Working Class Youth Culture

First published in 1976, Working Class Youth Culture offers a much-needed alternative viewpoint to the law-and-order lobby which treats the youth question as a dreadful pest to be exterminated or caged in.

First published in 1976, Working Class Youth Culture offers a much-needed alternative viewpoint to the law-and-order lobby which treats the youth question as a dreadful pest to be exterminated or caged in. The contributors describe the real conditions of life for working-class youth; how they make sense of the world; and how we can understand their perspective. The subjects discussed include Teddy Boys, Mods, Skinheads and the Glamrock Cult; dance-hall fights; picking up girls and going steady; how schools manufacture delinquency, truancy and vandalism; how working-class kids slide from bad schools to bad jobs, or to no jobs at all; Paki-bashing, racism and the competition over jobs and houses; how social change in post-war Britain has influenced youth culture; and how social scientists have hidden the real character of youth troubles behind the myth of a classless society. This book will be of interest to students of sociology and anthropology.