Youth, Crime and Media MEP Emergence of Youth: Teenage Consumer to Counterculture

Chicago School ethnographies: youth and ‘slum societies’ Studies of immigrant communities during the Depression (Whyte 1943; Cressey 1932) “The younger generation has built up its own society relatively independently of the influence of its elders” (Whyte 1943: p.xviii) Corner boys (unemployed, uneducated) v. College boys (upwardly mobile) Racketeering and political activities

The first teenagers Turn of 20thC – young people enjoy better standard of living, more leisure time and economic independence Moral panics about delinquency – 1930s statistics show increase in juvenile crime Fewer marriages in Manchester during 1930s than 50s or 60s (Fowler 1992) Public dancing and cinema going - first examples of mass teenage consumption

Case study: Ballroom dancing Standardisation of dance steps (waltz, foxtrot, quickstep, tango) – strict tempo Late 1930s: US craze for swing and jitterbug (jiving) threatens the conservatism of standardised couple- dance styles Jitterbug and rumba are controversial: new styles flout social / sexual etiquette Seeds of rock ‘n’ roll era are sown

WW2 – and after the war Wartime – closure of schools + youth clubs, high wages, black-outs blamed for high delinquency rates (Baney 1987) 1948 – National Service Act 1955 – sharp increase in juvenile offences National survey - youth enjoying greater autonomy + affluence (Abrams 1959) 1960s – end of NS, liberal social policies

Youth as a generational unit Disaffected, delinquent youth – initially linked to family and social class issues Early models of ‘maladjusted’ youth centre on specific urban, working class communities (e.g. Mays 1954) Post-1955 youth re-categorised as a distinctive generation – the ‘generation gap’, ‘youth culture’, ‘baby boomers’

Countercultures Emerge in the 1960s as generational categories (i.e. all young people of a certain social and political bent) Hippies – middle class, bohemian, politically motivated youth (Melly 1972) Moral campaigns intended to check the ‘permissive revolution’ (Newburn 1991) Countercultures fracture into subcultures