1. The trouble with class: researching youth, class and culture beyond the ‘Birmingham School’
- Author
-
Christine Griffin
- Subjects
Value (ethics) ,Sociology and Political Science ,media_common.quotation_subject ,transition ,General Social Sciences ,Gender studies ,Youth culture ,Consumption (sociology) ,Social class ,Youth studies ,youth culture ,Reading (process) ,Cultural studies ,gender ,consumption ,Sociology ,Club ,social class ,Life-span and Life-course Studies ,media_common - Abstract
This paper revisits the work on youth cultures and subcultures that emerged from Birmingham's Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (hereafter CCCS) during the 1970s. I engage with a number of recent critiques of the 'youth sub/cultures project', including Thornton's influential work on rave and club cultures and its troubled engagement with class. I argue that the focus of the youth sub/cultures project on mediated cultural practices through which young people constitute themselves and their (gendered, classed and racialised) positions remains of value, especially the emphasis on a 'symptomatic reading' that locates these processes in a 'conjunctural analysis'. I end by exploring the legacy of this project for understanding youth, class and culture in contemporary late modern society.
- Published
- 2010