marxists and neo marxists

hebdige

wc youth form politically motivated subcultures to try change society and that youth subcultural styles should be read as a challenge to the class inequalities that characterises capitalistic society

hebdige uses the work of Gramsci to explain how political and ideological domination by the ruling classes is changed by oppressed wc youth as they are not yet ideologically controlled.

• they have the capacity of free thought as they haven’t experienced a lifetimes of the dominant culture reinforcing the normality of capitalism and teaching then to just accept inequalities

• ysc cultures create their own distinctive styles to ‘solve’ the problems which exist by protecting the territory, gaining status, using spectacular styles to reject cultural hegemony but these are only ‘imaginary solutions’

• these don’t fix the problems of capitalism

• capitalistic society quickly adapt to such challenges like punks and other ysc, they are short lived Because of incorporation

• capitalism quickly commercialises aspects of youth cultural style, stripping them of their ideological significance so that they just become another consumer item.

scraton

neo marx

policing, media coverage and political debates centre round the issue of ‘race’ being a problem

• ethnic minorities have been on the receiving end of discrimination since the first ship of migrants arrive leaving them in a worse socio-economic position than the white majority

• in réponse to this ‘cultures of resistance have emerged in which crime is a form of organised resistance which has origins in anti-colonial struggles

• when young members of em commit a crime it is a political act rather than a criminal act

++++ savanadan and Rastafarians

hall et al

neo marx

policing the crisis and muggings in Britain 1970s , moral panic, scape goats

• moral panic created around mugging by black youth

• media ran headlines suggesting that black youth were dangerous and this alerted public of a new problem and led to a demand for more police

• harsh prison sentences showed that the crisis was being dealt with

• the ruling class felt threatened due to the hegemony of the ruling class being threatened and used the black youths as scare goats to divert societies interests away from the social and economic crosses like stakes and unemployment.

• the ruling class cleverly manipulated the population into becoming distracted from the real problems like unemployment and poverty and more police which were then used to shut down strikes and protest.

• moral panic helped capitalism in two ways

• 1 the public were persuaded that society’s problems were caused by immigrants rather than the fault of the capitalistic society

• 2 the gov was able to justify the use of force to suppress the groups that were challenging them through the mugging crisis

willis

carried out observations, interviews, analysed diaries in a school in the midlands in 1970

he found a counter school subculture amongst working class boys who he followed over 18 months

• valued having a laugh at school and work above conformity and academic prgoress

• he saw this as a fight against capitalism

• they were semi class conscious which means they were partly aware that the futile capitalistic society was set against them and not meritocracy

• felt destine for low pay and low status regardless of how good they were in school

• felt more powerful when we stood together as mates in school and later life

• their actions trapped them in the system further as their misbehaviour did lead to low paid jobs