Youth Subcultures and the CCCS Tradition
The Birmingham Centre's influential theory that post-war youth subcultures are class-based, symbolic responses to social and economic change.
Definition
The CCCS tradition is the body of Birmingham cultural studies work that interprets post-war youth subcultures as collective, ritualised and stylistic responses through which working-class youth symbolically negotiate the contradictions of their class position.
Scope
This topic covers the model of youth subcultures developed at the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies in the 1970s, centred on Resistance Through Rituals (1976). It examines the concepts of parent culture, symbolic resistance and the 'magical' resolution of class contradictions, alongside key elaborations and critiques, including feminist interventions that exposed the model's neglect of girls. It does not cover the later semiotic and post-subcultural developments treated in sibling topics.
Core questions
- How did the CCCS link youth subcultures to class structure and the 'parent culture'?
- What is meant by the 'magical' or symbolic resolution of class contradictions?
- How did ethnographic work such as Willis's complicate the model?
- Why did feminists argue the tradition rendered girls invisible?
Key concepts
- parent culture
- symbolic resistance
- magical resolution
- homology
- cultural reproduction
- bedroom culture
Key theories
- Symbolic resistance and the parent culture
- The CCCS argued that youth subcultures arise within a working-class 'parent culture' and use style and ritual to win symbolic space and resist subordination, without altering material conditions.
- Cultural reproduction
- Willis's ethnography of working-class 'lads' shows how their counter-school subculture, while resistant, ironically prepares them for and reconciles them to subordinate labour, reproducing class inequality.
- The absence of girls
- McRobbie and Garber argued that subcultural theory focused on spectacular male street cultures and overlooked the differently located, more domestic 'bedroom culture' of girls.
History
Phil Cohen's study of subcultural conflict in London's East End (1972) anticipated the approach, which was synthesised in Resistance Through Rituals (1976). Willis's Learning to Labour (1977) brought rich ethnography and the theme of reproduction. From the late 1970s, McRobbie and others mounted feminist critiques of the model's masculinism, opening the way for more varied accounts of youth culture.
Debates
- Resistance or reproduction
- Whether subcultural activity genuinely resists the social order or, as Willis suggests, ultimately reproduces the class positions it appears to contest.
Key figures
- Stuart Hall
- Tony Jefferson
- Phil Cohen
- Paul Willis
- Angela McRobbie
Related topics
Seminal works
- cohen1972
- halljefferson1976
- willis1977
Frequently asked questions
- What does 'magical resolution' mean?
- It refers to the CCCS idea that a subculture can resolve the tensions of its members' class situation only at a symbolic level — through style, music and ritual — rather than actually changing the material conditions that produced those tensions.