theories on youth subcultures

• functionalism 


  youth subcultures emerge as a way of dealing with status frustration

  young people often find it difficult to establish a clear independent adult status as they often live with their parents
• functionalism 


  subcultures enable young people to carve out an identity for themselves

  separate from that established by family school and work
• functionalism 


  they see the formation of youth subcultures as a fairly normal transition and is often short-lived
• functionalism 


  AO3-today more young people live at home for longer due to house prices but there are less subcultures
• functionalism evaluation 


  the functionalist view doesn't explain the wide variety of youth subcultures and styles or the class gender and ethnic differences between them
• Marxism 


  they try to explain the diversity of subcultures and their differences in terms of social class
• marxism 


  hall(1975)

  saw youth styles such as skinheads and punks resisting the dominant class culture
• Marxism 


  Cohen(1972)

  believed that working class youth subcultures tried to re-establish as sense community and cohesion that had been lost due to the breakup of traditional communicates through re housing
• marxism 


  hebdige

  argues that through bricolage punks were able to turn existing values on their head. By deliberately being shocking and offensive punks were expressing their view that the society they lived in was ugly and offensive
• Marxist 


  anti school subcultures are relevant here. Willis research into working class boys can be considered.
• Evaluation: Marxists 


  Marxists only tend to look at high profile white male working class youth subcultures

  they pay little attention to middle class subcultures
• more evaluation Marxists 


  Cohen refers to recreating working class communities. since the late 1970s manufacturing industries have declined and a new working class has emerged.
• more evaluation Marxists

  it is possible that many young people don't see themselves as resisting anything. they just see it as a bit of fun
• more evaluation Marxists 


  Stanley Cohen from an interactionist perspective suggests that the media help to create youth subcultures through their labelling of styles of dress and behaviour
• A03- pau Willis used 12 boys is it generalisable

  society has changed

  factories have closed