Are the kids alright? A critique and agenda for taking youth cultures seriously

1.1 The Chicago School and Classical youth studies

Youth-culture studies can be traced at least as far back as the Chicago School (Levine & Stumpf, 1983). This body of work applied existing theories of crime, delinquency and social deviance to youth lifestyles and behaviors. From this perspective, individuals in general, and youth in particular, may resort to deviant behavior as a result of insufficient cohesiveness with society – as a result of alienation or anomie. The status of being young necessitates a confusing period of life in which the norms of childhood existence have not yet been fully subsumed by the norms of adulthood, resulting in role confusion and the inability to fully conform to normal standards. As such, youth culture was considered to be deviant culture, and affiliation with such groups was believed to set one on a course for future criminality.

Underlying claims of this sort was the causal assumption that these deviant behaviors resulted from the inability or refusal on the part of youths to successfully conform to societal norms and practices, which in turn were overwhelmingly considered to be those of the middle class. This assumption anticipated a later development in the field of cultural studies, tracing the emergence of youth subcultures to the unique structural position of working-class society but which, as will be seen below, derived an entirely different set of conclusions regarding the significance of this context of emergence.

Youth studies in the Chicago School tradition were conducted as early as the 1920s. Despite this early inception, work of this sort continued for some decades and was considerably reinforced by Robert K Merton’s (1938) revision of structural functionalism. Merton attempted to illustrate how the apparent disruption of normality alleged to accompany deviant behavior could actually be interpreted as part of the normal operation of society. In his work, he suggests that all individuals try to achieve normality, but sometimes conditions render the desired conformity difficult or impossible to attain. Failure may in turn result in the individual adapting to their situation in deviant ways, as a sort of continued effort to achieve normality, or shifting the emphasis on what sort of ends, and the means to get there, constitute the attainment of success (e.g. Cloward & Ohlin 1960; Cohen, 1955). While youth studies thus remained fairly consistent in perspective and scope for many decades, other events occurring during this same time period would ensure that innovations in the study of youth culture were imminent, even if they would not immediately displace the preexisting perspective. ¹

1.2 Transaction and labeling

Social and political events occurring during the 1960s brought the issue of power back into academic discourse, and into youth culture studies in particular (Roberts, 1976). Whereas the perspective of earlier subcultural studies implied that interaction occurred between equals, the emerging perspective recognized that equality in exchange was not always the case. This perspective, developed by a number of prominent researchers (e.g. Becker, 1963; Erikson, 1962; Goffman, 1961, 1968), argued that youth occupy a relatively powerless social position, and so interactions with adults are often characterized by a power imbalance, an unequal ability to define a given situation. Whatever practices youth adopt or develop are subject to the censure or approval of adults representing the established norms of society who, collectively, have the power to define and maintain those norms. Once a youth deviates from established norms, willingly or not, they may be labeled deviant as a means of social control. Fear of stigma may curb initial deviant acts, but, once the label is assigned, it may become self-fulfilling in that the deviant identity is internalized by the youth, who will go on to commit more deviant acts. Youths may thus undergo deviant ‘careers’ in which they learn deviance and eventually adopt or even embrace a stigmatized identity. This identity may crystallize over time as others reinforce the deviant youths’ perception of themselves as deviant through further transaction.

Following from this explanatory scheme, youth culture studies continued to classify youth subcultures as deviant. However, the concept of a relative deviance was introduced. Dominant, powerful segments of society were able to define normality and labeled other segments, here youth subcultures, as deviant. This labeling amounted to a process of social control, stigmatizing and marginalizing different lifestyles. It also suggested a social etiology of youth subcultures: they develop not out of individual pathologies resulting in turn from alienation and isolation, but out of transaction. That is, out of social interactions, where the power to define what is normal is not shared equally by all participants and which serve to maintain the status quo.

While the transaction perspective shifts ‘blame’ for youthful deviance away from youth themselves and their inability to conform successfully, it has been criticized on the grounds (1) that it denies agency to youth, suggesting that they merely receive and interpret sanctions from more powerful groups; and (2) that it downplays the role of social structure, of social context, on both sets of parties to the interaction (e.g. Akers, 1967; Mankoff, 1971).

1.3 The Birmingham School and the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies

After the end of the Second World War, youth subcultures in Britain became increasingly visible (Clarke et al., 1976). Researchers from the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS) at the University of Birmingham sought to better understand this emergent phenomenon. The starting-point of their perspective borrows heavily from the American interactionist perspective. While abandoning the idea of individual, social pathologies, the perspective maintained a transactional approach in which unequal cultural power underlies all interactions: ‘The definitions of the world … express the life situation of those groups which hold the monopoly of power in society’ (Clarke et al., 1976). But, these researchers soon found that however insightful this approach might be, it was insufficient for explaining an obvious social-structural aspect of British youth subcultures – specifically, the role of social class. A deviant-youth status may result from processes of social labeling, but a pattern was noted in which working-class youths were far more likely to be so labeled than youths from any other class background. Chambliss (1973) provides a classic example of this phenomenon in his study of two high-school social groups. The first, which he calls the ‘Saints’, came from respectable middle-class backgrounds, while the second, the ‘Roughnecks’, came from lower-class backgrounds. While both were involved in similar deviant activities – drinking, skipping school, fighting and vandalism – and, indeed, the Saints seemed even more heavily involved – only the lower-class Roughnecks were actually labeled as deviant by the community. The double standards revealed in studies such as this showed how a synthetic approach, combining both microsociological and macrosociological perspectives, was needed to account for the contributing factors to subcultural formation and participation. Both interactively and structurally, then, youth culture could best be understood through its subordinate relationship to those segments of society endowed with superior cultural power.

According to the CCCS, each social class within a given society shares a separate understanding of how to live, that is, each class maintains a different culture (Clarke et al., 1976). Of these, the culture of the most powerful class is considered dominant. It has the greatest ability to set definitions and promote perspectives, and at the same time portrays itself as the only culture of the society. The remaining class cultures, while subordinate to this dominant culture, are also at odds with it and attempt to assert their own collective definitions. Each class-based culture, dominant or subordinate, is not monolithic but contains variations, subcultures, within itself. The class-based cultures each serve as ‘parent’ cultures, providing sets of cultural assumptions and choices, which can be selectively utilized or appropriated by the various subcultures they contain. Willis (1977), for example, examined the working-class culture of teenage boys in their industrial jobs. The subculture they created is directly sampled from the working-class parent culture, placing emphasis on being tough, hard-working, macho and streetwise. This system of values allows the youths to deal with their lot in life, their class position in society, and allows them to be contemptuous of other social classes, and their associated cultures, which are seen as pampered and naïve. However, this subculture also keeps them from ever aspiring to attain greater affluence, prestige and cultural power.

Subcultures, then, can be studied in terms of both their relationship to their parent culture as well as their relationship to the dominant culture. Each subculture is different. They may reaffirm and reinforce, or challenge and dispute the parent culture and/or the dominant culture. To the extent which they do so, they may be perceived as being ‘respectable, “rough”, delinquent [or] criminal’ subcultures (Clarke et al., 1976: 13). In all cases, subcultures are predominantly concerned with the same issues as their parent cultures: their unique social and material position in society and the specific difficulties this entails. Subcultures differ from their parent cultures in terms of the solutions they develop to resolve these difficulties, even as they appropriate the cultural, raw materials for their resolutions from the parent culture.

The CCCS posited a kind of dual reality to the nature of the relationship between the cultures of youth and that of the greater society. Youth, on the one hand, are subject to market influence, to being mere consumers of cultural goods. But youth are also engaged in resistance to the hegemony of dominant culture, and in pursuing class goals. Using semiological analysis, these researchers located youth resistance to cultural hegemony in the appropriation and reinterpretation of these same goods from the parent or dominant culture in an attempt to subvert their meaning and either promote a counter-discourse or to simply disrupt taken-for-granted cultural assumptions – a process referred to as bricolage (Lévi-Strauss, 1966). In these ways, subcultural style is intended to offend the mainstream, and to challenge the taken-for-granted meaning of objects along with the social relationships and organization they signify (Clarke et al., 1976). Thus, rather than focusing on mainstream interpretations of youth culture, as the British media and Classical youth-studies research had done previously, the Birmingham School attempted to adopt an emic perspective, examining youth subcultures through their view of the social world.

The importance of this perspective can be gleaned when considering the symbols youths implement, and upon which great emphasis was placed by researchers. Such symbols may have entirely different meanings for the youth who adopt them, and identifying these meanings is the researcher’s most crucial task (Hebdige, 1979). This is done primarily through homology (Brake, 1985), through finding associations between the visible, material culture of a group (e.g. attire, hairstyles, body modification, etc.) and the non-material aspects of its lifestyle (e.g. values, beliefs, behaviors, etc.). Style meaningfully signifies or reifies the intangible elements underlying subcultural objects, rendering it a fit and insightful subject of analysis. This is complicated by the necessity of decoding these meanings from the perspective of subcultural insiders since, again, the meaning they invest in material objects and practices will inevitably diverge from what other cultures within the same society would otherwise ascribe to those same objects.

The Teddy Boys (aka Teds), for example, were a working-class subculture very much concerned with their relatively low status and their desire to achieve membership in a higher class. To this end, they adopted the dress style, the Edwardian suit albeit with some modifications, of the upper class as a way of displaying and symbolically achieving these goals (Jefferson, 1976). While reflecting the interests of the working-class parent culture from which the Teds emerged (i.e. socioeconomic mobility), this style also served to resist the inferior status ascribed to the working class. Indeed, the Teds were so concerned with status, and their own marginality, that they became well known for (1) being extremely sensitive to anything that might be considered an insult to their status and (2) responding to this apprehension violently. These characteristics, then – sensitivity and pugnaciousness – can be interpreted as serving a similar purpose as Ted style: as a means of challenging their position in society.

Though this symbolic warfare may be defined as important by the subculture that is engaged in it, the CCCS researchers determined that it is ultimately ineffectual. The challenges to mainstream hegemony by subcultures are neutralized through (a) commodification and (b) ideological interpretation. Again, the relationship between the market and the dominant culture, on the one hand, and subcultures, on the other, works in both directions. The symbols may be appropriated by subcultural opposition, but these may in turn be commodified by the dominant culture. They may be copied, manufactured, and sold as hot, new fashions, and thus deprived of their potency. Simultaneously, since subcultures, and their artifacts, present a danger to cultural hegemony through their apparent disruption of taken-for-granted meanings and norms, they can be neutralized by being interpreted in ways consistent with prevailing ideology. Members can be portrayed as little more than pathological individuals, as youthful deviants, or as quirky but otherwise normal members of society. In either case, no social change is achieved in the dominant culture and no new gains or different social positionings are achieved by the subculture. Thus, while the symbolic strategies of subcultures are intended to serve as solutions to their class problems, the CCCS perspective suggests they constitute only a symbolic or ‘magical’ solution (Brake, 1974, 1980; Cohen P, 1972) – meaningful, but not a ‘real’ threat to established social organization and cultural hegemony. In the case of the Teds, of course, adopting the style of a more affluent class, although socially meaningful and potentially beneficial on a psychological level, did nothing to alter their real situation. If anything, spending hard-earned money on fashionable styles perpetuates a marginal social position.

1.4 Post-subculture studies

The field of post-subculture studies does not consist of a coherent, new paradigm, but rather contains a number of related observations and conceptualizations of subculture which are explicitly critical of the CCCS tradition. According to this perspective, the theories of the CCCS are either outdated and inapplicable to the current postmodern condition of social life, or are inherently flawed and likely to be inapplicable even to the groups to which they were previously applied.

For the most part, it is argued that CCCS perspectives are too structural, static and modernist, whereas contemporary youth inhabit social worlds that are more complex, constantly shifting and flexible, and greatly proliferated in scope and scale. The CCCS is accused of deifying social class as the sole, or at least most important, determinant in the creation of subcultures and the forms they take, while neglecting other important elements of life such as age, gender and ethnicity (Stahl, 2003). This insistence on the primacy of structure likely resulted from the imposition of neo-Marxian theoretical assumptions on the subject of study and, therefore, reflects only those assumptions and not the phenomenological realities of subcultural life (Muggleton, 2000). Instead, it is argued that social ‘class is wilfully obfuscated by subcultural distinctions’ (Thornton, 1995: 12), and consumption actually allows subculturalists to overcome structural impositions (Bennett, 1999, 2000).

A concern with the inadequacies of the semiotic methodology of the CCCS also permeates the post-subcultures literature. It is argued that ‘[t]he discourse of style overemphasizes a symbolic response to exclusion, situating semiotic play with appropriated texts above that of the imaginative and concrete contexts in which cultural activity is enacted’ (Stahl, 2003: 28–29). Styles, and the meanings behind them, are constantly shifting and diffusing in a globalized world, such that no stable meaning can be decoded by the semiotician (Baudrillard, 1983; Craik, 1994). Without the ability to read the meaning of subcultural styles, the concerns of subcultures cannot be interpreted through semiotics, rendering CCCS approaches void of interpretive value.

Post-subcultural approaches also take issue with the essentialist characterization of youth subcultures promoted by the CCCS. Instead, they suggest that (a) coherent, consistent, and homogeneous subcultures with stable sets of shared beliefs, practices and identities do not exist, and that (b) the loose categorizations that do exist cannot be readily differentiated from each other or from other entities.

First, post-subculturalists tend to take issue with the CCCS’s assertion of a ‘homological unity of class-based practices’ (Weinzierl & Muggleton, 2003: 7), that is, with the agreement or meaningful correspondence between various material and non-material aspects of the subculture. This is especially true in regard to the alleged correspondence between style and music. Whereas the CCCS semioticians generally argued that the meanings that could be read in each of these would reflect and support one another, post-subcultural approaches find no such correlation. Instead, they argue that modern subcultural activity is more eclectic and diverse. Participants sample from (i.e. consume) a number of available styles and musical forms that do not generally reflect each other in any real way (Bennett, 1999, 2000; Redhead, 1990). Moreover, moving beyond issues of homology, post-subculturalists argue that there is no such thing as a coherent, recognizable subculture, and therefore no such thing as ‘real’ or ‘fake’ (i.e. poseur) members or participants. For example, Muggleton (2000: 2), agreeing with and quoting one of his informants, states that: ‘“There is no such thing as punk’. Thus, to even use the term ‘subculture’ is problematic since it is a term with no referent (Bennett, 1999). While norms, rules and shared understandings still exist and still matter, they are contingent, temporary and fluid (Grossberg, 1984), and cannot be used to delineate a stable configuration that can be labeled ‘subculture.’

Next, post-subculturalists, in perhaps the most telling departure from CCCS theory, disavow that paradigm’s assertion ‘that both “subculture” and the parent culture against which it is defined are coherent and homogeneous formations that can be clearly demarcated’ (Wienzierl & Muggleton, 2003: 7). Just as we cannot locate a clearly identifiable subculture, neither can we distinguish between subcultures or between subculture and external entities that are clearly not of the subculture. Global flows of people, ideas, style and so forth constantly diffuse and overlap, making nothing distinct, leaving no unit of analysis discrete, and rendering null any attempt to distinguish any subculture from the ‘other’. For example, the CCCS theorists established an inimical relationship between youth subcultures, on the one hand, and mainstream media, on the other. Youth were portrayed as interested in maintaining freedom from media representation, which would either demonize them (e.g. Cohen S, 1972) or coopt their image for sale and, therefore, remove its threat (Hebdige, 1979). These clear divisions are not evident in post-subcultural studies. Thornton’s (1995) work with ‘club cultures’ exemplifies this blurriness. She locates subculture formation not as distinct from the media but as dependent on media representation to establish anything resembling coherence out of a mish-mash of individual styles and tastes. Likewise, McRobbie (1989: 39) has argued that subcultures are ‘born into the media’. Thus, there is no distinction between a moment of subcultural authenticity preceding representation in the media and that representation itself. Grossberg (1984, 1997) has similarly problematized the distinction between subcultures and the mainstream or popular ‘other’. What we might otherwise attempt to understand as two separate and opposed social entities are actually interrelated and share numerous elements. Each incorporates ‘practices, codes, and effects’ (Grossberg, 1997: 220) of the ‘other’, resulting in an inability to clearly differentiate between them. In short, no cultural phenomenon is self-contained and localized. Instead, all are overlapping, locally experienced variations in a global stream.

Having established a powerful critique of the CCCS tradition and the concomitant concept of ‘subculture’, some post-subculturalist researchers have endeavored to establish new concepts which they feel more adequately capture and describe the phenomena of contemporary youth culture. The most prominent of these include ‘neo-tribes’ (Bennett, 1999, 2000), ‘club cultures’ (Thornton, 1995), and ‘post-subcultures’ (Muggleton, 1997, 2000). These can be categorized as ‘lifestyles’: individual-level sensibilities deployed in the selection of commodities through which to engage in self-expression (Bocock, 1992; Chaney, 1996; Miles, 2000). That is, youth phenomena are reduced to a series of individual quests for expression in the ‘Supermarket of Style’ (Polhemus, 1994). Members are not goal-oriented in any ‘rational’ way but, through shifting patterns of taste and consumption, seek only to assert their individuality. Subcultures, by whatever name, are not homogeneous, coherent ways of life where the members share collective goals and sensibilities. Instead, youth phenomena are characterized by fluid, fragmented identities, shifting and overlapping boundaries, relatively low levels of commitment and little concept of authenticity. At the same time, the ‘individual’ becomes difficult to pin down precisely because of the multiplicity of meanings, expressed through different styles, places of subcultural activity frequented, and behaviors engaged in, which are all inherently unstable and diverse (Shields, 1992).

Post-subcultural approaches are not without their own criticisms. For example, just as the CCCS was accused of obscuring social reality through a procrustean imposition of a priori theory (Muggleton, 2000; Redhead, 1990; Stahl, 2003), the same can also be said of post-subcultural research. While the theory imposed this time may not be grand or general, the expectations of the perspective are still found to only partly hold in research designed to test the relative merits of the competing interpretations of youth culture (e.g. Greener & Hollands, 2006). Just as it is possible to ‘read’ too strongly the effects of social structure at the expense of human agency, so too is it possible to selectively note instances of agency at the expense of the importance of ‘real’, material conditions. Thus, in a related critique, some researchers have argued that contemporary youth cultures have not been freed from structural constraints. Issues of class, gender, race and so on are not readily done away with nor are they easily ‘negotiable by self-creating subjects’ (Hesmondhalgh, 2005: 25). Rather, structural forces still influence youth subcultural participation and its consequences (Hollands, 2002; Nayak, 2003). From this perspective, while some modern youth may partake of a vast variety of styles and activities, it is most likely those of an upper- or middle-class background who are able to most fully take part in these consumption activities and freely define their identities through them (Shildrick & MacDonald, 2006). At the very least, the background of individuals, comprising a habitus (Bourdieu, 1990), will influence the type and degree of subculture participation they ‘choose’ to engage in (O’Connor, 2004). The post-subculturalist insistence on absolute agency, moreover, typically leads post-subculture theorists ‘to down-play the collective nature of subcultural practice … because their postmodern critique of the CCCS wants to give priority to the individual’ (Blackman, 2005:12). Additionally, Blackman argues, whenever theories of subculture become too focused on the individual level of analysis – as is the case not only with post-subculture approaches, but also with the pre-CCCS Chicago School and Transaction/Labeling perspectives – they become ‘over- preoccupied with the particular, either in terms of “dysfunctionalism” or celebratory hybrid pleasures … [and therefore] lack theoretical coherence and explanatory power at the level of the social’ (Blackman, 2005: 16–17).

In summary, while post-subculture studies have been immensely important in reviving a dialogue regarding youth culture (Shildrick & MacDonald, 2006), many problems remain, and little theoretical consensus has been reached. This impasse has served to render youth subcultures something of a continuing mystery to academic interpretation, if not to the individuals that comprise them.

2.1 Monolithic conceptions of youth culture

Early discussion of youth in society made use of the idea of youth culture, as opposed to cultures or subcultures, suggesting that there was a shared state of social being at this stage of life. Talcott Parsons (1942), for example, posited the existence of such a monolithic, shared culture with which youth in modern societies were affiliated. While clearly inaccurate in describing the phenomenon of youth culture today, it is possible that such portrayals were once true. Indeed, some work suggests that until fairly recently the concepts of youth and associated youth subculture did not exist at all (e.g. Ariès, 1962; Mintz, 2006). Instead, youth were drawn into the adult world, and therefore adult culture, as soon as possible.

Whatever the historical reality of youth life, when it comes to recent decades no serious observer would claim that all youth cultures are exactly the same. Yet, despite the admission of a multiplicity of contemporary subcultures, monolithic conceptions of youth culture remain popular. In other words, the attempt is often made to circumscribe a variety of cultural practices within a single, totalizing theorization. Bennett (1999) has convincingly argued that the term ‘subculture’ has come to encompass so wide a range of phenomena that the concept has been stretched beyond the point of utility. Yet, to use a looser concept – such as tribe or post-subculture – does not necessarily solve this problem. Such concepts are, by the definitions of their creators, used to indicate a wide range of youth behaviors that cannot easily be classified and, thus, return us to the original problem of a concept that is too inclusive. Thus, while ‘[t]he CCCS subculturalists might have overestimated the boundedness and permanence of the group identities they were studying … simply to offer instability and temporariness as alternatives does not get us very far’ (Hesmondhalgh, 2005: 24).

The disagreement in findings over the years – the lack of consensus about what youth cultures are like – may be a result of the imposition of totalizing theories on divergent cases (Greener & Hollands, 2006; Muggleton, 2000; Redhead, 1990; Stahl, 2003). However, the reverse may also be true, that researchers over-generalize their findings – usually ethnographic case-studies of a single subculture rather than representative quantitative studies (Hesmondhalgh, 2005) – to all subcultures. While it is understandable and even praiseworthy, given the nature of the subject-matter and the need for an insider’s perspective, that researchers will utilize qualitative methodologies, the usual cautions for generalizing beyond the observations should still apply (see e.g. Berg, 2004).

There are many possible solutions to this problem. One is to establish a typology of youth cultures based on their distinguishing characteristics. The CCCS likely represents the first clear attempt to distinguish between different types of subcultures: conceptual groupings of subcultures that represent similar configurations and concerns. Specifically, they divided all subcultures into those with either working-class or middle-class backgrounds. As discussed above, the distinction was never fully supported and has been heavily criticized in the ensuing years. Another possible distinction is raised by Cagle (1995), who notes that the CCCS failed to examine non-oppositional subcultures. This suggests that typing cases based on their stance toward ‘mainstream’ society might also be a fruitful endeavor.

Regardless of which distinctions one uses to differentiate between different youth configurations, the practice will necessarily involve the use of ‘ideal-types’ (Weber, 1949): some characteristics of the subject-matter will be emphasized at the expense of others. While such an approach will not perfectly represent the subculture under study, it will enable the recognition that not all youth cultures are the same and, therefore, cannot be treated by theorists as though they had identical antecedents, identical concerns and identical consequences.

Fortunately, useful ideal-types already exist that can be applied more fully. As already noted, there has been considerable disagreement over the extent to which current conceptions of subculture accurately reflect the phenomena in question. Empirical studies meant to compare competing interpretations of youth cultures find support for some aspects of both CCCS and post-subculture perspectives (e.g. Greener & Hollands, 2006; Muggleton, 2000). It is likely that neither perspective, on its own, can fully explain all youth subculture experiences and that, instead, each perspective represents an ideal at the end of a continuum upon which actual cases may be placed.

At least two major studies have previously argued for such a perspective, prioritizing neither a CCCS perspective of subculture nor a post-subcultures approach. Hodkinson argues that subculture is still a relevant concept, but researchers must ‘differentiate those groupings which are predominantly ephemeral from those which entail far greater levels of commitment, continuity, distinctiveness, or, to put it in general terms, substance’ (Hodkinson, 2002: 24). Using these criteria in his study of gothic subculture, Hodkinson finds that this group more closely approximates the CCCS ideal of a subculture than a post-subculture, but this should not be assumed to be necessarily true of all other groups. Muggleton (2000) similarly suggests two ideal-types: (1) ‘liminal subcultures’ and (2) ‘crossover countercultures’. The former are fairly coherent and consistent configurations, where members can mostly identify with a particular category but deny being a stereotypical exemplar of that category. This type clearly corresponds most closely with a CCCS ideal. The latter, however, are so eclectic that they cannot be said to fit into a single category at all, nor do they identify with a single category but, instead, feel comfortable and accepted in multiple groups. This type has also been referred to as ‘freak style’ (Gottschalk, 1993), and represents an ideal more consistent with a post-subcultures perspective.

Thus, not all cultures should be assumed to reflect a CCCS approach or a post-subculture approach, nor should any other characteristic be assumed to correspond with the totality of youth cultural experiences. The matter of characteristics becomes an empirical question that can be tested rather than assumed based on prior theory or overgeneralizations.

2.2 Style and consumption

The preceding discussion of youth studies indicates that youth cultures are, typically, and monolithically, viewed as groups – or aggregations of diverse individuals – utterly preoccupied with consumption. For the CCCS, subcultures were primarily engaged in taking styles from the mainstream or parent cultures and reinterpreting them to signify subcultural concerns; that is, they were engaged in semiotic warfare through consumerism. The post-subcultural approaches argue that style is unique to each individual and does not necessarily signify anything at all, much less something that is collectively meaningful (Craik, 1994; Kaiser, Nagasawa & Hutton, 1991). Yet, consumption practices still figure prominently in this perspective and are seen as occurring at the individual level, where they are interpreted as emancipatory: they free individuals from structural and social constraints by allowing them to express themselves via the ‘Supermarket of Style’ (Polhemus, 1994). Thus ‘priority is given to the individual to absorb and choose subcultural style, to explore personal emancipation and self-fulfillment … ’ (Blackman, 2005: 15).

Both perspectives start out with an assumption that style and consumerism are central to all subcultures, then go on to establish the role of these without empirically testing the accuracy of the assumption. Thus, while style and consumerism may have a role, and while this role may vary according to the particular group under study, the significance of that role may be exaggerated and no different from mainstream cultural consumption. This is particularly problematic if the researcher is an outsider to the group since spectacular appearances, and aspects of material culture more generally, will likely be the first and most obvious characteristic observable when encountering an unfamiliar group. Clark (2003) suggests that interpretations of subcultures as little more than fashion movements are likely the result of such an outsider perspective, and over the years insider perspectives are lost in the wake of hardier media and academic representations. However, even insiders are likely to work with these assumptions when they are also researchers. Muggleton (2000: 171), for example, ‘selected [informants] on the basis of what [he] regarded as their unconventional appearance’. We know nothing of the youth who did not place such emphasis on appearances since they were purposefully excluded from the sample. Moreover, of the 46 distinct questions listed in his interview schedule, at least 34 deal directly with the style of the informants: type of dress, reasons for dressing the way they do, and so on. While this is understandable in that the goal of his study was to interpret the ‘postmodern meaning of style’, the methodology serves to exemplify the assumptions in this field of study more generally.

While a discussion of alternatives to a superficial analysis of consumption and style cannot be addressed in full here, some mention of these possibilities is appropriate. In one of the principal documents of the CCCS canon (Clarke et al., 1976), Marx is invoked as a guiding light of the perspective: ‘As individuals express their life, so they are. What they are, therefore, coincides with their production, both with what they produce and how they produce’ (Marx, 1970: 42, emphasis in original). Despite this emphasis on production, however, the overwhelming tendency of most studies of youth subcultures is to insist that their subjects are only engaged in consumption or, at best, in reinterpreting the objects they consume, which are provided by the parent culture. Indeed, they are silent on the matter of what new production might entail, what it might look like, and so render their claim invulnerable to falsification. Some recent work has begun to move away from the inertia of this tradition to forge new paths for research. Moore (2007), for example, highlights the need to move beyond consumption, finding that, at least for some subcultures, independent cultural production is a more salient source of meaning for both group members and researchers.

While Moore’s study considerably improves on the issues inherent in much youth-culture research that prioritizes consumption, future research cannot address this issue by simply moving on to the study of the production of style either. Interestingly, despite his research model, Muggleton (2000: 120, 69) found that ‘contrary to what both sociology and our own assumptions might have led us to believe, some subculturalists did not hold style in high regard’ and that ‘[w]e therefore need to explore the meaning of diversity in other areas’ . The need to move beyond a focus on style, especially ‘spectacular’ style (Shildrick & MacDonald, 2006), including the consumption of resources for the establishment thereof, has long been acknowledged (e.g. Clarke, 1990). Chatterton and Hollands (2002; Hollands, 1995, 2002) offer a promising approach by expanding the analytic framework of youth activities to include an emphasis on youth relationships to both production and regulation, but moving also beyond style to focus on a more holistic set of cultural practices tied to different youth cultures in their respective socio-spatial settings. They note distinct patterns in their research: some youth are engaged in relatively passive consumption in mainstream settings with individualistic emphases; while others, for example, are more closely involved in producing and regulating their own cultural spaces. Such work is intriguing and illustrates the possibility of moving beyond style while providing a meaningful alternative.

In summary, there is a need to determine the importance, if any, of subcultural style and the role of consumption rather than simply assuming a necessarily high level of such importance. Research cannot stop at the surface of style and then presume an interior without substance if that interior is never explored. Indeed, if one were to limit an analysis to style only, the persistence of some subcultures over time may be lost entirely. Such, it is alleged, is the case with punk, which has been declared dead many times because it no longer has a clearly recognizable, and therefore easily marketable, style (Clark, 2003). Moreover, consumption practices, no matter how important or unimportant, cannot be over-emphasized at the expense of neglecting issues of production, regulation and distribution – important topics that can also tell much about the particularities and concerns of subcultures.

2.3 Goals, rationality, and outcomes

Each of the major theoretical perspectives on youth culture has argued, either implicitly or explicitly, that subcultures are engaged in irrational, ineffectual behavior. This is derived from a preoccupation with studying subcultural style and consumption, and an a priori assumption that these are of primary if not sole importance to subcultures. In other words, the unsurprising conclusion is reached that clothing, piercings, hair-dye and tattoos cannot change the world or social arrangements more generally.

This pattern is evident beginning with the earliest youth studies perspective, that of the Chicago School and related classical approaches. As discussed above, this early work emphasized that some youths are socially pathological: that is, they have been poorly socialized, are isolated, or in some way experience insufficient solidarity with society and its norms. As a result, they form new social groupings – subcultures – as maladaptive, deviant responses to the strain otherwise induced by their incomplete integration. Such ‘strain’ models were popular in this early era of sociological inquiry for explaining any number of social phenomena that did not conform to researchers’ ideas of ‘normality’. For example, social-movement formation – another collective phenomenon like subculture – was also believed to result from the needs of socially pathological individuals (e.g. Kornhauser, 1959; Smelser, 1962; Turner & Killian, 1957). Like subcultures, social movements were not believed therefore to be involved in any rational sort of behavior nor were they pursuing any rational goals (McAdam, 1982). On a conceptual scale of perceived irrationality, subcultures were ranked, along with cults, somewhere between crowds and riots (at the most irrational end) and social movements (as the least irrational) (Eyerman, 2002). Instead, subcultures and collective behavior more generally were conceived of as providing a therapeutic release for social deviants while doing nothing to alter the causes of their symptoms.

Strain theories have been heavily criticized and generally discredited in most topical areas of sociology, yet they still hold currency within the youth-cultures literature. An exhaustive critique of strain theories is not necessary for the purposes of the current argument. ² It is sufficient to note the questionable logic upon which assumptions of irrationality and ineffectualness within youth subcultures are based. The assumption of irrational behavior on the part of participants of any collective mobilization was based on a functionalist assumption of stable and mutually beneficial social workings. Assuming the current system is functional, any efforts to work outside of that system must be, de facto, dysfunctional and irrational, resulting from some pathological experience of strain on the part of the individual or resulting from social change. Also, later theorists indicated that strain, far from being experienced sporadically by a minority of the population at a given time, is a common experience, whereas collective mobilization is not (see Jenkins, 1983). Thus, the constant – strain – cannot be used to explain a variable – collective mobilization. In short, just as strain models offer inadequate explanations for social movements, so too should they be considered suspect in explaining other forms of collective behavior such as subcultures. At the very least, assumptions of pathology and rationality should be tested rather than taken as givens.

As noted earlier, in many ways the transaction and labeling perspective offers an improvement over the classical models of youth subculture (e.g. introducing the concepts of relative deviance and power into the model). However, this is still inherently a perspective that emphasizes deviant, discredited identities and passivity on the part of subculturalists. Here, any potential a subculture might have to pursue rational goals is immediately defused by the label ‘deviant’. Resistance to powerful cultural authorities (e.g. teachers, parents, the media, etc.) can readily be redefined by those same powers as youthful rebellion or a pointless fad (Raby, 2005). Thus, no actual change can occur outside of the boundaries of deviantized subcultures to infect the rest of society.

The youth subculture perspective of the CCCS is considerably more sophisticated than the earlier perspectives and offers at least some degree of continued utility. However, despite the pervasive influence of neo-Marxianism in its formulation, the perspective still draws heavily on the strain theory of the prior generation and is subject to the same criticisms. As outlined above, the CCCS suggested that subcultures are indeed trying to change the real conditions of social life; it did not assume pathology or other irrational underpinnings of subcultural involvement. In fact, subcultures are direct responses to structural grievances: economic duress, unemployment, and so on. However, while considered inherently political because of their subordinate structural location – itself a proposition rightly criticized by post-subculture theorists – the nature of their opposition is indirect, located in style and symbolic resistance. As Marchart (2004: 420) notes, ‘to restrict the analysis to matters of style rather than political mobilization will necessarily lead to a depoliticized account of subcultures – even … with the opposite intention of politicizing them’. Thus, it comes as no surprise that the solutions offered by subcultures are described by researchers in this tradition as ‘magical’ and, again, as serving only psychologically therapeutic ends (Brake, 1974, 1980; Cohen P, 1972). This conclusion is indistinguishable, in logic and terminology, from earlier strain theories in which ‘[t]he beliefs on which collective behavior is based … are thus akin to magical beliefs’ (Smelser, 1962: 8). By the time the CCCS became dominant in the study of youth culture, the Resource Mobilization (McCarthy & Zald, 1977) and Political Process (Tilly, 1978) perspectives had vindicated social movements, identifying them as rational, albeit unconventional, attempts to enact or oppose social change. Yet subcultures continued to be distinguished from social movements as ‘pseudo-political movements’ that ‘exist at a mythical level’ (Tillman, 1980: 173) without any real agenda. ³ While social-movement activists were out in the streets challenging the status quo, youths in subcultures were seen as simply ‘doing nothing’ (Corrigan, 1976: 103).

Post-subculture studies, while disagreeing that rational goals such as social change are even on the agendas of youth subcultures (to the extent that such groups can even be identified), tend to conclude that the end result is the same as those suggested by earlier perspectives: no tangible or collective outcomes emerge from subcultural activity. Indeed, in their apotheosis of agency most theorists in this perspective deny or ignore the ‘real’, material, structural conditions (disparities) which collective interests might attempt to act against (Shildrick & MacDonald, 2006). Instead, a series of temporary and overlapping aggregates are caught up in consumption and leisure pursuits, through which they hope to assert their individuality with little concern for social transformation or collective goals, however defined. Far from pursuing rational interests – political or otherwise – the main occupation of youth is to express or lose one’s self in a hedonistic bender of consumption (Bennett, 1999, 2000), drugs and dance (Rietveld, 1998). Any concept of ‘a rationalized “social”’ is thoroughly superseded ‘by an emphatic “sociality”’ (Maffesoli, 1996: 11).

This sort of argument pervades the post-subcultures literature. For example, it has been argued that the politics of ravers are not ‘concerned with “changing the world”, but rather with … alternative experiences of the self’ (Pini, 1997: 118) and with accruing subcultural capital or ‘hipness’ (Thornton, 1995). The Punks and Mods that Muggleton (2000: 161) interviewed, similarly, offer ‘not a challenge to the system, but a liberal declaration of freedom of expression, including the right to dress in ways contrary to dominant social conventions’. It is the individual attainment of strictly expressive goals that are the focus of these groups; (post)subcultures are fully fixated with ‘consumer autonomy and creativity’ (Bennett, 1999: 599–600) within the ‘Supermarket of Style’ (Polhemus, 1994). There are no external opponents, no causes or grievance that might inspire collective action. At best, ‘subculturalists are as much reproducing as resisting aspects of the dominant culture’ (Muggleton, 2000: 162). They are ‘taste cultures’ (Stahl, 2003), market niches, and little more.

Although post-subculture studies, then, portray youths as active agents and not passive objects of structural conditions, as the CCCS did, they fail to locate any rationality or resistance – even ineffectual resistance – within subcultures. As Blackman (2005: 15) indicates, ‘emancipation is retained within postmodern subcultural analysis as a form of personal expression’. Yet, even researchers in this tradition have at times recognized the weaknesses of such a totalizing theorization for the contemporary study of youth cultures: ‘post-modernist and other post-subcultural positions have been … guilty of under-politicizing [post-subcultures]’, a position that ‘has been significantly undermined by the political activism and media visibility of new post-subcultural protest formations’ (Weinzierl & Muggleton, 2003: 14).

No existing perspective on youth cultures has yet emerged that allows for the possibility of rational, goal-oriented – including politically oriented – behavior. However, some individual researchers have begun to take steps in this direction by suggesting that the literature on subcultures can be fruitfully merged with that of social movements (Martin, 2002; Moore & Roberts, 2009). While among such efforts no theoretical consensus exists in terms of how this should be conceptualized, many possibilities have been raised. This work suggests that, at the very least, (1) subcultures can serve as mobilizing structures from which more conventional movement activism can arise, and (2) subcultures can offer a direct, cultural challenge to taken-for-granted social norms and practices. As such, some subcultures may be said to ‘straddl[e] the conceptual boundary between subculture and movement’ (Haenfler, 2006: 60).

Social movements are not shaped exclusively by objective factors such as available resources, but also by shared cognitions (Snow & Benford, 1992). As Eyerman (2002) argues, subcultures, as contexts within which alternative ideas are exchanged and reinforced through shared experience, can be fertile breeding grounds for social-movement activity. Similarly, Pfaff (1996) illustrates how the collective identity developed from mutual trust and solidarity in informal social groups can result in contentious movement activity – even with grim prospects for success. Just like traditional social movements (e.g. Kriesi, 1996), the course which this activity takes is, in part, based on the greater socio-political context within which subcultural activity occurs: whether the subculture will serve as a recruiting ground, transform into an overt social movement, be institutionalized within the political arena, and so on. White-power subcultures, for example, have been received quite differently in nations with varying opportunity structures. Eyerman (2002: 457) notes that ‘Swedish neo-Nazi groups are larger and more aggressive, as an underground subculture, than those in Denmark, where the established political discourse has translated their ideas into more acceptable political forms and language’.

National factors, of course, do not necessarily trump factors internal to the subcultures themselves. St John’s (2003, 2004) studies of rave dance cultures, for example, reveal how these groups – previously trivialized as simple taste cultures or hyper-individualist lifestyles – have often embraced political activity and emerged as an important component of a global protest movement. This subculture-based movement aims at achieving human rights, environmental protection, global justice and the reclamation of public spaces for convivial – not capital – purposes: ‘Not merely seeking difference, DIY tribes have mobilized to make a difference’ (St John, 2004: 423, emphasis added). These ends are pursued not through an oblique, semiotic posturing, but through direct action. ‘Activists’ storm the streets, denying vehicular traffic, sometimes destroying these same streets and planting trees, always creating a carnival-like, rave atmosphere and spreading the idea that public space should not be simply space for commerce. In cases such as these, subculturalists begin to resemble social movements more than ‘taste cultures’.

Social-movement scholars have traditionally focused on social movements as ‘challengers’ to established political systems (e.g. Gamson, 1990), and subcultures can be studied as extensions of this practice, as the preceding examples illustrate. However, it has been noted that strictly political challenges have been overemphasized (Giugni, 1998) at the expense of other potential outcomes of movement action. In more recent years, the idea that social movements can be ‘a fundamental source of social change’ as challengers to cultural hegemony has gained ground (Johnston & Klandermans, 1995: 5). From this perspective, cultural change may be at least as important as political change (Gamson, 1998). Haenfler’s (2006) characterization of the straightedge subculture as a social movement stands as a compelling case-study. Stemming from the discourse and collective identity of their subculture, many straightedgers find encouragement to participate in more overt social movement activity (e.g. taking part in the women’s rights movement, environmental movements, etc.) much like St John’s ravers. However, the cultural challenge inherent in some subcultures, like straightedge, introduces new alternative ways of thinking and doing into the dominant discourse. Subcultures, like formal social movements, ‘may also alter cultural understanding and the organization of everyday life’ (Jenkins & Form, 2005: 349). The effects of such a cultural counter-discourse can be limited; for example, maintaining traditions of resistance within local subcultures that give birth to periodic bouts of activism (Van Dyke, 1998). However, the effects can be more pervasive as well. A subculture’s counter-discourse can serve as a ready-made collective action frame, launching a social movement into contentious action and, ultimately, becoming absorbed as part of a modified everyday culture (Tarrow, 1992).

As is normally the case when attempting to measure cultural change (Gamson, 1998), it is difficult to say how many youths have been inspired by subcultural movements to pursue social change. While specific political changes may not be readily observable, ‘the cultural outcomes of movement activity may generate longer-lasting and farther-reaching consequences than political or legislative victories’ (Haenfler, 2006: 200). Presenting unconventional alternatives as legitimate alternatives, subcultures as social movements may lay bare the illusion of cultural consensus, permitting sweeping change in the ways people think, live and dream. They can represent ‘oppositional subcultures within the “global culture” [that] function as wellsprings from which oppositional thought and discourse flow’ (Johnston & Klandermans, 1995: 7).

Clearly, the capacity exists for subcultures to pursue instrumental or rational goals, whether or not those are explicitly political in nature. Yet, as Marchart (2004: 420) warns, ‘not all roads lead to Rome, and not all paths lead to politics’. Similarly, the intention of the current article is not to suggest that youth subcultures can readily be explained and reduced by rational-actor models nor that all subcultures necessarily resemble social movements. Indeed, many are likely engaged in expressive, non-instrumental behavior as well. ⁴ However, it is the case that such groups have the potential to be at least as rationally motivated as other manifestations of collective action. Conversely, they are equally subject to the limitations of rational reductionism. Nonetheless, the extent to which they are rational – the extent to which subcultures are in pursuit of collective gains – relative to the extent to which they are not, cannot be determined unless one is willing to analyze the possibility.