S. J. Blackman

Youth Subcultural Theory: A Critical Engagement with the Concept, its Origins and Politics, from the Chicago School to Postmodernism

Initially, I will suggest that the postmodernist understanding of youth subculture relies on a determinist interpretation of the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS) position, which denies the immense diversity in the CCCS theorization that draws on Barthes, Gramsci, Althusser, Levi-Strauss and Lacan. I shall critically examine the development of postmodern subcultural theory, which is premised on the work of three key social theorists: Max Weber, Jean Baudrillard and Michel Maffesoli. Postmodernists have extracted ideas from these thinkers and combined them to argue against what is described as CCCS’ ‘theoretical orthodoxy’ and also to construct new terms such as ‘neo-tribe’ and ‘lifestyle’ to replace the concept of subculture. I suggest that postmodernisms reluctance to focus on social structure promotes an individualistic understanding of the social. The work of the Chicago School and the CCCS gave priority to the collective, whereas postmodern subcultural writing is preoccupied with the individual resulting in a weak understanding of the group context of youth cultural practices. The postmodern interventions offer some useful critical insights, but their new theorization lacks substance and critical application to young peoples social, economic and cultural realities. Furthermore, I will argue that under postmodern analysis, subculture returns to a conservative Mertonian interpretation of individual adaptation that corresponds to recent political neo-liberal economic and social policies. I will demonstrate that a contradiction is apparent between the postmodern dismissal of the CCCS’ model of resistance and their own argument that youth are engaged in creative and emancipatory activities.

Subculture Theory: An Historical and Contemporary Assessment of the Concept for Understanding Deviance

Subcultures attract attention in culture, society, and the media because they have been theorized as not merely distinct from, but also in opposition to, the dominant culture. In the United States and the United Kingdom the concept of subculture has been a major explanatory tool for sociology and criminology to understand deviant behavior. For nearly a hundred years the concept has been at the center of academic struggle for superiority between rival paradigmatic approaches, which have employed different theoretical explanations. In this article I critically assess the origins and politics of the way the concept of subculture has been applied primarily to youth cultures in terms of the relationship between agency and constraint.

Has Drug Culture Become an Inevitable Part of Youth Culture? A critical assessment of drug education

ABSTRACT During the last 3 years I have undertaken two qualitative empirical investigations into drugs and young people (Blackman 1995b, 1996a). In this paper I want to move beyond the presentation of data to assess theoretically three major areas of discourse which have a fundamental impact on our understanding of issues relating to young people, health and drugs. The areas are drug policy formation, models of drug education and youth culture.

Rituals of intoxication: young people, drugs, risk and leisure

This chapter works within the theoretical framework developed by Stan Cohen (1972) to describe youth intoxication as a moral panic but my focus is not on negative representations. I shall examine how young people’s intoxication makes for an effective strategy of regulation by government and the media through the promotion of representations of youth ‘out of control’. This strategy captures a disturbing voyeurism that is both attractive and threatening, and one that supports prohibition policies (Royal Society of Arts, 2007). Government and youth are brought together through different positions focused on risk. Prohibition policies seek to define youth intoxication as pathological whereas young people understand their participation in risk as leisure.

Intersections in (New) drug research

In this special issue, we contend tht there is much merit in studying the intersections between NPS, other forms of new drugs such as Human Enhancement Drugs (HED), and more traditional illegal substances such as cannabis, ecstasy/MDMA, cocaine. We argue that treating NPS, not as an entirely new and distinct problem, but rather as the latest chapter in our history of narcotica can have many benefits in terms of oboth our wider thoretical understanding in this araea and the practical interventions that we introduce.

Towards ‘sensible’ drug information: critically exploring drug intersectionalities, ‘Just Say No,’ normalisation and harm reduction

Abstract Aim: This article examines the impact of new psychoactive substances (NPS) on drug service interventions using a case study of professional practitioners in South East England. We assess how professionals seek to develop an innovative approach towards providing ‘sensible drug information.’ Methodology: The research methods include observations, and individual and collective ethnographic interviews with 13 professionals who work with young people across the region. Results: The article theorises sensible because it is a key element in contemporary drug education with a harm reduction approach. Therefore, we take up this challenge and use the ideas of Gilles Deleuze, which according to Mazzei and McCoy ‘prompts the possibilities of new questions and different ways of thinking research’. We identify a series of drug intersectionalities between ‘traditional’ illegal drugs and NPS and through social class differences between young affluent and more socially disenfranchised drug users. This article assesses the delivery of ‘sensible drug information’ as part of a harm reduction approach, which may not always be supported by other agencies. In responding to these challenges we explore Deleuze’s ideas as a foundation for ‘sensible’ drug information which incorporates Matza?s theory of drift, to explain young people?s changing pattern of drug consumption.

Psychotic (e)states: where anti-social behaviour is merged with recreational drug use to signify the social problem group

In 2012, grime artist Plan B’s album title track ‘111 Manors’ used a critical tone to convey the reality of young people’s experience of poverty and inequality under the Conservative-Liberal Democrat Coalition government. These ‘gritty’ representations of psychotic (e) state s affirm young people’s culture and define their urban locality. In the video of the song, the popular images are reflected back to ‘fuel the fear’ with an ironic sneer at misrepresentations in the media, an irony that is lost on governments which have used images of anti-social behaviour, drugs, and young people on stigmatized social housing ‘estates’ within their programme to regulate the conduct of a social problem group. Young people’s actions are allowed no margin for error as youthful exuberance is seen as having ‘intent’ and interpreted as a sign of future criminality. Activities that previous generations engaged in as a rite of passage are now regarded as not just anti-social but as risk factors to predict potential misdemeanours. Drawing on Ian Hacking’s (1986) notions of ‘making up people’, that is, classifying people through ‘looping effects’ (Hacking, 1996), we examine the way that the recreational drug use of youth in poorer neighbourhoods has been merged with an anti-social behaviour agenda and problematic drug users to create a ‘criminogenic group’ who are deemed likely to cause criminal behaviour.

Review Symposium Gill Jones Youth Cambridge: Polity, 2009, £14.99 pbk (ISBN: 9780745640952), 224pp

Gill Jones’ book enters a crowded market where there is considerable competition, with recent works by Andy Furlong and Fred Cartmel (2007), Alan France (2007), Joanne Wyn and Rob White (1997), Bob Coles (1995) and Christine Griffin (1993), and classics such as Frank Musgrove’s (1964) Youth and the Social Order or Shmuel Eisenstadt’s (1956) From Generation to Generation. What marks Jones’ new book as fitting within this tradition is her ability to move between meta-analysis and grounded micro-realities. She achieves this most productively in the latter half of the book where she writes about young people’s vulnerabilities in relation to social transitions. The book is structured by contemporary and classical sociological debates. Jones’ interdisciplinary approach means that her study is designed to make a contribution to the youth question rather than merely review it. The chapter headings and macro focus on theories of action, identity, transition, inequality and dependence enable her to move through the literature across time, but at the same time remain wedded to the task of working out how youth has been theorized. Specifically, the major theme that drives the book is a critical assessment of social and cultural theory, addressing whether these theories interpret young people’s actions in terms of agency or passivity. Jones’ theoretical navigators on this epic journey are Jurgen Habermas and Pierre Bourdieu, but she also welcomes considerable direction from Anthony Giddens and Ulrick Beck. This theoretical combination does cause momentary tensions in the book, especially in her use of postmodern ideas and theories, which downplay the causal factors of social structure. For example, at times she is supportive of postmodernist approaches towards youth subculture with their emphasis on play, choice, consumption and individualization, but overall Jones draws back from this chic theorization to reassert the structuring influence of social class on young people. The limitations of the book are related to the interdisciplinary borderline between sociology and cultural studies. The book’s strength is in the sociological theory. From a cultural studies perspective, little emphasis is given to areas such as youth deviance, alcohol, drugs, youth leisure, popular music, contemporary youth cultures, middle-class counter culture or DIY cultures, computer games, social networking and new technologies, ethnicities/race and global youth. Although there is some consideration of early Review Symposium