Youth-Subcultural Studies: Sociological Traditions and Core Concepts

The study of youth subcultures has rich histories in the USA and UK, yet has remained a marginal subfield within cultural sociology. In this article, I begin by reviewing the significance of the Chicago school, strain theory, Birmingham school and post-subcultural studies traditions of youth-cultural and youthsubcultural research. I then conceive of a series of significant analytic concepts that over time have proven themselves to be core components of youthsubcultural studies. These analytic concepts include subcultural style, resistance, subcultural space and media, societal reaction, and identity and authenticity. In each analytic section, I explore major conceptual frames and discuss significant empirical research, on youth subcultures including punk goth, straightedge, riot grrrl skateboarding, rave and club cultures, among others. Youth-subcultural phenomena continue to be popular topics at colleges and universities in the USA, the UK, Europe, and Australia. Sociologists and cultural studies scholars regularly participate in researchand teachingrelated seminars on youth cultures and subcultures in conferences around the globe. There has been a plethora of monographs and edited research volumes on youth subcultures in recent years, covering a rich and diverse history of theoretical and methodological traditions. Peer-reviewed research can be found in a variety of journals, and university courses on youth subcultures are well attended. At the same time, however, some scholars have called for the abandonment of the subculture concept in favor of newer alternatives. This has sparked reactions from those scholars who believe in the analytic potential of the subculture concept. Given all this attention, there is a need to take account of the past and present in the field of youth-subcultural studies and to consider the diversity of epistemological, theoretical, conceptual, and substantive issues at hand. Subcultural studies emerged out of two distinct sociological traditions yet has been affected by and affects many other scholarly fields. The earliest coherent set of subcultural studies was carried out by sociologists at the University of Chicago from the 1920s to 1940s, although these sociologists did not identify themselves explicitly as subcultural scholars.