Revision:Post Marxism

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Still concentrates on social institutions and is still structural rather than looking at individuals.

Structural Approach

Traditional Functionalists

Youths have to find way of moving on from childhood to adulthood

Youth culture provides link between conflicting values of home (childhood) and work (adulthood)

Eisenstadt suggests young people try to distinguish themselves from their parents, but being different leaves emotionally insecure. In response to this insecurity, they create distinct sets of values and styles of dress. By doing this, they distinguish from parents and have standard to compare against.

Comparison with Marxist Approach

Contents of youth culture are unimportant and need no further analysis.

Differences in backgrounds of young people and between various subcultures are unimportant.

POSTMARXIST APPROACH

Marxists stress importance of above stuff

Hegemony - imposition of ruling class values on society.

Youth - majority of people have financial commitments so they are scared to revolt as they have too much to lose. Youth don't have these and are therefore weakest point in structure of hegemony.

Resistance through style

Whilst functionalists argue each generation has same problem of transition, Marxists argue each generation of WC has similar problems. Each has different economic circumstances.

Brake and Hebdige - culture developed to cope with problems, styles, reflects circumstances.

Youth culture doesn't alter power and economic differences that caused problems for WC in 1^st place: Brake uses term 'magical' to describe solution provided by WC youth culture.

Youth culture contains some of resistance to dominant ideas.

WC culture often regarded as deviant and threat to society.

Style adopted to work out problems and express resistance.

An Example of Marxist Subculture Approach

Cohen - East London 1970's

Looked at youth cultures in

1. immediate context, and
2. wider context

Immediate Context - Society in East London destroyed by:

• Redevelopment - People moving to new towns/high-rise, community street life lost. Property price rise, small workshops, local businesses driven out.
• Loss of jobs on docks - Economy of East End based on docks. When docks declined, economic structures community props destroyed.
• Decline of extended family - Partly due to above factors. Community lost furthermore affects youth.

Wider Context -

• Ownership of houses and consumer goods risen. Ideology of affluence begins. Ran alongside poverty in inner city.
• Youth cultures develop to cope with loss of community and social divisions
• WC youths either remained in WC or moved towards affluence
• Factors that Cohen found with white WC in UK in 70's are found in poor black males in US cities now.
• In both cases, redevelopment, move away from city centres, decline in well paid employment, increase in lone mother families

SUMMARY OF MARXIST SUBCULTURE THEORY

New Marxist approaches added important insights into older, no longer appropriate theories in 60s.

Stressed that style had meaning, interpretable by sociologists.

Activities by youths cannot be understood without reference to wider society.

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