Youth Subcultures - Assignment Example

The problematic issues of youth have become topical in science in the middle of fifties of the twentieth century. Just as traditional societies develop gradually and rather slow, leaning basically on experience of the senior generations, the phenomenon of youth culture concerns mainly to dynamic societies, and has been noticed in connection with so-called "technogenic civilization". If some time ego the culture was not so obviously divided into "adult" and "youth" cultures. Irrespective of age all people sang the same songs, listened to the same music, danced the same dances, etc. Now "parents" and "children" are very different in their opinions about value orientations, fashion, ways of communication, and even way of life as a whole. Prompt, permanent acceleration and updating become the leading characteristics of life of modern industrial societies. Scientific and technical revolutions make them to be extremely dynamical systems, stimulating radical change of social communications and forms of human communication. In modern culture there is a strongly pronounced layer of innovations, which constantly break and reconstruct cultural tradition, and thus complicating processes of socialization and adaptation of a person to constantly varying conditions and requirements of life. A human beings search of "self", of own individuality and own social status become complicated due to the abundance of choice combined with dynamism and novelty. As a specific phenomenon, youth culture arises also in connection with the fact that the physiological acceleration of young people is accompanied by sharp increase of duration of period of their socialization (at times till 30 years), that is caused by necessity of increase of time spent for education and professional training, which are corresponding requirements of the epoch. Today a young man stops to be the child early as to psycho-physical development, but under the social status such young person still long time does not belong to the world of adults. Youthful age is the time when economic activity and independence are not reached yet in full. Psychologically the youth belongs to the world of adults, and socially - to the world of adolescence. If in the sense of saturation by knowledge a person mature much earlier, in the sense of position in a society, in the sense of having a chance to make own presence felt persons maturity is put off. The youth as a phenomenon and sociological category born by industrial society is characterized by psychological maturity on the one hand, and the absence of powerful participation in social institutes of adults on the other hand. Youth subculture is a partial, rather coherent system inside of the general system of culture. Its occurrence is connected with uncertainty of social roles of youth, uncertainty in own social status. In ontogenetic aspect the youth subculture is represented as a phase of development, which everyone should pass through. Its essence is a search of the social status. By means of youth subculture young persons "practises" in execution of roles, which they will play in the further in the world of adults. The most accessible social platforms for concrete deeds of youth are leisure, where it is quite possible to show own independence: the skill to make decisions and to supervise, to organize and be organized. Leisure is not only an intercourse, but also some kind of social game. The absence of skills of such games in youth leads to that the person at its mature age considers itself free from obligations. Sub-cultures typically are associated with recognizable life-styles. Motorcycle clubs, punk rockers, and retirement communities are all identified with particular life-styles. Paul Willis (1978) describes the life-style of a subculture as a homology: “The values and behaviours of a subculture are systematically related in a way that "makes sense" to its members but that may seem alien or lawless to outsiders”. A good example of such a homology was “the hippie life-style, which combined the values of "dropping out" and "turning on" with drug use, "love-ins," and psychedelic fashions and music in a way that was, at once, coherent and meaningful for its members but confusing and foreign to the dominant culture” (Kaustenbaum, 1993, p. 491). Hebdige (1979) offers a semiotic analysis of the sub-cultural styles and homological behaviours of punks, mods, teddy boys, and skinheads, to name a few. In his case studies of British youth subcultures, excerpted under the title Subculture from Subculture: The Meaning of Style, Hebdige “seeks to articulate the political function of subculture how signifying practices of bricolage (the mods could be said to be functioning as bricoleurs when they appropriated another range of commodities by placing them in a symbolic ensemble which served to erase or subvert their original straight meanings) challenges hegemony through refusal, resistance, and reappropriation” (Guins & Cruz, 2005, p. 350). Let us consider Graffiti subculture. Nowadays Graffiti is ranging from vandalism to cherished artwork. Michael Walsh in his book “Graffito” compares two opposite points of view on this issue. He compares two statements. First is a claim of Eskae Oakland from California, who says that “Graffiti is a kick in the face to the Gallery/Museum system, where the artist is pimped like a whore for the capitalist system, made into another commodity for people to buy. . . Graffiti art is free for all to come and view—no one can own it, it belongs to all of us” (see Walsh, 1996, p. 3). The opposite view in presented in the words of Gary Doyle from Public Works Officer, Nuisance Crime Abatement Unit, Oakland, California, who said, “I think graffiti is vandalism, pure and simple. . . . To them to get busted is like a Purple Heart. Nobody really slams the doors on those thugs. These graffiti vandals are causing people pain and grief. They think theyre artists and have some right like free speech to express their individualism or artistry. If they want to be an artist they should go to work for a record company and do hip-hop CD covers. Graffiti might look good to them and their buddies, but the majority of the people dont want to look at that crap every day” (see Walsh, 1996, p. 3). As a matter of fact we may agree with Phillips that “any type of cultural or artistic production forces change on an environment. Most of the time, people abide by well-established rules for culture-producing activities. They do it through consuming certain products in certain ways or by creating symbols of their identity within the scope of what is legal for the entire society. In general, people who write graffiti produce culture in a different manner. No matter what it says, the manner in which graffiti is produced defines the writers position as an outsider and alienates that person from the rest of society” (Phillips, 1999, p. 21).  In dynamical societies the family partially or completely loses its function of being a kind of a centre of socialization of a person, as rates of changes of social life generate historical discrepancy of the senior generation to the changed problems of new time. With the introduction into youthful age young people turn away from the family, they search for those social connections, which should protect them from for the alien society. Between the lost family and yet not found society a young person aspires to adjoin to similar young people. Informal groups formed in this way provide to the young person the certain social status. The refusal from own individuality and full submission to norms, values and interests of the group often acts as a payment for this. These informal groups produce own subculture differing from the culture of adults. Internal uniformity and the external protest against the dominant ideas of society are peculiar to it. Owing to the presence of own culture, these groups are marginal in relation to society. That is why they always contain elements of social disorganization, and potentially gravitate to a behaviour deviating from conventional norms. Often everything not goes beyond eccentricity of behaviour and infringement of norms of the standard morals, interest to issues of sex, parties, music and drugs. However such environment forms countercultural value orientation, which maximum principle is the principle of pleasure, enjoyment, acting as an incentive motive and the purpose of all behaviour. The whole scale of values of youth counterculture is connected with irrationalism that is dictated by the recognition as actually human only something that is natural, that is dissociation of "human" from that "social". From this comes a moral of permissiveness, being the major and organic element of the counterculture. As existence of the counterculture is concentrated on present moment, on "today", on "now ", that hedonistic tendency is the direct consequence of it. The youth counterculture demands conscious renunciation of the system of traditional values and a kind of replacement with their counter-values: freedom of self-expression, personal participation in new style of life, direction on liquidation of the repressive and regulating moments of human mutual relations, full confidence to spontaneous displays of feelings, imagination, to nonverbal ways of dialogue. Its basic motto is happiness of a person understood as freedom from external conventionalities. The person offered and constructed by counterculture therefore hostilely resists to any moral interdiction and moral authority, that in its mentality mechanisms of values of moral-spiritual orientation in the human world were not quite generated yet. So, on the one hand, youth subcultures cultivate the protest against a society of adults, its values and authorities, but, on the other hand, they are called to promote adaptation of youth to this society. Works cited: GUINS, R., & CRUZ, O. Z. (2005). Popular culture a reader. London, SAGE Publications. HEBDIGE, D. (1979). Subculture, the meaning of style. London, Methuen. KASTENBAUM, R. (1993). Encyclopedia of adult development. Phoenix, Ariz, Oryx Press. PHILLIPS, S. A. (1999). Wallbangin graffiti and gangs in L.A. Chicago, University of Chicago Press. WALSH, M. (1996). Graffito. Berkeley, Calif, North Atlantic Books. WILLIS, P. E. (1978). Profane culture. London, Routledge & K. Paul. Read More