Youth Subculture
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Sociology Factsheet
Youth Subcultures
In other cultures, the transition from childhood to adulthood is more clearly marked with no period of ‘youth.’ In some cultures, individuals may undergo a ‘rite of passage’ (a social event or ceremony) to indicate their new status.
Number 32
This Factsheet will be useful for the topics of youth and crime and deviance on the Sociology specifications. This Factsheet will explore the reasons behind the development and existence of youth cultures in previous years and the current variations in contemporary youth subcultures. It will allow you to develop your own argument on how and why the range of youth subcultures of today have developed.
Youth can be difficult to define but the Concise Oxford Dictionary defines it as: ”the state of being young, the period between childhood and adult age” It is therefore seen as a period of transition between childhood and adulthood. In contemporary Britain, youth is recognised as an important stage of development in which individuals begin to leave the dependent and powerless world of the child and enter the world of the adult. However, it could be questioned that not all children stop being children at the same time. Frith describes youth as “not simply an age group, but the social organisation of an age group” Sociologists of youth, according to Frith, describe youth culture as “the way of life shared by young people”. Subculture, as defined in the Concise Oxford Dictionary, is a ‘cultural group within a larger culture often having beliefs or interests at variance with those of the larger culture’. This would imply that a subculture is a subdivision of a national culture. Philip Aries in Centuries of Childhood (1962) argues that ‘youth’ is a relatively modern concept. He argues that it was only from the mid 17tth century that ‘young people’ started to be seen as both dependent on adults and as having special characteristics of their own (e.g.
Sociology Factsheet
Youth Subcultures
In other cultures, the transition from childhood to adulthood is more clearly marked with no period of ‘youth.’ In some cultures, individuals may undergo a ‘rite of passage’ (a social event or ceremony) to indicate their new status.
Number 32
This Factsheet will be useful for the topics of youth and crime and deviance on the Sociology specifications. This Factsheet will explore the reasons behind the development and existence of youth cultures in previous years and the current variations in contemporary youth subcultures. It will allow you to develop your own argument on how and why the range of youth subcultures of today have developed.
Youth can be difficult to define but the Concise Oxford Dictionary defines it as: ”the state of being young, the period between childhood and adult age” It is therefore seen as a period of transition between childhood and adulthood. In contemporary Britain, youth is recognised as an important stage of development in which individuals begin to leave the dependent and powerless world of the child and enter the world of the adult. However, it could be questioned that not all children stop being children at the same time. Frith describes youth as “not simply an age group, but the social organisation of an age group” Sociologists of youth, according to Frith, describe youth culture as “the way of life shared by young people”. Subculture, as defined in the Concise Oxford Dictionary, is a ‘cultural group within a larger culture often having beliefs or interests at variance with those of the larger culture’. This would imply that a subculture is a subdivision of a national culture. Philip Aries in Centuries of Childhood (1962) argues that ‘youth’ is a relatively modern concept. He argues that it was only from the mid 17tth century that ‘young people’ started to be seen as both dependent on adults and as having special characteristics of their own (e.g.