In understanding youth subcultures, class and gender factors are of central importance. Firstly, what is a culture? A culture is the customs and civilisation of a particular people at a particular time. Following on from this a subculture is a social group or smaller culture contained within a larger group or culture. This essay will attempt to deal with three essential factors of a subculture, youth, gender and class, and how they effect a subculture. The particular time period and people in question is Irish and English youth subcultures in the latter part of the last century up to present day.
As I defined in the opening paragraph, a culture is a distinctive structure of customs and civilisation of activities and values. " Sociologists define culture as the values, beliefs, behaviour and material objects that constitute a people's way of life" (Soyinka, 1991). A culture is also our social heritage, a bridge to the past and a guide to the future. Similarly subcultures "must exhibit a distinctive enough shape and structure to make them identifiably different from their "parent" culture. They must be focused around certain activities, values, certain uses of material artefacts, territorial spaces etc" (The Subculture reader pg 100). An example of these identifying characteristics would be the skinheads in England or the gothic groups seen in both Ireland and England who identify with one another by their style, behaviour, dress and music. However as well as showing characteristic differences a subculture must also show characteristic similarities to its "parent" culture. A subculture is a cultural pattern that's sets the group apart from some segment of a society's population, for example gays or Rastafarians, but at the same time maintains strong links with its "parent" culture. Look at how the members of these diverse subcultures continue close ties with home and family or even community look at Irish Sunday markets which are still a community and family event which everyone partakes in no matter which subculture they belong to.
