Subculture_Notes

Hall, Stuart, Jefferson, Tony (1976) Resistance through Rituals, London: Hutchinson ‘Subcultures, Cultures and Classes’ ‘Youth appeared as an emergent category in post-war Britian, one of the most striking and visible manifestations of social change in the period’ (P9) ‘It [youth] was signified as a social problem by the moral guardians of society- something we ought to do something about’ (p9) Discussion of meaning of culture and an immediate shift to look at the menaing and definition og youth culture. The culture of a group or class is the peculiar and distinctive ‘way of life’ of a 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 kmaterial life’ (p10) This seems similar to an anthropological definition og culture as a way of life. It denotes the way that youth culture is a social construction, not in any artificial way but in ways that relate to real life as it is lived. Use a gramscian conceptualisation of organic (relatively permanent) movements and conjunctural movements (occasional, immediate almost accidental). These movements are related to class and culture but not necessarily so. Ie age groups or gender can become real movements in a political sense The power to represent is seen as coming from the power of the ruling class and the authors use a Marxiwst framework to understand culture and class Youth subcultures operate within already existing social classes. They also operate in relation to the dominant culture in any society. For youth subcultures they will do a double articulation of subcultures in relation to the parent class culture and to the domninant class culture The account of subcultures ‘relates only to those sections of working-class or middle-class youth where a response to their situation took a distinctive sub-cultural form’ P16) But they acknowledge ‘ they may be less significant than what most young people do most of the time’ (p16) Acknowledge that youth and youth sub cultures are nbot new and note the late Victorian stret corner cultures, this raises the importance of looking at social history to enable a good understanding of the present. What was different about post-war youth subcultures from previous ones 1) Affluence and birth of teenage consumer- leading the way to a consumer society 2) Mass art, mass communication and mass culture democratised or opened out culture- a lot of concern was on widespread imitation and manipulation 3) A generation born out od the violence, anomie and social rupture of the wartime period 4) Expasion of secondary education for all and higher education 5) Arrival of a range of distinctive styles of dress- [perhaps a form of group individualisation] Discussion of class in post-war Britian, acknowledge and affluent society, but do not accept ideas of the affluent society or embourgeoisement, merely more income for all but the same relations of wealth inequality that existed before the war. Discussion of the role of ‘afluence’ in a Gramscian shcam of hegemony and how power is maintained over a particular group. Discussion of middle class and working class subculture, with particular reference to the counter cultural moment in the 1960s. [from here it sems like a movement of the present and very neatly historisised and tied up. For me the easiest period of history to tie up and the hardest to get a distance from. Could the 80s and 90s be similar os this just a generalising of the culture] [There does seem to be a demographic lack as a mode of explanation. There were more as well as richer young people in the post war period.] Hall argues that ‘In the 1950s Youth came to symbolise the most advanced point of social change: youth was employed as a metaphor for social change’ (71) Youth and the various cultures that emerged led to moral panics, and calls for change, something to be done and a lightning rod for other social anxieties. These were in a displaced form ‘society’s “quarrel with itself”’. (p72) For the neo Marxist perspective heavily influenced by Gramsci The growth of youth subcultures was a sign of the collapse of hegemonic domination. [I am led to think abut Chinese subcultures and the wealth that is developing, and wonder about issues of class and domninance and hegemony, and wonder weather all the talk of social change is not a little over wrought and misplaced, searching for some last crisis of a successful capitalism.] [A key factor here is the way that wider social changes were transmitted and tried out first within a greoup that emerged in the 70s – it was only in the 80s that these changes in mores became commonplace]