Resistance Through Rituals: Youth Subcultures in Post-War Britain
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Resistance Through Rituals Youth subcultures in post-war Britain Edited by Stuart Hall and Tony Jefferson First published in 1975 as Working Papers in Cultural Studies no. 7/8 Eighth impression 1991, HarperCollinsAcademic Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2003. © The Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies, University of Birmingham 1976 All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. The authors assert the moral right to be identified as the authors of this work. ISBN 0-203-22494-9 Master e-book ISBN ISBN 0-203-22506-6 (Adobe eReader Format) ISBN 0-415-09916-1 (Print Edition) CONTENTS INTRODUCTION 5 THEORY 1 SUBCULTURES, CULTURES AND CLASS: A theoretical overview John Clarke, Stuart Hall, Tony Jefferson & Brian Roberts 9 SOME NOTES ON THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE SOCIETAL CONTROL CULTURE AND THE NEWS MEDIA: The construction of a law and order campaign CCCS Mugging Group 75 ETHNOGRAPHY CULTURAL RESPONSES OF THE TEDS: The defence of space and status Tony Jefferson 81 THE MEANING OF MOD Dick Hebdige 87 THE SKINHEADS AND THE MAGICAL RECOVERY OF COMMUNITY John Clarke 99 DOING NOTHING Paul Corrigan 103 THE CULTURAL MEANING OF DRUG USE Paul E.Willis 106 ETHNOGRAPHY THROUGH THE LOOKING-GLASS: The case of Howard Becker Geoffrey Pearson and John Twohig 119 COMMUNES: A thematic typology Colin Webster 127 3 REGGAE, RASTAS AND RUDIES Dick Hebdige 135 APPENDIX: Unemployment, the context of street boy culture Rachel Powell 154 A STRATEGY FOR LIVING: Black music and white subcultures Iain Chambers 157 STRUCTURES, CULTURES AND BIOGRAPHIES Chas Critcher 167 THEORY II STYLE John Clarke 175 CONSCIOUSNESS OF CLASS AND CONSCIOUSNESS OF GENERATION Graham Murdock and Robin McCron 192 GIRLS AND SUBCULTURES: An exploration Angela McRobbie and Jenny Garber 209 A NOTE ON MARGINALITY Rachel Powell and John Clarke 223 THE POLITICS OF YOUTH CULTURE Paul Corrigan and Simon Frith 231 METHOD NATURALISTIC RESEARCH INTO SUBCULTURES AND DEVIANCE: An account of a sociological tendency Brian Roberts 243 THE LOGIC OF ENQUIRY OF PARTICIPANT OBSERVATION: A critical review Steve Butters 253 REFERENCES 274 INDEX 286 4 INTRODUCTION This issue of WPCS is devoted to post-war youth sub-cultures. We have tried to dismantle the term in which this subject is usually discussed— ‘Youth Culture’—and reconstruct, in its place, a more careful picture of the kinds of youth sub-cultures, their relation to class cultures, and to the way cultural hegemony is maintained, structurally and historically. This journal thus pulls together the work of the Centre’s Sub-cultures Group over the past three years. This work continues, both within the Centre and in a very fruitful dialogue with others working in the same field. The results and formulations offered are, therefore, part of work-in- progress. They do not pretend to be either final, definitive or ‘correct’. We hope they will lead to further work, discussion and clarification and that, on other occasions, some of this can be reflected in the pages of the journal. Despite the uncompleted nature of the work, we feel that it may be helpful to sketch in a brief history of how the focus of the work has shifted over the period, and how our present position was arrived at. Our starting point, as for so many others, was Howard Becker’s Outsiders—the text which, at least for us, best signalled the ‘break’ in mainstream Sociology and the subsequent adoption, by many sociologists working in the fields of deviance, sub-cultural theory or criminology—originally in America, but rapidly, in this country too of what came to be known as an interactionist, and later a ‘transactional’ or ‘labelling’ perspective. Our reading of this text—and subsequent British work in this rapidly emerging tradition—and our engagement with the perspective in general was always, however, double-edged: both a sense of exhilaration about the importance of some of the ideas generated by this ‘sceptical revolution’ (the viewing of social action as process rather than as event, for example, and crucially, the idea that deviance was a social creation, a result of the power of some to label others) and a sense of unease: a feeling that these accounts, whilst containing many important, new insights, were not comprehensive enough: a feeling, particularly, that deviant behaviour had other origins besides public labelling. This sense of unease was given a concrete empirical and theoretical substance by our subsequent reading of Phil Cohen’s seminal paper (published in WPCS 2) on youth subcultures and their genesis within the class structure and class cultures of the East End. This settled our feelings of ambiguity and relegated transactional analysis to a marginal position in favour of a concern with the structural and cultural origins of British youth subcultures. Our subsequent efforts were for some considerable time devoted to filling out the suggestive framework offered by Cohen, initially through papers offering more detailed accounts of particular subcultures—Teds, Mods, Skinheads, etc.—extracts from which are reproduced in the 5 Ethnographic section. We also endeavoured to develop our theoretical position in a number of papers, involving extensions, revisions and criticisms of Cohen, and these attempts provided the basis for the theoretical overview presented in this journal. In the middle of that work came our involvement in the mugging project—an involvement which has perhaps been the biggest single organic influence on the development of our subsequent work, and on the shaping of the theoretical and methodological position which we take in this journal. The project had two major consequences: politically, it brought a more direct engagement since it stemmed originally from a concern with a particular, local case; and theoretically it returned transactionalism to our agenda of work. Since our initial concern was precipitated by the severity of the judicial reaction to the Handsworth case, we could, therefore, no longer simply ignore the question of social reaction, but our concern in the Subcultures work with structural and historical forms of analysis meant that we could not regress to a naive transactionalist perspective. Our aim became, therefore—and remains— to explain both social action and social reaction, structurally and historically in a way which attempts to do justice to all the levels of analysis: from the dynamics of ‘face-to-face’ interactions between delinquents and control agents to the wider, more mediated, questions— largely ignored by ‘pure’ transactionalists—of the relation of these activities to shifts in class and power relations, consciousness, ideology and hegemony. A word about presentation. Much of it—including the long theoretical overview—arises out of the work of the Sub-Cultures group. In keeping with the aims of the Centre—and for good or ill—this has been collaborative work: the effort to sustain an ongoing discussion around the key theoretical issues, but also the collective writing and revision of articles. Collective work of this kind is, in practice, extremely difficult to sustain and by no means always possible: but those who have been involved in it would like to register, here, their continuing sense of its rewards, despite the problems attached to it. A great deal of empirical work in this field has also been done by Centre members not directly in the Group: and this issue draws widely on their work (for example, the studies by Paul Willis and Dick Hebdige). The work of the group has been presented to and discussed by Centre members as a whole, and a number of other pieces are contributed by them. We have benefited enormously from many people, who, though outside the Centre, are not only working along similar lines, but have entered directly into discussion with us, and given us intellectual support. On this occasion, we welcome as contributors to the issue Paul Corrigan, Simon Frith, Graham Murdock, Robin McCron, Geoff Pearson and John Twohig. Finally, the issue has been produced by the Group working together with an Editorial team, and the latter have not only shouldered the practical load but played a major part in the discussion, revision and 6 rewriting of articles, etc. (this is partially but inadequately acknowledged in the otherwise inexplicable ‘authorial assignments’ at the end of some articles in the issue). A note on format. The journal begins with an overview article which, we hope, will set the main themes. Then there is a long section containing selections from ‘ethnographic’ work on different aspects of post-war sub-cultures. The intention here is, first, to indicate (but by no means exhaustively) the range; second, to provide empirical substantiation; but, third, to develop, out of the empirical material presented, a theoretical point, issue or argument which connects with the main themes outlined in the ‘overview’. This is followed by a section of shorter theoretical articles which pick up and develop some of the points merely touched on in the overview: the problems of ‘style’, ‘generational consciousness’, ‘politics’ and the relationship of girls to subcultures. Finally, Brian Roberts (who, though registered in another Department, has played a major part in the work of the group) and Steve Butters (who has a long-standing link with several areas of the Centre’s work) return to questions of methodology. Steve Butters’ piece is an opening attempt, by someone both familiar with and sympathetically critical of the work of the Group, to open a critique of its methods of work and the problematic underlying them.