Youth culture - social class

Question 1

[Gap fill] Sociologists believed that youth culture in the _____ and ________ were ______________. Many youth subcultures see themselves as protesting ___________ ___________ that they saw in society.

Answer 1

Sociologists believed that youth culture in the USA and Britain were classless. Many youth subcultures see themselves as protesting against injustice that they saw in society .

Question 2

Who studied Skinheads and Mods?

Answer 2

Cohen (1972)

Question 3

What did Cohen find in his study into Skinheads?

Answer 3

They held working class values, suffered from low self esteem due to their lifestyles, they showed defiance by wearing working class styles demonstrating their manliness and being tough. They were anti authoritarian and gained pleasure going against society

Question 4

How did Skinheads dress?

Answer 4

Shaved heads, heavy boots, baggy trousers and braces

Question 5

What did Cohen believe the skinhead subculture symbolised?

Answer 5

An attempt to recover the working class community

Question 6

What did Cohen find in his study into Mods?

Answer 6

They reflected the upward aspirations of a more affluent section of the working class who sought to copy the middle class with flashy Italian suits and driving scooters.

Question 7

What did Cohen suggest about the Mods?

Answer 7

They rejected traditional working class culture and attempted to embrace a more glamorous and cosmopolitan style

Question 8

What is an advantage of Cohen’s research?

Answer 8

Brake (1980) supports the work by Cohen and he found that youth subcultures can be classified into class categories based on three types

Question 9

What were the three types of youth subcultures classified by Brake (1980)?

Answer 9

Delinquent youth (working class), Cultural rebels and politically militant youth (middle class youth)

Question 10

Who studied delinquency?

Answer 10

Cohen (1955)

Question 11

What did Cohen (1955) find about delinquency?

Answer 11

It is a collective response and delinquents join together to express discontent by committing crimes. He focused on non-utilitarian crime.

Question 12

What did Cohen (1955) find about delinquency in young working class boys?

Answer 12

They have the same goal as the rest of society (to become successful) however due to educational failure and dead-end jobs they cannot attain these goals due to their position is the social structure so they experience anomie

Question 13

What did Cohen (1955) find that failure in young working class boys can lead to?

Answer 13

Status frustration

Question 14

Status frustration (Cohen 1955)

Answer 14

Working class boys become frustrated and dissatisfied with their low status in society and do not turn to crime but instead reject the success goals of mainstream culture. They develop new norms through delinquent subcultures

Question 15

What did Cohen (1955) state that delinquent subcultures can do?

Answer 15

reject and reverse mainstream culture

Question 16

What do delinquent subcultures place a focus on?

Answer 16

criminal activity like stealing, vandalism, truancy

Question 17

How do lower working class boys solve their status frustration?

Answer 17

By forming a delinquent subculture

Question 18

What are the disadvantages of Cohen’s work?

Answer 18

• Box (1981)
• Bordua (1962)
• Matza (1964)

Question 19

Box (1981) on Cohen’s work

Answer 19

Criticised it and stated that the delinquent working class subculture theory could only be applied to a minority of criminals. He instead stated that young people feel resentment if labelled as failures and turn against those who look down on them

Question 20

Bordua (1962) on Cohen’s work

Answer 20

Criticised Cohens use of the term “lower class subcultures” as it cannot explain crime and offending as working class crime does not necessarily pass from one generation to the next

Question 21

Matza (1964) on Cohen’s work

Answer 21

Criticised the view that delinquents are opposed to mainstream values and therefore become delinquents. Many young delinquents accept mainstream values and only rarely commit crimes

Question 22

Simon Harding (2014)

Answer 22

Ethnographic study of residents, professionals and gangs in south London. He used the analogy of a casino to describe gangs and their behaviour

Question 23

The Street Casino: Survival in violent street gangs

Answer 23

Harding (2014) saw gangs as social arena’s of competition where members struggle for status. Like accumulating chips in a casino, success is determined by accruing street capital. The gang is a ‘game of high stakes’ for youth

Question 24

What is a disadvantage of Harding’s (2014) research?

Answer 24

Lack of consideration for ordinary youth as the vast majority of youth are never members of youth subcultures and are instead in neo tribes

Question 25

Farrington & West (1994)

Answer 25

Self reports to plot amounts and types of offending of a sample of working class male participants. 1/3 of males up to 32 had been convicted at least once. 400 males born 1951-1954 investigated. take-off age is 14 and decreases by 23.

Question 26

What are the advantages of Farrington & West's research?

Answer 26

+ Longitudinal research can follow an individual through their life to look for factors that can lead them to offend and help increase verstehen when investigating social class + Support from the New Right. They would agree that young working class male criminals tend to have poor socialisation

Question 27

The middle class

Answer 27

- Belong to the hippy subculture and drop out of capitalist system. - Listen to music like pop and folk which focuses on protesting · Spend longer in education so have time to experiment with different attitudes, values and lifestyles

Question 28

What did Jock Young (1972) study?

Answer 28

Hippie marijuana users who lived in Notting Hill in London (middle class) and examined the police view of the hippies, and the police reaction to them (labelling)

Question 29

How did the police view hippies in Young's (1971) study?

Answer 29

Dirty, scruffy, idle, scrounging, promiscuous, depraved and unstable drug addicts. Some hippies were caught and arrested for taking drugs by the police, and they were labelled as criminals.

Question 30

What did Young find the result of the police labelling hippies as criminals was?

Answer 30

smoking marijuana even more and it became a central activity for them. Some of the hippies even lost their jobs because of their extensive drug use. A deviant subculture emerges

Question 31

What are the advantages of Young's (1971) research?

Answer 31

+ The role of class does seem to be an important factor for some youth subcultures, e.g. hippies do tend to be middle class. Therefore it seems class can be important for some youth subcultures but not all of them. + Clear links with Marxist ideas. Hippies were very political and active in showing resistance to the capital system for example not wanting a job . This might link to the Marxist idea of, "resistance through rituals"

Question 32

What did Young find hippies focus on?

Answer 32

love, peace, sex, drugs and rock and roll

Question 33

How might hippies dress?

Answer 33

Hippies have more money so can afford to buy good quality clothes. They might dress in platforms, flared trousers, round coloured sunglasses, floaty flamboyant coloured clothes, long hair parted in the centre.

Question 34

"resistance through rituals" in hippies

Answer 34

They would rather chill out, relax, listen to music and take drugs than have a job like most other people in society

Question 35

Class convergence

Answer 35

Roberts (1997) stated that class boundaries between subcultures have become blurred over the years and nowadays there is less class segregation within youth subcultures