The Sociology of Youth Subcultures

The main theme in the sociology of youth subcultures is the reladon between social class and everyday experience. There are many ways of thinking about social class. In the work of the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu the main factors involved are parents' occupation and level of education. These have signilicant effects on the life chances of their children. Social class is not a social group: the idea is not that working class kids or middle class kids only hang out together. There may be some of this in any school or town. Social class is a structure. It is shown to exist by sociological research and many people may only be partly aware of these structures or may lack the vocabulary to talk about them. It is often the case that people blame themselves—their bad school grades or dead-end job—for what are, at least in part, the effects of a system of social class that has had significant effects on their lives. The main point of Bourdieu's research is to show that many kids never had a fair chance from the beginning.