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HNC Sociology Unit ‘B’ – Crime and Deviance
Subcultures
Subculture (and Cultural Studies) theory first emerged out
of the Birmingham School in the 1950s.
It concerned itself with the construction of identities which
appeared to pose alternatives to prevailing, ‘mainstream’
norms.
These identities were often rooted in expressions of class,
gender, ethnicity or nationalism which appeared to deviate
from dominant themes.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XrxhbQ98u5Q&feature
=related
HNC Sociology Unit ‘B’ – Crime and Deviance
The School was predominately concerned with youth
subcultures.
These cultures appeared to share similar beliefs and values
which did not conform to prevailing orthodoxies (‘parental
culture’), though they may occasionally have patterns of
norms and values in common, i.e. the Teddy Boys assertion
of working class masculinity, or the Skinheads work ethic.
They were cultural, sartorial, musical and attitudinal in
form.
HNC Sociology Unit ‘B’ – Crime and Deviance
Subcultural Theory focused its attentions on speech, political
values, symbols, modes of dress and cultural mores.
For Hebdige (‘79), subcultures represent an ‘oblique’ challenge to
‘hegemony’ (monopoly) through ‘style’. Style is ‘pregnant with
significance.’ The task therefore for Sociologists is to ‘discern the
hidden messages inscribed in code on the glossy surfaces of style.’
And here we arrive at our first contentious issue: namely, just
how genuinely subversive of ‘common sense‘ norms of
behaviour and the ‘collective conscience’ of established values
can subcultures claim to be?
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2. 11/01/2012
HNC Sociology Unit ‘B’ – Crime and Deviance
Hebdige concedes that this ‘rebellion’ is limited in ambition.
‘The typical members of a working class subculture in part contest and
in part agree with the dominant definitions of who and what they are.’
In other words, between subcultures and the mainstream culture, there
exists ‘common ground.’
Matza and Sykes (‘64) actually argue that so-called ‘delinquent’ youth
offer no genuinely alternative values to society at large. Their ‘Drift
Theory’ suggests that even the most apparently deviant of youth
subcultures do not actually challenge dominant norms and values at
all. Their ‘rebellion’ is transitory and often explained away by those
involved in terms Matza and Sykes named ‘Neutralisation Techniques.’
HNC Sociology Unit ‘B’ – Crime and Deviance
Subculture and Gender:
As we have seen from previous lessons on Crime, deviance
and gender, much analysis is ‘malestream,’ concerned
primarily with the study of male experiences.
In ‘Girls and Subculture’(‘76) Mcrobbie and Garber suggest
that female subcultures are not as visible due to different
cultural attitudes to female deviance and the behaviour
expected of girls.
HNC Sociology Unit ‘B’ – Crime and Deviance
R. Williams (‘77) considers three types of cultural expression:
Dominant – ‘mainstream’ values and cultural forms.
Residual – past cultural forms/values which remain active – i. e. mods,
punks, skinheads.
Emergent – new forms of counter cultural values.
But are today’s subcultures less rigidly defined than in the past?
‘Pop tribes still exist in 2010, but their forms are looser and broader than
in the heyday of subcultures. Perhaps that’s because young people
consume music in very different ways. When you can listen to anything,
anytime, you’re less likely to hold tight to tribal loyalties.’
(Rogers 2010)
What do you think? How do new innovations such as Face book, My
Space or Tweeter contribute to young people’s sense of identity?
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3. 11/01/2012
HNC Sociology Unit ‘B’ – Crime and Deviance
Problems with Cultural Studies:
To what extent do subcultures really offer a distinct
alternative to prevailing norms?
For instance, was Punk truly oppositional or subversive?
Consider Iggy Pop or John Lydon advertising on TV. Think
of David Cameron name-checking the Jam’s ‘Eton Rifles’, or
the pierced and tattooed corporate managers of today.
Is the ‘appropriation’ of subversive attitudes, music or styles
inevitable?
HNC Sociology Unit ‘B’ – Crime and Deviance
In ‘One Market Under God’ (2000), Thomas Frank argues that US Cultural Theorists
of the 1980s/90s – in condemning all critiques of mass culture as ‘elitist’ snobbery –
failed spectacularly on two broad counts:
1. In criticising the likes of the Frankfurt School (see slides below), they assume that
people consume popular culture (TV, tabloids, the Internet, the Top 40, movies and
radio) actively and creatively and not passively. Are they right?
2. By locating in all things ‘popular’ the democratic distillation of the people’s
infallible tastes (i.e. if the Sun is the bestselling paper, or Pop Idol the most viewed
programme , it is sheer elitist snobbery to criticise them, for to do so you are
inherently belittling the ‘people’), US Cultural Theorists unwittingly mimicked the
strategies of the ruling class during that period. Management theory had begun to
assert that the free market was a simple reflection of the needs and aspirations of
the common people. Therefore anyone who questioned the machinery of capitalism
– privatisation, weak trade unions, inequalities and light regulation of the activities
of big corporations – were themselves ‘elitists!’
HNC Sociology Unit ‘B’ – Crime and Deviance
Richard Hoggart, an original UK Birmingham School theorist went so
far as to argue that what mattered most was real world political
confrontation, not the ability of some subcultures to ‘…snicker behind
their bosses back.’
In fact, many of the new breed of corporate billionaires were
themselves extolling the ‘freedoms’ symbolised by dreadlocks, nose
piercings and skateboarding!
‘ Studies of this kind habitually ignore or underplay the fact that these
groups are almost entirely enclosed from and are refusing to attempt to
cope with the public life of their societies. That rejection cannot
reasonably be given some idealistic ideological foundation. It is a
rejection, certainly, and in that rejection may be making some implicit
criticisms of the ‘hegemony,’ and those criticisms need to be understood.
But these groups are doing nothing about it except to retreat.’
Hoggart (‘95)
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4. 11/01/2012
HNC Sociology Unit ‘B’ – Crime and Deviance
The Frankfurt School.
Though many of the Subcultural Theorists of the UK would have considered
themselves Marxists, in the US, particularly during the 80s/90s as previously
mentioned, a critique developed amongst Cultural Theorists that derided such
perspectives as having lost faith in the people’s essential intelligence and pro-active
patterns of consumption.
In contrast, Marxists like Herbert Marcuse believed that the influence of the mass
media was an impediment to radical social change. The ‘idiot box’ had anesthetised
us into passivity, nullified our senses and made radical class consciousness very
difficult to achieve. We had been seduced and socialised into an imaginary world of
equality, celebrity and entertainment. Such vulgar distractions gave the masses the
illusion of consumer success and opportunities for all.
‘The people recognise themselves in their commodities; they find their soul in their
automobile, hi fi set, split level home, kitchen equipment.’
(Marcuse ‘64)
HNC Sociology Unit ‘B’ – Crime and Deviance
Marcuse, in accordance with the Frankfurt School in general, was
attempting to develop a Marxism which takes note of the
contemporary mass media and consumer culture. Marx had identified
‘commodity fetishism’ even during the late 19th Century, but he could
not have foreseen the escalation of these trends in the 20th and 21st
Centuries!
In their hostility to the Marxists, some Cultural Theorists abandoned
politics altogether. In doing so they found themselves outflanked by
the very power structures they had sought to expose. Goatees and nose
rings do not offer a significant threat to establishment interests! The
cultural terrain is of undoubted interest and significance, but the real
sources of power and inequalities lie elsewhere.
HNC Sociology Unit ‘B’ – Crime and Deviance
‘At best, daily life, like art, is revolutionary. At worst it is a prison house.’
Paul Willis (‘77)
What do you think Willis is getting at here?
Do subcultures offer a genuine challenge to the ‘teeth gritting harmony’ so loathed by
Marxists like Althusser (‘71)?
In what ways do Mods, Punks, Skinheads, Emos or Goths challenge the status quo? And
just as importantly, by what strategies do the powerful seek to accommodate,
‘appropriate’ and so diffuse these critiques?
Homework:
In groups, adopt a specific subculture and research its main features. Specifically, you
will want to itemise their origins, their tastes in music and clothes, their particular
attitudes, inebriants of choice and importantly the initial public reaction they invoked,
and the responses of what Sociologists call the ‘Agencies of Social Control’ such as the
mainstream press. Can you still discern their influence and presence in contemporary
youth tribes and styles?
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5. 11/01/2012
HNC Sociology Unit ‘B’ – Crime and Deviance
Suggested Reading:
R. Barnes – Mods! (1979)
H. Becker – The Outsiders (1963)
S. Cohen – Folk Devils and Moral Panics (1972)
T. Frank – One Market Under God (2000)
S. Hall – Resistance Through Rituals: Youth Subcultures in Post War
Britain (1976)
D. Hebdige – Subculture: the Meaning of Style (1979)
J. Savage – England’s Dreaming (1991) and Teenage: the Invention of
Youth 1911 – 1945 (2009)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jSVMD4fMiD4
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