Youth Cultures and Subcultures
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Youth culture can be defined as the cultural practice of young individuals or adolescents by which they demonstrate their belonging sense and express their identities to a specific young people group. Additionally, youth culture is defined as symbolic systems and processes shared by young people and are distinct from those of other adults and parents in the community. Juvenile cultural expressions and their early perceptions promoted the idea that, as a social group, youth adheres to common behavior, goals, and values very different from those of the world of adults. After these conceptions, new ideas came in that focused more on the internal differentiation of youth culture. The most prominent ideology about youth cultures were the ones that linked juvenile cultural expressions to the inequality structure in modern society, hence, giving a perception of them as class-specific youth cultures. Youth culture is a fascinating topic of sociology. Youths can be grouped or classified into many subcultures, which they demonstrate in their music, clothing, attitude, and more. People can easily understand how the world works when they study these cultures, especially the media’s role in shaping youth behavior because the majority of consumers in American media are aged between 14 and 15. Some of the subcultures in youth cultures include hip hop culture, extreme sports culture, mean girls, jock culture, punk, bullying, cliques, and outcasts. This paper’s primary purpose is to explain, in detail, the meaning of youth culture, its emergence, associated theories, and some examples of youth cultures and subcultures, including hip-hop culture, jock, punk, cliques, and outcasts, and mean girls.
Since the start of recorded history, there have always been age-based differences. However, the term “youth culture” materialized in the 1950s in North America and Europe, after the introduction of the term “teenagers” depicted as distinct social personae having unique characteristic slang, fads, lifestyle, and music (Kaur, 2015). Since the mid1950s, there has been independent evolution of the concept of youth culture through designations of lifestyle-related mainly with youth-generated musical style and trends such as rap, disco, rock and roll, and punk. Each culture or era is characterized by unique slang, ritual, the pattern of symbolism, and overall lifestyle (body decorations and clothing) gotten from attendant musical style. There are three theories related to youth culture. First, Stanley Cohen’s moral panic theory states that moral panic crystallization came into being after a new trend of youths to “network socially” on Internet sites like Friendster and myspace.
Additionally, the second theory was developed in 1997 by Thomas Frank, stating that, since the 1960s, youth has evolved to become an economic and social commodity. Therefore, trends in the adolescent world have become the fashion, dictating look, cultural norm, and taste in music, because youth sells (Hodkinson, 2016). Lastly, the third theory by Mikhael Bakhtin explains why emerging youth culture forms seem to oppose the adult official “sacred world,” at the same time having no serious subversive political opposition to it.
Hip hop culture refers to a cultural movement that emerged in the late 1960s among the youths of African American origin living in New York City (Baker et al., 2015). This culture was characterized by the following four unique elements: graffiti art, b-boying, turntablism, and rap music. History books indicate that hip hop culture started when Ghetto Brothers set up music on 163rd Street and Prospect Avenue to fight against racial barriers. This culture’s beginning was also marked when DJ Kool Here set up a venue and mixed records while shouting out to the dancers and crowd. Here is referred to as the “father” of hip hop. These events were developed and refined by other DJs like Jazzy Jay, Grandmaster Flash, and Grand Wizard Theodore, who used breakbeats, including scratching and cutting.
Additionally, there were numerous street gangs in the poverty of the South Bronx. In 1977, the New York City blackout enabled the expansion of hip-hop culture. In the early years, most African-American communities were very poor and could not afford costly equipment for making music. There was widespread arson, looting, and other disorders during this blackout, particularly in the Bronx. Many people looted DJ equipment for electronics stores allowing the hip-hop genre to expand outside the Bronx and at a high rate (Hodkinson & Deicke, 2007).
Furthermore, punk was started as a music-based subculture. Initially, punk proclaimed and embraced discord. In England, Punk was started by working-class youths who wanted to complain about an increase in unemployment and a declining economy, refuting the idea of reform and chiding the rich hypocrisy. On the other hand, early punk in America was a movement of the middle-class youth, reacting against mainstream culture’s boredom (Kaur, 2015). This subculture was aiming to destroy royalty, consumer goods, idols of the bourgeoisie, and sociability. Apart from punk, there was a jock culture. The term “jock” started in 1963, derived from “jockstrap,” and referred to an athletic man. Essentially, “jockstrap” referred to undergarments worn by males to protect their genitals during sports. In the United States and Canada, jock was used to stereotype against athletes, specifically, college and high school athletes who form a unique youth subculture.
Moreover, cliques and outcasts are other examples of youth culture. Thomas (2009) states that cliques were formed to promote the construction of racial identity, similarities among members of a given group, and mark differences with others. There are different meanings of the term clique. Generally, cliques can be referred to as exclusive and small groups of friends who share common interests (sports, dress, music, and others) and common traits (Hodkinson, 2016). Every group member has an indirect or direct connection to each other member. Usually, cliques involve groups of girls, but it can also include boys. Cliques contain hierarchies among teens, from losers to popular, and there are numerous cliques in schools, including nerds, arties, preppies, druggies, brains, jocks, normal, and freaks. Also, another youth culture is mean girls. Mean girls are basically bullying, tyrannical, and dedicated to a ruthless caste system. Ringrose (2006) states that mean girls are relationally and indirectly aggressive. They are also related to manipulation, back-biting, intimidation, pretending to be joking while saying something mean, ridicule, gestures, exclusion, sending hurtful messages through a computer or cell phone, betrayal of confidences, on again-off again friendships, campaigns, cliques, teasing, name-calling, gossiping, and other forms of harassment (Baker et al., 2015).
In summary, the youth category has been the main focus for research development in the contemporary approach. Young children in the modern world possess many variations, and it is essential for us to teach them about these transitions, which include: hip hop culture, extreme sports culture, mean girls, jock culture, punk, bullying, cliques, and outcasts. The youth in the world today to be empowered and taught to recognize these complexities and transitions of the 21st century. This will be very important to enable the youth to easily prioritize, comprehend, and equipoise their attitude towards others and themselves, hence helping them to maintain their equilibrium of the society and their own.
References
Kaur, J. (2015). Vicissitudes of Youth Culture: Primary Epoch to the New-Fangled World.
Hodkinson, P. (2016). Youth cultures and the rest of life: Subcultures, post-subcultures, and beyond. Journal of Youth Studies, 19(5), 629-645.
Baker, S., Buttigieg, M. B., & Robards, B. (Eds.). (, 2015). Youth cultures and subcultures: Australian perspectives. Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.
Hodkinson, P., & Deicke, W. (Eds.). (, 2007). Youth cultures: scenes, subcultures, and tribes. Routledge.