Abstract
Understanding young people and defining what it means to be a young person is a crucial challenge in youth research. In the Anglo-American tradition, youth studies can be roughly divided into two schools—youth transitions research and youth cultural research. In Nordic youth research, especially in Finland, the focus on youth culture research has had less importance (Suurpää and Hoikkala, 2005). In Finland, recent directions in youth studies can be described as an ‘ethnographic turn’, and overall youth culture research today is increasingly important in Nordic youth studies, explaining the choices of young people in music, style, sports or politics, their behavioural norms, and meanings of that behaviour. Subcultural Theory: Traditions and Concepts focuses on the approaches of oppositional youth subcultural studies, gives an elaborated, theoretical historical overview, and covers a wide range of thematic topics. Even though the ‘subculture’ might be interpreted as a very broad term, this book focuses on youth subcultures and does not cover the kind of groups that would ‘shift the focus away from youthfulness and from the idea of groups with an antagonistic relationship with normal society’ (p. 3). As a conceptual discussion of youth subcultures, the book also gives relevant insight into the methodological issues of youth studies.
From the 10 chapters of the book, we can read about youth cultural studies from America, Europe, Australia and Asia spanning from the nineteenth century until today. Patrick Williams, however, is not only an ‘armchair academic’ discussing previous studies. As he has had a great deal of experience participating in punk, straightedge and extreme metal subcultures himself, he has used many examples from his personal experiences and thoughts. The book starts with his memories about a school shooting in Tuusula, Finland, and the interpretations of the school shooting as a ‘tiny, but frightening subculture’, as put by a journalist who approached him for an explanation of the phenomenon. Personal thoughts about the meaning of ‘subculture’—Williams did not agree with above-mentioned definition—are an excellent introduction to the journey through the schools and themes of subculture studies.
The first two subsections outline the theoretical context of subculture research: the problematic nature of the concept, and the overview of the studies in different schools and academic traditions. Usually subculture research is divided into the Chicago school, the Birmingham school and post-subcultural studies. Williams uses a more stratified division, distinguishing between the two American traditions from the first half of the twentieth century, in addition to the Chicago school also deviance and strain studies; as well as the two British traditions, the Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies from the 1970s, and a second, wider approach, which he named ‘From the Manchester school for post-subculture studies’. In addition to these, he added the approach ‘Back to subculture—the symbolic interactionist tradition’. Subculture studies from last decade can be characterized by a debate over the suitability of classical (especially Birmingham school) theories, and the concept of ‘subculture’ for contemporary youth cultural analyses. The central claim of the post-subcultural approach is that individual choices prevail over models of social constrains, and subcultural groups cannot be treated as though they were determined by a dominant culture, since the whole society is too fragmented (for example, Bennett, 1999; Muggleton, 2000; Redhead, 1990). Other critical researchers highlight the idea that class, social segregation and exclusion still play crucial roles, and that the post-subcultural approach is disconnected from local structural processes, thus overestimating the freedom of choice in consumption (for example, Hesmondhalg, 2005; McCulloch et al., 2006; Schildrick and MacDonald, 2006).
Although Williams does not explicitly address the ongoing debate, the author is clearly on the side that favours the use of the concept ‘subculture’. However, he does not approach subculture as a ‘collective resistance to cultural hegemony’ (p. 28) according to Birmingham School. Rather, he favours the symbolic interactionist perspective, which sees subcultures as culturally bounded, but not closed, networks of people. In the light of the ongoing debate, he offers a fresh alterative by using the symbolic interactionist approach, which helps to build the bridge between the Birmingham School and post-subcultural studies. He has contemporary sensibilities from post-subcultural studies in his choice of topics, and a concrete, transparent way of writing analyses, without over-romanticising or over-abstracting subcultures. Williams does not offer one definition for, or new theory about ‘subculture,’ but rather, encourages the use of multiple methods for seeking understanding, while keeping in mind the use of these concepts. As the author puts it himself, ‘it has not been an exercise in constructing a new theory of subculture /…/ but an attempt to summarize and synthesise some of many theories, concepts and empirical studies that have come before’ (p. 186). This attempt could be considered successful. Through the concepts Patrick Williams has used to organize the book, he gives an updated frame for approaching youth subcultures.
The topics included in the book after the first two theoretically focused chapters are Race and Gender; Style; Resistance; Moral Panic, Identity and Authenticity and Scales and Related Fields, which focus on the bridges between subculture research and social movements, and fan culture studies. All the topics are equally relevant and proportionally discussed. As it would be too space consuming to offer a deep insight into all of the chapters, I chose the ‘Style’ to make an example of his approach. Style has been around since at least one of the most theorized topics from the Birmingham school: youth subcultures are often understood in stylistic terms, and style has been approached as a revolt in itself. This subchapter begins with a recent personal experience of the author again, from the Kunsthalle Vien in 2008. Williams thus describes his confusion: ‘This is punk?’ when he found an important part of his own youth reduced to material cultural artefacts and case studies of avant-garde artists he had never heard of (p. 66). This well chosen example, which refers to the domestication and commercialization of subcultural style, becomes the starting point of the discussion of academic conceptualization of style. He discusses classical conceptual frames—the meaning of style, the processes from consumption to subcultural style and homologies in ideology and practice—by relating them to significant empirical research. By distinguishing semiotic and ethnographic homologies, he first refers to most scholars from the Birmingham school, including Dick Hebdige (1979) who never studied lived experiences of subcultural youth, but focused on abstract semiotic analyses. Second (ethnographically), he uses Paul Willis’s in-depth ethnography on everyday activities of subcultural youth, and includes contemporary analyses about bike messengers (Kidder, 2005) and homegirls, the members of Latino youth gangs (Mendoza-Denton, 2008). He looks at the subculturalists’ creation of new meaning for symbols, as well as the processes of diffusion and the defusion of style.
The symbolic interactionist perspective is recognizable throughout the book, and could be interpreted in the context of youth research methodology as a reflective approach that acknowledges the importance of the concepts. Patrick Williams stresses that ‘youth subcultures are not real things. They are abstractions created and communicated among people—academics, parents, newsmakers, moral entrepreneurs, and kids—that shape our understanding or young people’s collective activities’ (p. 39). He reminds us that like class distinctions, we make and remake race and gender every time we use their ideas to guide our interactions with other people (p. 63). It is important to ‘pay attention how these concepts frame our understanding of all people’ (p. 46). When explaining demonizing football hooliganism, heavy metal moshing or punk thrashing, he points out that criticism to certain youth behaviour has ‘less to do with dangerous and violent behaviour and more with the manner in which it is carried out’ (p. 68). The connotations that are given to certain behaviours are dependent on established frames and concepts. Young people are in many cases constructed as a social problem when they do not fit into existing frames, and despite this, young people do not see themselves the same way. On the other hand, the ways by which youth (sub) cultures are perceived in society, and the ‘moral panic’ around them, also influence how insiders identify themselves and outsiders perceive them. ‘Youth subcultures may be as much created by morally right-thinking adults as by young people themselves’ (p. 110). Concepts do not only explain the words of young people, but also their forms, their identities and, finally, also their behaviour. As he points out, ‘concepts of labelling, folk devils, and moral panics can be used to identify the analytic nature of societal reaction to individuals who become emblematic of social disintegration’ (p. 116). Patrick Williams stresses that the same phenomenon can be analyzed differently when approached from other theoretical perspectives, and he gives merit to the theories of new social movements, which discuss subcultures without narrowing them down to a class problem (as the Birmingham school did), or de-politicizing them as post-subcultural studies does.
The book gains credibility because of its readability and comprehensibility. The theoretical discussion is easy and enjoyable reading because of its simple language and logical arguments. At the same time, however, the latter point makes it a valuable, critical contribution for established scholars working in youth subcultures. But, it is also an ideal introduction for students lacking a deeper background knowledge of the contemporary debate over subculture research.
Even though there is a considerable amount of literature on youth subcultural studies, this book distinguishes itself from others in recent decade as a theoretical monograph, which gives a fresh view on the topic. Considering that Patrick Williams used the definition of subculture as a relevant background concept (Fine and Kleinman, 1979) in his approach, I wonder why he, while giving an exhaustive overview of relevant literature, has not quoted David Moore, who has also used the symbolic interactionist approach explaining skinhead subculture in Perth Australia. Also, not much subculture literature outside of Anglo-American traditions was mentioned. The understandable reason behind that is that much European youth (sub)culture literature is not available in English. However, subculture research and discussion about the concept has its own particularities in smaller countries with different societal structure (for example, Suurpää and Hoikkala, 2005). It would be good if future discussions would also include this kind of approach; this could enrich the discussions over youth (sub) cultures in contemporary society.
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
This book review is part of research project ETF7331 Youth Subcultures and Lifestyles in Estonia: Where does the boundary between distinctive and deviant behaviour lie.