CCCS Theories about Youth culture

CCCS - Centre for Contemporary Cultural Srudies aka The Birmingham School
This Centre focused on particular areas of research into popular cultures such as urban subcultures and ethnic and sexual identity. CCCS aimed to study cultural institutions and their interaction with society and social change. Investigation into gender roles, ethnicity, criminal and other subcultures and how they all link into society was vital.
David Reisman defined 'Mainstream' as audiences who passively accept the styles and beliefs provided by commercials. By conforming to something mainstream, you will come across similar to everyone else.
A 'Sub-Culture' is a minority group formed from a wider, more general 'parent' culture. E.G: Soul -> Neo-Soul. Subcultures upset the mainstream beacause they confront it with difference which may be an opposite set of values to the traditional ones that everyone else would follow. There are two types of going against the mainstream. Through Crime and Through Style. The difference is that people who feel alienated result to crime in order to resist against the mainsream, they think they are causing trouble and making things worse for institutions but infact, they are making more money for the people they're rebelling against. When rebelling through style, people do it by upsetting the social norm but not intend to trouble it by causing crime and destroying society. Punks for example, created their own identy in order to stay diffferent from the invading Asian race and Caribbeans.
Sub-Cultures arent that different from their 'parent' culture because most subcultures react against or continue some of the values or styles of the parent culture.

Dick Hebdige was the first to look at how subcultures are assimilated into the mainstream. He stated that subcultures only emerge because they replace a culture that has been absorbed into the mainstream already because being different from everyone else is what matters.

The Meaning Of STYLE

So subcultures exists becase it is a way for young people from a lower to middle class background, who feel they have no access to the mainstream society, to react to the mainstream in whatever way they feel necessary. The white working class youth created the subculture of 'Punks' because they felt at the time they looked similar to others of a working class community which and felt this came through the rise of the unemployment. As stated above, some reject the values of the mainstream through crime, and some audiences use dress to either reinforce their class origins or exaggerate the fact that they aren't bound by a lower class root regardless of their past. This is the rebellion of the mainstream through style. Subcultures however need the mainstream to react to in order to rebel. But Counter-Cultures aim to make a revolution by completely opposing social mainstream and not adopting any of the traditional values or beliefs, these are all rejected.

PUNK subculture