American youth culture

 

РЕФЕРАТ

 

 

Курсовая работа 39 страниц, 33 источника.

 

Key words: youth culture, subculture, history, origin, fashion, ideology, influence, problems

 

Object: American youth culture

 

Subject: the history of different youth cultures and subcultures in the USA; their influence and problems

 

Methods of research: study of literature on the history of American youth culture and subcultures; analysis of their influence and problems

 

Purpose: to study the history and the main types of youth cultures and subcultures in the USA to understand their influence and problems

 

Objectives: to study the origin and definition of the terms “culture” and “subculture”; to describe the history of American youth culture and subcultures; to study the origin, fashion, ideology of the most popular subcultures in the USA; to find out the influence of subcultures and their problems

 

Results: the origin and definition of the terms “culture” and “subculture” have been given; the history of American youth culture and the origin, fashion and ideology of the most popular subcultures have been described; the influence and problems of subcultures have been found out

 

Recommendations: the results of the research can be used in study of American youth culture

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

CONTENTS

 

 

Introduction……………………………………………………………...     4

1 The history of the youth culture in the USA…………………………    6

    1. The origin of the term “culture”……………………………….    6
    2. Youth Culture of 18th and 19th centuries……………………..     8
    3. Youth Culture of 20th century……………………………........    10

2 The most popular subcultures in the USA…………………………...     14

2.1 The definition of the term “subculture”…………………….. ..   14

2.2 The history of subcultures in the 20th century………………..   16

2.3 The origin, fashion and ideology of subcultures……………..   23

2.3.1 Punks…………………………………………………….   23

2.3.2 Emos……………………………………………………..     25

2.3.3 Hip-hoppers……………………………………………... 26

2.3.3.1 Rapping and dj………………………………….. 27

2.3.3.2 Breaking………………………………………….     28

2.3.3.3 Graffiti art………………………………………..   29

2.3.4 Goths…………………………………………………….. 30

2.3.5 Skinheads………………………………………………...   31

2.4 The influence of subcultures and their problems…………….      33

Conclusion………………………………………………………………   36

Bibliography……………………………………………………………. 38

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

INTRODUCTION

 

 

The development of the culture of the United States of America has been marked by a tension between two strong sources of inspiration: European ideals, especially British; and domestic originality.

American culture encompasses traditions, ideals, customs, beliefs, values, arts, and innovations developed both domestically and imported via colonization and immigration from the British Isles. Prevalent ideas and ideals which evolved domestically such as important national holidays, uniquely American sports, proud military tradition, and innovations in the arts and entertainment give a strong sense of national pride among the population as a whole.

It includes both conservative and liberal elements, military and scientific competitiveness, political structures, risk taking and free expression, materialist and moral elements.

It also includes elements which evolved from Native Americans, and other ethnic subcultures; most prominently the culture of African American slave descendants and different cultures from Latin America. Many cultural elements, especially popular culture have been exported across the globe through modern mass media where American culture is sometimes resented.

Youth cultures have not been part of all societies throughout history; they appear most frequently where significant realms of social autonomy for young people become regularized and expected features of the socialization process. Most scholars would agree that the conditions necessary for the mass youth cultures recognizable today appeared after the formation of modern nation-states and the routinization of the human life course in the industrializing nations of the nineteenth century. The mass institutions of the nation-state, which separate young people from adults and gather them in large numbers for education, religious instruction, training, work, or punishment have been consistent locations in which youth cultures have developed. There is some evidence suggesting that youth cultures may have existed in certain circumstances during the medieval period. Also, it is important to recognize that there are significant gaps in our historical understanding, particularly for populations outside of Europe and the United States. Youth cultures have been clearly evident in the twentieth century, particularly since the end of World War II. The history of this period is notably marked by significant social and cultural influences of youth cultures on society at large, a trend that continues in the contemporary period.

Research into youth cultures has been most prolific in the disciplines of sociology, psychology, and anthropology; it is readily apparent in criminology of juveniles, demographic analyses, studies of the family and adolescent social development, and the study of ritual. The analytic frameworks and debates about youth cultures that have emerged from the three major disciplines have been taken up in other areas of study, including history.

This job is topical nowadays as we knew about American youth culture too little. More detailed study of this theme helps us to understand, firstly, the influence of subcultures on the youth: their fashion, hairstyle and lifestyle, and, secondly, difference between such terms as culture and subculture. Also this project is topical because we want to solve such problems as use of alcohol, drugs and smoking among the youth. To solve these problems we need to find firstly the root of all evil, and to find the root of all evil we should study the theme of youth culture more detailed. There is one more problem nowadays among the youth – violence. Different subcultures create hostility between different youth groups. Such question as “why so?”  appear. The study of my job’s theme helps to find all answers which we need. Also my job is useful because in our country there are a lot of different subcultures which have come from the USA and for better understanding their essence we need study their origin and their history.

The aim of this job is to study the history and the most popular cultures and subcultures to understand their influence and problems. The following objectives have been posed for prevailing:

    1. to study the origin and definition of the terms “culture” and “subculture”;
    2. to describe the history of American youth culture and subcultures;
    3. to study the origin, fashion and ideology of the most popular subcultures in the USA;
    4. to find out the influence of subcultures and their problems.

During writing of job have been used such methods of research as study and analysis of different literatures. The results of this job can be used in different schools, colleges, universities and so on for study of American youth culture.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1 THE HISTORY OF THE YOUTH CULTURE IN THE USA

 

 

1.1 The origin and definition of the term “culture”

 

 

Culture (from the Latin cultura stemming from colere, meaning "to cultivate") is a term that has different meanings. For example, in 1952, Alfred Kroeber and Clyde Kluckhohn compiled a list of 164 definitions of "culture" in Culture: A Critical Review of Concepts and Definitions [19,p.3]. However, the word "culture" is most commonly used in three basic senses:

  • Excellence of taste in the fine arts and humanities, also known as high culture;
  • An integrated pattern of human knowledge, belief, and behavior that depends upon the capacity for symbolic thought and social learning;
  • The set of shared attitudes, values, goals, and practices that characterizes an institution, organization or group.

When the concept first emerged in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Europe, it connoted a process of cultivation or improvement, as in agriculture or horticulture. In the nineteenth century, it came to refer first to the betterment or refinement of the individual, especially through education, and then to the fulfillment of national aspirations or ideals. In the mid-nineteenth century, some scientists used the term "culture" to refer to a universal human capacity [27,p.6].

In the twentieth century, "culture" emerged as a concept central to anthropology, encompassing all human phenomena that are not purely results of human genetics. Specifically, the term "culture" in American anthropology had two meanings:

    1. the evolved human capacity to classify and represent experiences with symbols, and to act imaginatively and creatively;
    2. the distinct ways that people living in different parts of the world classified and represented their experiences, and acted creatively.

Following World War II, the term became important, albeit with different meanings, in other disciplines such as cultural studies, organizational psychology and management studies [19,p.173].

According to the Britannica Concise Encyclopedia the culture is integrated pattern of human knowledge, belief, and behaviour that is both a result of  integral to the human capacity for learning and transmitting knowledge to succeeding generations. Culture thus consists of language, ideas, beliefs, customs, taboos, codes, institutions, tools, techniques, works of art, rituals, ceremonies, and symbols. It has played a crucial role in human evolution, allowing human beings to adapt the environment to their own purposes rather than depend solely on natural selection to achieve adaptive success. Every human society has its own particular culture, or sociocultural system. Variation among cultures is attributable to such factors as differing physical habitats and resources; the range of possibilities inherent in areas such as language, ritual, and social organization; and historical phenomena such as the development of links with other cultures. An individual's attitudes, values, ideals, and beliefs are greatly influenced by the culture (or cultures) in which he or she lives. Culture change takes place as a result of ecological, socioeconomic, political, religious, or other fundamental factors affecting a society [5,p.347].

We are interested the term in such sense as complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man person as a member of society. According to this point of view culture has several important characteristics: 

    1. Culture is comprehensive.  This means that all parts must fit together in some logical fashion.  For example, bowing and a strong desire to avoid the loss of face are unified in their manifestation of the importance of respect. 
    2. Culture is learned rather than being something we are born with. 
    3. Culture is manifested within boundaries of acceptable behavior.  For example, in American society, one cannot show up to class naked, but wearing anything from a suit and tie to shorts and a T-shirt would usually be acceptable.  Failure to behave within the prescribed norms may lead to sanctions, ranging from being hauled off by the police for indecent exposure to being laughed at by others for wearing a suit at the beach. 
    4. Conscious awareness of cultural standards is limited.  One American spy was intercepted by the Germans during World War II simply because of the way he held his knife and fork while eating. 
    5. Cultures fall somewhere on a continuum between static and dynamic depending on how quickly they accept change.  For example, American culture has changed a great deal since the 1950s, while the culture of Saudi Arabia has changed much less [19,p.168].

Culture is known to have many meanings. One of them refers to the spiritual and material achievements of humanity. On the whole it is possible to distinguish three kinds of culture. They are elite culture, folk culture and popular culture. These cultures are closely connected with one another and one culture is part of the others. Elite culture is a highly developed sphere, it is comprised of painting, sculpture, architecture, literature, music. Folk culture is the culture of everyday life and routine relations of social life. Folk culture consists of traditional knowledge and practice. It is like a habit of people, thus this culture does not change very quickly. Popular culture is mass culture. It is a professionally organized sphere that works for a large mass of people. Popular culture gives people, especially young, standards to be what they like.

Today the life of many young people is influenced by popular culture. The youth follow certain stereotypes that are imposed on them through TV, movies, and music. In their lifestyles they try to imitate the images of their idols. Other young people are sports and music fans. They frequent stadiums and huge concert halls. They follow their idols in their tours throughout the country and support them. Unfortunately they are intolerant to those who do not share their view. It is a specific aspect of the youth subculture that cannot be ignored.

Culture is among the most complicated words in the English language. It refers to the processes by which the symbolic systems (e.g., common sense, "usual way of doing things"; traditions and rituals, frameworks for understanding experience, etc.) characteristically shared by a group of people are maintained and transformed across time. Despite the appearance of stability, culture is a dynamic, historical process. Youth culture refers to those processes and symbolic systems that young people share that are, to some degree, distinctive from those of their parents and the other adults in their community.

 

 

1.2 Youth culture of the 18th and 19th centuries

 

 

As the institutions and practices of civil life within modern capitalist nation-states began to take their characteristic shape in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, several cultural, social, and economic trends emerged that formed the material basis for modern notions of mass youth culture. Protestantism came to understand the period in the life course that would later be categorized as adolescence as a particularly vulnerable time in moral development and thus open to collective supervision by trusted adult authorities. Sunday school served this purpose. As industrialization proceeded and expanded, rural populations migrated and concentrated in urban areas. No longer connected to longstanding, stable communities in which the responsibilities for the socialization and oversight of the young were collectively shared, the youth peer group often became a substitute, particularly for orphans, youths of marrying age, and runaways. Cities offered employment for wages for young people and a more or less open marketplace in necessities and leisure to people of any age. What many criminologists now recognize as youth gangs had appeared as early as the Middle Ages. As these examples indicate, a distinction between a cultural realm created for youth and monitored by adults on the one hand (an "approved" youth culture), and a cultural realm sustained primarily by young people themselves on the other (a "rogue" youth culture) is useful, although it must be recognized that the boundary separating the two is fluid and permeable [1,p.3].

The emerging social stratum of middle-class professionals (e.g., doctors, lawyers, engineers, and teachers) whose legitimacy was dependent upon formal education grew and expanded as the scientific and industrial revolutions placed secular experts alongside those from religious institutions. Reflecting the professional classes' power base in education, their children were sent to school rather than to apprenticeships in the trades. In the schools, large numbers of young people were segmented by age and placed under the supervision of adults that exercised very different relationships with these youths than those of their parents and community elders. The professional middle classes increasingly became the cultural and social standard bearers in many of the leading democratic capitalist countries during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. As this group moved to assume responsibility for the unintended and unattended consequences of urbanization and industrialization, it took up an advocacy role for those young people who had been socially and economically displaced by the transition from agriculture to industrialization. In taking this advocacy role (through charitable and religious organizations and later through governmental agencies), their views of children and adolescence became the dominant and institutionalized view.

These developments began to coalesce to form a new understanding of the "place" of young people in leading industrial societies after the mid-nineteenth century. A period of public education was made mandatory for young people in many parts of the United States; increasingly, schooling became an expected and routine part of the life course. At roughly the same time, the field of medicine and the emerging discipline of psychology began to differentiate the stages of the human life course more precisely, determining a "normal" standard for biological and social development based on chronological age. The influx of migrants and immigrants to industrializing cities relieved some of the demand for the labor of young people, pushing young people to assume new roles outside the workplace. As concerns for the integration of immigrant children became a public issue, the schools took up this task as well. In 1904 American psychologist G. STANLEY HALL attempted to synthesize and codify the contradictory biological, psychological, and social understandings of youth that had emerged during the nineteenth century in a two-volume work entitled Adolescence: Its Psychology and Its Relations to Anthropology, Sociology, Sex, Crime, Religion and Education. This work laid a "scientific" basis for the collective socialization of the young in large institutions, justifying the social segregation of young people by age. With progressive shift in the identity of young people from workers to students in the late nineteenth century, the process for the creation of mass youth cultures was in place [20,pp.132-133].

The uneven rate and extent of this shift both within and across national boundaries is important to bear in mind. Slaves, indigenous peoples, and colonial subjects did not proceed along this timeline. For instance, young African-American slaves were chattel property in the United States until emancipation in 1865, a clear divergence from the experiences of even the most destitute of white youths. Despite these limits, however, elements of a youth culture in the form of games, rituals, and stories did develop among young slaves, particularly during the period of their lives (sometimes as late as fifteen years old) before they entered the regulated agricultural work of adulthood. Indigenous Inuit youth in north-central Canada did not pass through a period of adolescence before contact with Europeans, instead experiencing a swift transition between childhood and adulthood. Parents arranged marriages for their children, sometimes at birth, leaving scant space for a youth culture to emerge. Even the homogeneity of the shifts within the United States in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries can be overemphasized. As many contemporary scholars note, there have been many "pathways" from childhood to adulthood.

The institutional structures and practices of mass socialization in place at the end of the nineteenth century created a new place (both figuratively and literally) for young people to emphasize their common bonds over other mediating differences. Identities connected to parent communities–class, ethnicity, gender, religion, and later, sexuality and race– were often partially (but rarely completely) subsumed under the common experiences of youth and the rituals of the new mass socialization. The autonomous realms in which youth cultures developed in these institutions were not always intentionally granted to them by adults. Adults have only limited abilities to constrain the activities of their youthful subordinates, and young people across history have demonstrated great resourcefulness in collectively exploiting those limitations to gain some self-directed social space. Drawing on that shared experience, the peer group became an (unintended) mass social institution in its own right, at times creating alternatives that were visibly opposed to adult cultural and social norms. Schools took young people away from the daily activities of most adults, opening the possibility for a youth social system, even if that social system was limited and constrained [17,pp.267-268].

 

 

1.3 Youth culture of 20th century

 

 

New distinctions are needed to understand the development of youth cultures in the twentieth century. First, while the conditions for mass youth cultures to emerge were in place, young people did not become a homogenous social group; there has never been a singular youth culture in complex societies, but rather a wide variety of youth (sub) cultures. Second, a distinction needs to be made between the wide variety of commercial products (including forms of entertainment) marketed to youth and the unique ways in which young people took up the opportunities of these activities and products to produce a separate sphere of cultural processes and practices. It has become commonplace to refer to youth-marketed products as "youth culture," but this tells us little about the cultural lives of young people themselves. While the development of national markets did offer new connections between youth people across great distances, the youth market did not lead to a homogenization of youth cultures. Third, the definition of youth itself changes, as more young people extend their period of semi-dependence on family to attend colleges and universities [4,p.5].

Scholars have argued that the first authentically independent mass youth culture in the twentieth century emerged among these college students, who fashioned new rituals and customs that have since marked memories of that period in American history. While these new rituals and customs often were (and still are) seen as a more radical departure from the parent culture than they really were, the college youth of this period did set the example for other developments. Youth clubs and youth cultures appeared in high school, as education beyond the elementary level became more common, and many of the new customs were borrowed from college youth and adapted to the high schools. With the loss of employment during the Great Depression of the 1930s, even more young people entered high school. Since its appearance in the late nineteenth century, commercial popular culture had accepted youths' money, but many of the new forms of urban popular culture, particularly film, explicitly catered to young people. The consumption of movies , novels, and music (and later, comic books and television) became an expected part of youth. While the majority of research has focused on the effects of commercial popular culture on youth, popular culture's role as a shared and identity-generated commodity among youth has been investigated to a much lesser degree. Youth cultures do not consume popular culture commodities in a vacuum; their consumption forms the basis of affiliations (e.g., fans and collectors), a wide variety of social rituals (e.g., friendship and dating), and the everyday stuff of common conversations [3,p.97].

Although the commercialization of youth as a consumer market did not end with the 1920s, college youth's role as the avant-garde of consumerism diminished significantly during the Depression. That role was passed on to another group of consumers, high school students, during the early 1940s, when the word teenager came into common usage among marketers. This trend coincided with America's entrance into World War II. During the war, youth cultures in high schools became a national social problem, initiated through a series of moral panics about their sexual activities, delinquency, and the influence of mass popular culture, particularly comic books, films, and rock-and-roll music. By the late 1950s and early 1960s, the existence of a mass youth culture itself was widely recognized, although mostly ridiculed. Youth cultures adopting unusual and spectacular clothing and hair styles appeared in the United States (the Beats). Fears of urban youth gangs and their potential influence on the less-threatening teenager initiated some of the first studies of youth culture. Besides the expansion of popular culture and the commonality of high school, the automobile had a dramatic effect on youth culture, particularly in the United States. The car not only provided a means for suburban and rural youth to travel to central cities, but it also created a kind of portable "private space" that enhanced other customs, including courtship, sex, drinking, and listening to the radio [3,pp.187-188].

The number of youth cultures proliferated in the 1960s. College-age youth once again took the public (and world) stage as "hippies" and as organized radical groups, which often spread to the high schools. Spectacular subcultures continued to appear as well, notably mods, rockers, and near the end of the decade, skinheads. These subcultures, along with the participation of young people in mass protests and radical politics, signaled some realization of the cultural, social, and economic influence of young people. That this had been true for almost forty years is not a coincidence, since most young people had participated in those formations that seemed the least threatening to adults. The mass mobilization of youth against military service and restrictions on their speech, among other issues, signaled a mass refusal of the social terms accepted by their parents. This mobilization did not only apply to white middle-class youths, but also was apparent in a wide variety of social groups. For instance, young African Americans were key players in the dramatic civil rights demonstrations of this era; young central-city residents of all races and ethnicities took part in the urban riots that followed later in the decade.

While youthful drug use and sexual experimentation had been cause for hysteria among adults for at least fifty years, these practices became much more widespread during this period. Drug use was associated with rock music and visual culture (films, posters, and art of all sorts), both their consumption by youth and their production by popular musicians and artists. "Hippies" (including high-school students) took hallucinogenics and smoked marijuana in public. Drug use, like drinking rituals, became an expected part of youth, although the majority of young people did not participate. Sexual experimentation appears to have been rising steadily throughout the century, but the public emphasis on "free love" and recreational sex broke new boundaries, particularly after the development of oral contraceptives.

In the aftermath of the 1960s' youth rebellion, youth culture became a normalized feature of life in many developed nations, and the youth cultures in those countries often set the terms for emulation by other nations. Parents and adults continued to try to control their wards, but if they found a son or daughter dressed in strange clothing (often self-fashioned) or with a strange haircut, they no longer panicked. Recognizing that the most rebellious of youth cultures of the 1960s had been commodified by entrepreneurs and later by mundane retail outlets, some youth cultures searched for identities that could either not be quickly coopted or that embraced consumer culture for its own ends. Punk, with its trash-heap, "do-it-yourself" aesthetics and its claim that anyone could be a musician was an open attack on the hippie subculture of the previous generation. Despite its best efforts to resist mass marketing, punk too became a style available in shopping centers around the world. Glam rockers and disco dancers moved in the other direction, openly embracing some aspects of popular culture, particularly fashions borrowed from marginalized social groups. Most young people did not formally "join" a subculture, although they may have bought the records and adopted some of the clothing styles when they became available in stores [3,pp.199-201].

Three trends developed in youth cultures formed after the 1970s. First, as marketers moved more definitively to segment pre-adolescents as a separate market, a mass "kid" culture has begun to emerge. Because of the limits on this group's mobility and autonomy, new analytical tools are needed for investigations. However, it is important to note that this group is segmented from adult and adolescent culture at an early age, often within the context of institutions such as day care and school, and the preconditions necessary for many aspects of youth culture to emerge are in place. At the very least, the shared experience of consumer goods (toys, foods, movies, radio stations, clothing), adult authority in socializing institutions, and common activities (skateboarding, scooters) strengthen the cultural connections between young people at an earlier age while further distancing them from the experiences of their parents and older siblings. Youth culture has gotten younger. At the same time, youth culture has taken on new meanings and gotten older: In particular, there is strong evidence that some people are continuing their youth culture affiliations into adulthood, so that youth cultures become "lifestyles." This raises some interesting questions. What are we to make of a forty-year-old punk? A sixty-year-old hippie? Finally, new communication and media technologies, particularly the Internet, create spaces for new youth cultures to emerge. Teenage computer hackers and phone "phreaks" had already appeared during the 1980s, but the Internet allows for a much more expanded notion of cyber-cultures detached from everyday off-line identities. The Internet, like "lovers' lane," is a more or less unpatrolled wilderness that has allowed new cultural affiliations (e.g., net Goths) to be formed [3,p.208].

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

2 THE MOST POPULAR SUBCULTURES IN THE USA

 

 

2.1  The  definition  of  the  term “subculture” 

 

 

The term “subculture” has a lot of different meanings according to the sphere in which they use. The most widespread meanings are given in the following dictionaries:

    1. dental dictionary:

     An ethnic, regional, economic, or social group with characteristic patterns of behavior and ideals that distinguish it from the rest of the culture or society [6,p.578].

    1. archaeology dictionary:

     A self-defining group within a society which holds different values and norms to those of the majority. This may be represented by specialized types of material culture or the differences in the way material culture is used [18,p.481].

    1. sports science and medicine:

     An identifiable subgroup of society with a distinctive set of behaviour, beliefs, values, and norms. Though a subculture is subordinate to the dominant culture of a society, it sometimes allows individuals greater group identification. Those who take part in particular sports, for example, racing cyclists, professional footballers, are sometimes referred to as a subculture [16,p.425].                   

    1. veterinary dictionary:

     A culture of microorganisms derived from another culture [22,p.763].

    1. science dictionary:

     A group within a society that has its own shared set of customs, attitudes, and values, often accompanied by jargon or slang. A subculture can be organized around a common activity, occupation, age, status, ethnic background, race, religion, or any other unifying social condition, but the term is often used to describe deviant groups, such as thieves and drug users [11,p.16].

In sociology, anthropology and cultural studies, a subculture is a group of people with a culture which differentiates them from the larger culture to which they belong, for example, if a particular subculture is characterized by a systematic opposition to the dominant culture, it may be described as a counterculture.

As early as 1950, David Riesman distinguished between a majority, "which passively accepted commercially provided styles and meanings, and a 'subculture' which actively sought a minority style ... and interpreted it in accordance with subversive values". In the  book Subculture the Meaning of Style, Dick Hebdige argued that a subculture is a subversion to normalcy. He wrote that subcultures can be perceived as negative due to their nature of criticism to the dominant societal standard. Hebdige argued that subcultures bring together like-minded individuals who feel neglected by societal standards and allow them to develop a sense of identity [14,p.73].

In 1995, Sarah Thornton described "subcultural capital" as the cultural knowledge and commodities acquired by members of a subculture, raising their status and helping differentiate themselves from members of other groups [32,p.27]. Ken Gelder argued in 2007 that subcultures are social, with their own shared conventions, values and rituals, but they can also seem "immersed" or self-absorbed; a feature that distinguishes them from countercultures [10,p.53]. Gelder identified six key ways in which subcultures can be understood:

  1. through their often negative relations to work (as 'idle', 'parasitic', at play or at leisure, etc.);
  2. through their negative or ambivalent relation to class (since subcultures are not 'class-conscious' and don't conform to traditional class definitions);
  3. through their association with territory (the 'street', the 'hood, the club, etc.), rather than property;
  4. through their movement out of the home and into non-domestic forms of belonging (i.e. social groups other than the family);
  5. through their stylistic ties to excess and exaggeration (with some exceptions);
  6. through their refusal of the banalities of ordinary life and massification [10,p.188].

Subcultures can be distinctive because of the age, ethnicity, class, location, and/or gender of the members. The qualities that determine a subculture as distinct may be linguistic, aesthetic, religious, political, sexual, geographical, or a combination of factors. According to Dick Hebdige, members of a subculture often signal their membership through a distinctive and symbolic use of style, which includes fashions, mannerisms, and argot [14,p.85]. They also live out particular relations to places; Ken Gelder talks about "subcultural geographies" along these lines.

The study of subcultures often consists of the study of symbolism attached to clothing, music and other visible affectations by members of subcultures, and also the ways in which these same symbols are interpreted by members of the dominant culture. Subcultures have been chronicled by others for a long time, documented, analysed, classified, rationalised, monitored, scrutinised. In some cases, subcultures have been legislated against, their activities regulated or curtailed [10,p.24].

A youth subculture is a youth-based subculture with distinct styles, behaviors, and interests. According to subculture theorists such as Dick Hebdige, members of a places can also be an important factor. Youth subcultures offer participants an identity outside of that ascribed by social institutions such as family, work, home and school.

Social class, gender and ethnicity can be important in relation to youth subcultures. Youth subcultures can be defined as meaning systems, modes of expression or lifestyles developed by groups in subordinate structural positions in response to dominant systems — and which reflect their attempt to solve structural contradictions rising from the wider societal context. The study of subcultures often consists of the study of the symbolism attached to clothing, music, other visible affections by members of the subculture and also the ways in which these same symbols are interpreted by members of the dominant culture [4,p.11].

The term “scene” can refer to an exclusive subculture or faction. Scenes are distinguished from the broad culture through either fashion; identification with specific (sometimes obscure or experimental) musical genres or political perspectives; and a strong in-group or tribal mentality. The term can also be used to depict specific subsets of a subculture, habitually geographical, such as the Detroit drum and bass scene or the London Goth scene. A quantity of scenes tend to be volatile, imprudent to trends and changes, with some participants acting elitist towards those considered to be less fashionable, or oppositional to the general culture although others do endow with mutual support in marginalized groups [30,p.273].

 

 

2.2 The history of subcultures in the USA

 

 

The 20th century, particularly the latter half, was a time of increasing social diversity and individualism. The world wars that dominated the first half of the century put enormous psychological pressure upon vast numbers of people for instance, wartime conscription meant that not only were many involuntarily forced to directly confront the threat of death, but even those not directly serving in combat were put into uniform, thus denying them freedom in their choice of clothing and hairstyle. As a result, in the 20th century there was a rise of people frantic to both live life to the full and also express their individuality. When these people came together, they often established a subculture.

There seems to be a dynamic relationship between subcultures and warfare. A society sends its young, healthy and strong to kill the young, healthy and strong of another society and subcultures seem to be provoked through the social trauma which results. There also is a clear relationship between subculture and refugee or immigrant status. Since there is clearly a link between warfare and the creation of refugees and forced exiles, a sociological pattern is discernible.

Wealth and class can be considered a subculture although the term is more usually associated with fashion or with resistance against social repressions. Other subcultures are connected with sexual orientation, religion and ethnicity. Travelling people such as the Roma tend to be universally a subculture.

Hairstyles at the beginning of the century were not strict unless you were in a religious order or other controlled circumstances (the military or prison etc.). Both men and women regarded long hair as normal. Men and women had, after all, always had long hair, since prehistory.

Because of the (1914-1918) world war, though, everything changed. The wartime trenches had infestations of lice and fleas. Soldiers had their heads shaved. Consequently, men with short hair appeared to have been at the front in the war, while men with long hair might be thought of as pacifists and cowards, suspected of desertion.

In the 1920s, American Jazz music and motor cars were at the centre of a European subculture of freedom and wild living which began to break the rules of social etiquette and the class system. Meanwhile, in America, the same flaming youth subculture was "running wild" but with the added complication of alcohol prohibition. Canada had prohibition in some local areas but where alcohol was permitted thirsty Americans coming over the border found an oasis. Some smuggling was done and this escalated as the crime gangs became organised. In the southern states of the USA Mexico or Cuba were other possible destinations for drinkers. Thus a drinking subculture grew in size and a crime subculture grew along with it. Other drugs existed which could be used as alternatives to alcohol. When prohibition ended the subculture of drink, drugs and jazz didn't go away. Neither did the gangsters.

The nudist movement gained prominence in Germany in the 1920s, but was suppressed during the Nazi Gleichschaltung after Adolf Hitler came to power. Social nudism in the form of private clubs and campgrounds first appeared in the United States in the 1930s. In Canada, it first appeared in British Columbia about 1939 and in Ontario nine years later.

In North America, the depression caused widespread unemployment and poverty, causing many young people to feel like dead end kids. The phenomenon of the dead end kid was taken into fiction and put on the stage and screen where it proved an enormously popular image with which people could identify. Films featuring The Dead End Kids, The Bowery Boys, Little Tough Guys etc were popular from the 1930s to the 1950s.

The Dust bowl disaster forced large numbers of rural Americans from Oklahoma and elsewhere to move their entire families to look for some alternative way to continue living. This got them labelled as "Okies" and treated very poorly by the authorities in other states they moved to. The refugee situation was recorded in folk songs (many of them by Woody Guthrie) and in a novel, The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck and a subsequent movie of the book. The movie starred Henry Fonda.

Avant-garde artists like Max Ernst, Marcel Duchamp and Marc Chagall had to flee Europe following the outbreak of World War II. They arrived in the United States and began to make contact with each other. Modern art's new home was in New York City. A subculture of American-based surrealism and avant-garde experimentation became the new centre of the art world.

In the 1940s, American fashion was still gangster orientated. Gangs gravitated largely around immigrant and racial cultures. In California, hispanic youth developed a fashion recognised by their distinctive zoot suits. The girls dressed all in black and were called Black widows. The zoot suiters use of language involved a lot of rhyming and trick words like so-called pig latin (also known as backslang). The whole thing, including Afro-American, Cuban, Mexican and South American elements and bits introduced by Slim Gaillard like McVouty oreeney was collectively known as Swing or Jive talk.

The entry of America into World War II was heralded by a new legislation which made zoot suits illegal because of the extra cloth which they used up. This led to the Zoot Suit Riots.

In post-war America, folk songs and cowboy songs (also known, in those days, as hillbilly music) were beginning to be more popular with a wider audience. A subculture of rural jazz and blues fans had blended elements of jazz and blues into traditional cowboy and folk song styles to produce a crossover called western swing. This type of music was able to spread across America in the 40s thanks to the prevalence of radio. Radio was the first almost instantaneous mass media and had the power to create large subcultures by spreading the ideas of a small subculture across a wider area.

A new jazz subculture formed from the rebellion of some musicians against the melodic stylings of swing. Their rebellion produced Bebop and the early players of it included Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker.The subculture which formed around this kind of jazz was the beginning of Hipsters and the Beat generation.

In 1947, the same year that Jack Kerouac made his epic journey across America which he would later describe in On the Road and the same year as the occurrence at Roswell, New Mexico which was claimed as a UFO crash, there was an incident involving a motorcycle gang at Hollister, California. A story about the incident was published that year in Harper's Magazine and would be developed (6 years later in 1953) as the Marlon Brando film The Wild One. A year after the incident the Hells Angels (without the apostrophe), formed in 1948 in Fontana, California. The name Hells Angels had been used as a movie title by Howard Hughes ten years before. The Hells Angels began as a motorcycle club looking for excitement in the dull times after the end of the war. They became far more notorious as time went on. Motorcycle gangs in general began to hit the headlines.

The Existentialists had a profound influence upon subcultural development. Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus transferred their French resistance underground campaign to the context of a cultural revolution and the American beat scene joined the movement. The emphasis on freedom of the individual influenced the beats in America and Britain and this version of existential bohemianism continued through the 1950s and into the 60s under the guise of the beat generation. Beards and longer hair returned in another attempt at returning to the image of peacetime man and the normality which had existed before the two wars. At the same time, as a result of American post-war prosperity, a new identity emerged for youth subculture: the teenager.

Jazz culture was transformed, by way of Rhythm and Blues into Rock and Roll culture. There are various suggested candidates for which record might've been the First rock and roll record. At the same time, jazz culture itself continued but changed into a more respected form, no longer necessarily associated with wild behaviour and criminality.

From the 1950s onward society noticed an increase in street gang culture, random vandalism and graffiti. Sociologists, psychologists, social workers and judges all had theories as to what was causing the increase to urban trouble but the consensus has generally tended to be that the modern urban environment offers all the bright lights and benefits of the modern world but often provides working class youths with little in reality. This theory and others were parodied in the musical West Side Story (based on Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet) in song lyrics such as Jet Song, America, and Gee, Officer Krupke.

American youth culture 📙 Курсовая → 🆔 123

American youth culture 📙 Курсовая → 🆔 123

American youth culture