Senior Freshman 2013‐14 Department of Sociology GENDER, CULTURE AND SOCIETY (2ND SEMESTER) SUBCULTURES AND GENDER (12 week module, January – April 2014) Dr Maja Halilovic‐Pastuovic The aim of this second half of the year is to present some more contemporary perspectives on gender and society. It does so through looking at the importance of the concept of ‘subculture’ in 20th century sociology and the difficulties encountered in combining this with a gender analysis. Were the early studies simply ‘gender‐ blind’? or should they be read rather as studies of rampant masculinity? Is ‘femininity’ itself a sub‐culture? If so, then how can half of humanity form a ‘sub’‐ culture? These are the kinds of questions we have to address when we follow these two strands of sociology – subcultures and gender – and see where they intersect. Much of the initial work on subcultures showed a fascination with ‘resistant’ masculine identities (from jazz musicians and marijuana users, to mods and rockers, punks and rastas), and we will study some of this work and its importance in debates about conformity and ‘deviance’ in the USA, and in social class and class conflict in the UK. It was a while before feminist researchers were able to point up this masculine bias, and bring women into a more complicated picture that shows both the reproduction of family values within female urban gangs in the USA, and the double rebellion involved in being a punk teenager with a Mohican and torn t‐shirt in a girls’ school. However, we shall also be doing some re‐reading of the earlier studies to see what they tell us about masculinity, even if this is not what their authors initially intended. In the past decade, various authors have argued the need to move beyond the concept of subculture, particularly in its close alliance with class divisions in the British context, but also because of its celebration of ‘resistant’ masculinity in a gender‐blind way. These authors have theorised a move from subculture to ‘post‐ subculture’, exploring the world of ‘club cultures’, or ‘neo‐tribalism’, as well as non‐ class‐based new social movements. We shall be assessing these claims and the debates that have ensued. These debates parallel those that have asserted the deconstruction of strict gender identities, whether through subcultures like ‘Goth’ that promote androgyny, or through queer subcultures that subvert conventional notions of both ‘gay’ and ‘straight’. We follow these debates into recent writing about lap‐dancers and into the portrayal of the New York subculture of black and Hispanic drag queens in the film ‘Paris is Burning’. 1 Lectures on this course take place on Wednesdays and Fridays at 9 am. The Friday session will be used mainly to show visual material, including several films, but is sometimes used for a second lecture or discussion session, as detailed on the reading list below. The films shown will be discussed in seminars, and you will also be able to bring them into exam answers. If you wish to see Maja Halilovic‐Pastuovic about any matter to do with the course, my office hours are on Wednesday 4 – 5 pm, during term time, Room 3.01, 3 College Green. You do not need an appointment to come and see me at that time. My email address is [email protected]. The Teaching Assistant on this course is Yaqoub BouAynaya. He will be arranging and facilitating the seminars (see below). His office hours are: Wed. 12‐1 pm. His email is [email protected]. Seminars will start in week 2 of the course. If you are new to the course this term, please contact Yaqoub ([email protected]) to join a seminar group. Seminars will take place once a week for each student. Small groups of students will work together on running each seminar, the objectives being: Assessment on this half‐year course will be as follows: 1) a seminar facilitationin groups of 2 to 4 students (20%) 2) an individual exam (80%) 3) a negative mark for incomplete seminar attendance (you forfeit 5 marks if you miss more than 3 out of 10 seminars, i.e. a 57 becomes a 52, a 69 becomes a 64, and so on ) For those of you who also did the course in the first half of the year (Anthropology of Gender), the marks from the first half and second half of the year will be averaged together into one mark out of 100%. This will be your mark for the whole year, i.e. for Gender, Culture and Society. Visiting students are very welcome on the course, but please note that there are no exceptions to the requirement to take the exam in May if you require credit for the course. 2 SUBCULTURES AND SOCIETY: GANGS, DRUGS, DEVIANCE AND CONFORMISM WEEK ONE 1 Anthropology in the city: race and space Wednesday 9 am The readings indented below are all to be found in: *** Ken Gelder, 2007. Subcultures: Critical Concepts in Media and Cultural Studies, Vol. II, Chicago, Birmingham, Scenes and Communities *** Albert K. Cohen, ‘A general theory of subcultures’ (Chapter 21) ** Ken Gelder, ‘Introduction’ ** Frederic M. Thrasher, 1927. ‘Gangland’, (extract from The Gang: a Study of 1,313 Gangs in Chicago ‐ Chapter 18) * Nels Anderson, ‘The Hobo: the sociology of the homeless man’ * Robert E Park, extract from ‘The City’ There is another reader edited by Ken Gelder and Sarah Thornton called simply The Subcultures Reader. This reader is the best one to buy for this course. Web resources relevant to this lecture: http://gangresearch.net/ (Site operated by John Hagedorn at University of Illinois) see especially: John Hagedorn, 2006. ‘Race not Space: a Revisionist History of Gangs in Chicago’, Journal of African American History, 91/2, available on http://gangresearch.net/Archives/hagedorn/articles/racenotspace.pdf see also extract from Thrasher on John Hagedorn’s site: http://gangresearch.net/GangResearch/Seminars/definitions/thrasher.html ) and the piece on ‘The Chicago Race Riots’ at: http://www.uic.edu/orgs/kbc/ganghistory/Industrial%20Era/Riotbegins.html including link to the newspaper report in the Chicago Daily Tribute, 28 July 1919 http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/4975/ For riots in UK, summer of 2011, see the study by LSE and The Guardian: http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/series/reading‐the‐riots 2 Film showing: Quadrophenia Part I Friday 8.30 am WEEK TWO 3 Subcultures and how to belong to one Wednesday 9 am *** Howard Becker, 1966. Outsiders: Studies in the Sociology of Deviance: Ch.3 ‘Becoming a marihuana user’ Ch.5 ‘The Culture of a Deviant Group: the Dance Musician’, Ch.6 ‘Careers in a Deviant Occupational Group: the Dance Musician’ 3 ** Chris Hackley, et al. 2012. ‘Young people and binge‐drinking: a Bahktinian analysis’, Journal of Marketing Management, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0267257X.2012.729074 ** Stan Cohen, 2002 [1972]. Folk Devils and Moral Panics: the Creation of the Mods and Rockers Additional reading: * Dick Hebdige, 1979. Subculture: the Meaning of Style 4 Film showing: Quadrophenia Part II Friday 8.30 am SUBCULTURES, CLASS AND RESISTANCE: THE BIRMINGHAM SCHOOL AND THE QUESTION OF GENDER WEEK THREE 5 Class as subculture: masculinity and resistance to a life of wage‐labour Wednesday 9 am *** Paul Willis, 1993 [1977]. Learning to Labour: how Working‐Class Kids Get Working‐Class Jobs And see extract from Willis’s book in The Subcultures Reader ** Paul Willis, 1978. ‘The Motor‐Bike Boys’, Chapter 2 of Willis, Profane Culture, also reprinted in Ken Gelder, ed. (2007) Subcultures, Vol. II (see above for full reference) * Angela McRobbie, 1980. ‘Settling Accounts with Subcultures’, in McRobbie, Feminism and Youth Culture; Ch.2; also reprinted in eds. Simon Frith and Andrew Goodwin, (1990) On Record: Rock, Pop and the Written Word Additional reading: * John Abraham, 1989. ‘Gender Differences and Anti‐School Boys’, Sociological Review, vol. 37, no. 1, pp. 65‐88 * Kathleen Lynch and Anne Lodge, 2002. Equality and Power in Schools: redistribution, recognition and representation, Chs.3, and 6 * Jeffrey Smith, 2007. ‘”Ye've got to 'ave balls to play this game sir!” Boys, peers and fears: the negative influence of school‐based “cultural accomplices” in constructing hegemonic masculinity’, Gender and Education, vol. 19, no. 2, pp. 179‐198 * John Abraham, 2008. ‘Back to the future on gender and anti‐school boys: a response to Jeffrey Smith’ Gender and Education, vol. 20, no. 1, pp. 89‐94 6 Class discussion Friday 9 am The film Quadrophenia in relation to the literature on subcultures (esp. Stan Cohen, ‘Folk Devils and Moral Panics’, and Paul Willis, ‘The Motor‐Bike Boys’). 4 WEEK FOUR 7/8 Girls in school: is femininity a subculture? Wednesday 9 am/ Friday 9 am *** Angela McRobbie [1977] 2000. Feminism and Youth Culture 2nd ed.: ‐‘The culture of working‐class girls’, Ch.3 ‐‘Jackie magazine: romantic individualism and the teenage girl, Ch. 4 ‐ see also, Introduction, ** Angela McRobbie, 1978. “Working class girls and the culture of femininity”, Ch. 5 of Women take issue: aspects of women's subordination, (ed.) Women's Studies Group, Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies, Birmingham * Nancy Lesko, 1988. ‘The Curriculum of the Body’ in Becoming Feminine: The Politics of Popular Culture (eds.) Leslie G. Roman and Linda K. Christian‐Smith * Barbara Hudson,1984. ‘Femininity and Adolescence’, in A. McRobbie and M. Nava, (eds.) Gender and Generation * Barrie Thorne, 1993. Gender Play: Boys and Girls in School, Ch.6, ‘Do girls and boys have different cultures?’ WEEK FIVE 9 Pretty in Punk: Girls and Subcultures Wednesday 9 am *** Lorraine Leblanc, 1999. Pretty in Punk: Girls’ Gender Resistance in a Boys’ Subculture ** Norma Coates, 1998 ‘Can’t we just talk about music? rock and gender on the internet’, in eds.