Youth and Youth Culture

The aims for this module are set into the context of the QAA Framework for Higher Education Qualifications and they relate to the SEEC level descriptors for level 2 study.

• Introduce and explore the nature and complexities of youth and its subcultures
• Demonstrate the social construction of youth as a distinctive category between childhood and adulthood
• Show how the nature of youth and the social space that it occupies has changed across time by scrutinising the different youth subcultural traditions from the 1950s onwards

In relation to the QAA Framework for Higher Education Qualifications and the SEEC level descriptors for level 2 study, by the end of the module students should be able to:

1. Recognise the socio-historical influences that affected the emergence of youth culture and the growth of distinctive youth subcultures within it [LO1]
2. Explain the importance of style (including music and fashion) in the articulation of youth and its distinctive formulations [LO2]
3. Show how different theoretical perspectives can be applied to the study of youth [LO3]

• What is youth, and youth as a ‘social problem’
• The emergence of ‘youth’ in the post-war era
• Youth subcultures and subcultural style
• Youth and ‘race’, class, gender and sexuality
• Youth and resistance
• Youth in postmodernity

Contact time:

• Lectures/seminars
• discussion groups
• tutorials
• assessment preparation

Non-contact time:

• Independent study

Books:

Bennett, A. and Kahn-Harris, K. (2004) After Subculture. Critical Studies in Contemporary Youth Culture, London: Palgrave.

Bennett, A. (2000) Popular Music and Youth Culture, London: Macmillan.

Cohen, S. (1973) Folk Devils and Moral Panics, London: Paladin.

Epstein, J. (ed.) (1998) Youth Culture: Identity in a Postmodern World, Blackwell: Oxford.

Fornas, J. & Bolin, G. (1995) Youth Culture in Late Modernity, London: Sage.

Gelder, K. & Thornton, S. (1997) The Subcultures Reader, London, Routledge.

McRobbie, A. (2000, 2nd ed.) Feminism and Youth Culture, Basingstoke: Macmillan.

Nayak, A. (2008) Gender, youth and culture: young masculinities and femininities, Basingstoke: Palgrave

Osgerby, B. (1998) Youth in Britain Since 1945, London: Blackwell.

Redhead, S. (ed.) (1993) Rave Off: Politics and Deviance in Contemporary Youth Culture, Aldershot: Avebury

Willis, P. (1977) Learning to Labour, London, Saxon House.

Wyn, J. & White, R. (1997) Rethinking Youth, London, Sage.

Wilson, B. (2006) Fight, Flight or Chill: Subcultures, youth, and rave into the twenty-first century, London, McGill-Queens UP.

Journals:

Journal of Youth Studies

Youth and Society

Electronic sources (ebooks):

Hodkinson, P and Wolfgang, D (eds.) (2007) Youth Cultures: Scenes, Subcultures and Tribes. London: Routledge – accessed November 23^rd 2008.

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