ibid, p. 321.
74. Ibid, p. 328.
75. Ibid,p.328.
76. Ibid, p. 329.
77. Blackburn, R., 'The NewCapital-
ism', in Blackburn, R. (ed), Ideology
in Social Science, London, Fortuna,
1972.
78. Murdock, G. and McCron, R.,
1976, op. cit.
79. Marsland's research unit at
Brunel University represents the only
British Institution with a major pro-
gramme of research in Youth in
opposition to this position.