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Youth culture, subculture and the importance of neighbourhood

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61

Nordic Journal of Youth Research

YoungA R T I C L E

Copyright © 2006SAGE Publications(London,Thousand Oaks CAand New Delhi)www.sagepublications.comVol 14(1): 61–7410.1177/1103308806059815

Youth culture, subculture and the importance ofneighbourhood

TRACY SHILDRICKUniversity of Teesside, UK

AbstractInvestigations into youth culture are marginal to the field of youth studies. The Centrefor Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS) at the University of Birmingham publishedstudies of the post-war youth subcultures, such as the teddy boys and the punks, in thelate 1970s and early 1980s (see Hall and Jefferson, 1976). From the 1980s onwards,however, the main concerns for youth studies were the transitions that young peoplemade into the labour market. Transitions research continues to dominate, although theadvent of the rave and dance cultures of the late 1980s prompted a partial return toinvestigations of youth culture. In direct contrast to the influential theories of the CCCS,many recent accounts of youth culture have moved away from structural and class-based accounts of young people’s experiences and have produced studies that stressthe ‘tribal’ (Bennett, 1999, 2000), ‘individualized’ (Miles, 2000) and distinctly ‘post-subcultural’ (Muggleton, 2000) nature of the contemporary youth cultural experience.Recently, however, questions have been raised as to how far these theoretical insightsare useful across youth cultural identities and experiences (Hollands, 2002; Nayak, 2003;Pilkington and Johnson, 2003). This article adds to this slowly growing literature. Bydrawing upon data collected for a PhD, it is suggested that structural factors, such asneighbourhood residence, can be influential in shaping the cultural identities andexperiences of some groups of young people.

Keywordsneighbourhood, subculture, youth culture

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INTRODUCTION

In 1964 the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS) was established byRichard Hoggart at the University of Birmingham in order to explore cultural forms,practices and institutions and their relation to society and social change (Turner,1992). Inspired by the ‘conceptual bankruptcy of youth cultural theory’ (Murdockand McCron, 1976: 24), which was hitherto underpinned by notions of classlessnessamong young people, the CCCS produced a theoretical paradigm that situated socialclass at the centre of any understanding of youth culture. The theorists at the CCCSabandoned the term ‘youth culture’ in favour of ‘youth subculture’ and they movedaway from the position that suggested that ‘age and generation mattered most, or thatyouth culture was classless’ (Clarke et al., 1976: 15). The approach of the CCCS wasovertly Marxist in nature and drew heavily upon the concept of hegemony developedby Gramsci, along with the structural Marxism of Althusser. The CCCS argued that itwas vital to ‘situate youth in the dialectic between a hegemonic dominant cultureand the subordinate working-class parent culture of which youth is a fraction’ (Clarkeet al., 1976: 38).

Most contemporary youth cultural researchers subscribe to the general critique ofthe CCCS and many discount the approach as polemical and devoid of practical orempirical value (Bennett, 1999, 2000; Miles, 1998, 2000; Muggleton, 1997, 2000;Redhead, 1993). This ‘rejection’ of the CCCS subcultural theory has taken place in asocial context where rapidly rising rates of youth unemployment have shifted thegeneral focus of youth studies towards the issue of youth transitions into the labourmarket. In the late 1980s, however, the emergence of a new youth culture prompteda partial return to investigation of youth culture. The rave dance scene arguably repre-sented a radical departure from the subcultures that had preceded it. Indeed, theculture was not subcultural in the sense that it attracted a more socially diverseclientele (Henderson, 1993; Melechi, 1993; Merchant and MacDonald, 1994;Redhead, 1993). For Antonio Melechi, raves were a ‘cross-roads where unlikely sub-cultures (football, Indie, traveller among others) would meet’ (1993: 36). Youngwomen were deemed to participate in this culture in roughly equal numbers to youngmen, and, for the first time perhaps, young women were deemed to be activelyinvolved in a mainstream youth culture (Henderson, 1993). The culture appealedacross socio-economic backgrounds too, attracting young people from professionalas well as unemployed backgrounds (Gilman, 1991; Merchant and MacDonald, 1994).

The move away from CCCS subcultural theory has taken place in the context ofwider social change. Recent decades have been characterized by far-reaching socialchanges, which have led to the proposition that we now live variously in high modern(Giddens, 1996), late modern (Furlong and Cartmel, 1997) or post-modern society(Harvey, 1998) or, indeed, the ‘second age of modernity’ (Beck, 2000). Rapid social,political and economic changes have led to a ‘reworking of basic premises of socio-logical analysis’ (Giddens, 1996: 1). Social class has come in for a particular batteringwithin these debates, moving from a position where it was the ‘most widely usedconcept in sociology’ (Edgell, 1993: viii) to one where its usefulness and explanatoryvalue has been increasingly challenged or undermined (see Crompton, 1998, orRoberts, 2001, for a review of these debates). It is the ‘postmodern’ challenge to classanalysis that helped to inform many of the recent accounts of youth culture (Bennett,1999, 2000; Redhead, 1993). Amidst the perceived decline of collective, cohesive and

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seemingly more stable identities, many commentators have pointed to the signifi-cance of more fragmented groupings as we move towards the ‘time of the tribes’(Maffesoli, 1996), indicating a break up of mass culture. Some youth researchers haveturned to the concept of neo-tribalism to try to explain this apparent fragmentationof lifestyles and lifestyle choices (Bennett, 1999, 2000). It has been argued that, indirect contrast to the class based youth cultures of the past, contemporary culturesof youth are more fleeting, transitional and organized around individual lifestyle andconsumption choices. This allows for the use of concepts like ‘neo-tribes’ in account-ing for the ways in which young people’s youth cultural identities are thought nolonger to be underpinned by factors such as social class. Conversely, they are morelikely to be typified by a ‘postmodern persona’ or by ‘multiple identifications’(Shields, 1992: 16). Indeed for some, postmodern youth will move swiftly on througha succession of styles choosing them ‘like tins of soup on a supermarket shelf’(Polhemus, 1996: 143).

It has been suggested that the concept of ‘lifestyles’ might now be a more appro-priate tool in untangling the complex youth identities and affiliations that character-ize the contemporary youth experience (Bennett, 1999; Miles, 2000). The conceptis underpinned by the importance of consumerism for the development of youthfulidentities. Whereas the proposition of the ‘lifestyle’ concept does not wholly denythe significance of structural inequalities, it is the fragmented and individualized waysin which young people construct their identities that is of key significance. Bennettsuggests that:

I put forward a new theoretical framework for the study of the cultural relationshipbetween youth, music and style using the Maffesolian concept of neo-tribalism . . . Neo-tribalism provides a much more adequate framework as it allows for the shiftingnature of youth’s musical and stylistic preferences and the essential fluidity of youthcultural groups. Such characteristics have been a centrally defining, if developing,aspect of consumer based youth cultures since the establishment of the post-war youthmarket . . . I have endeavoured to illustrate how urban dance music and its attendantsensibilities of consumption, although appearing to have inspired a new chapter in thehistory of post-war youth culture, are actually the product of neo-tribal sensibilitieswhich have characterized young people’s appropriation of popular music and stylesince the immediate post-war period, such sensibilities being an inevitable aspect oflate modern consumer society. (Bennett, 1999: 614)

Likewise, it has also been suggested that clubbers are eager for a ‘slice of the post-modern experience’ (Redhead, 1997: 95). Muggleton describes his theoretical stanceas distinctly ‘Neo-Weberian’, but also argues for:

. . . a qualified acknowledgement of a postmodern sensibility. Subculturalists arepostmodern in that they demonstrate a fragmented, heterogeneous and individualisticstylistic identification. This is a liminal sensibility that manifests itself as an expressionof freedom from structure, control and restraint, ensuring that stasis is rejected infavour of movement and fluidity. (Muggleton, 2000: 158)

Perspectives such as those described above, which draw very broadly upon post-modern theoretical themes to inform their work, have tended to dominate withinrecent studies of youth culture. Nevertheless, a couple of very recent studies havedrawn conclusions that raise questions about some of these currently popularideas. Robert Hollands is one of the few who takes a more measured view of

63Shildrick Youth culture, subculture and neighbourhood




contemporary youth cultural identity and experience. While sensitive to the import-ance of new forms of social identity, Hollands suggests:

Despite the existence of some minority patterns of post-modern tribal club cultures,there are clear social demarcations evident in nightlife that arise from both wider socialdivisions and lifestyle segmentations. These divisions have resonance with Hutton’s(1995) concept of the 30/30/40 society, divided in to the disadvantaged, the insecureand the privileged. (Hollands, 2002: 168)

Hollands has also suggested that, in theoretical terms, many contemporary youthcultural researchers might have been too keen to shift the emphasis away from thetheoretical approach suggested by the CCCS. He argues that ‘in an attempt to distancethemselves from class-based analysis of the CCCS many postmodern accounts mightbe accused of throwing the youth (baby) out with the adolescent bath water’ (2002:157). Paul Hodkinson has gone even further in his recent book on his doctoralresearch on goths. He argues for a ‘reworked and updated notion of subculture’(2002: 9). While not wishing to discount the newer concepts and theories thatcurrently dominate the field, he suggests that there are enough aspects of gothculture to make the use of the term subculture useful, albeit ‘avoiding some of theterm’s previous implications’ (Hodkinson, 2002: 9). He goes on to argue that ‘mostgoths reject multitudes of fleeting affiliations in favour of a single intensive subcul-tural lifestyle’ (2002: 197).

This article aims to add something to these debates by arguing that not all youngpeople are actively engaged in a global youth culture and furthermore that someelements of CCCS subcultural theory might still have some pertinence in understand-ing some contemporary youth cultural experiences.

METHODOLOGY

The research reported upon here was undertaken for a PhD. A key aim of this projectwas not only to explore how youth cultural experiences were related to illicit druguse, but also to try to understand this within a consideration of the broader socio-economic aspects of young people’s lives. The study was conducted in Deighton, atown located in the north-east of England. Typical of many de-industrialized areas inthe north-east of England, parts of the town are characterized by extreme depriva-tion (Tees Valley Joint Strategy Unit, 2004). The project was qualitative and involved49 semi-structured interviews with 76 young people, as well as a number of episodesof participant observation. The participants were aged 16 to 26 years old; 45 weremale and 31 female. The young people came from a variety of social and economicbackgrounds, although as reflective of the nature of Deighton itself the majority couldbroadly be described as ‘working class’.

DIFFERENTIATED YOUTH CULTURE, DRUGS ANDNEIGHBOURHOOD: YOUTH CULTURAL GROUPS IN DEIGHTON

One of the key aims of this project was to explore whether or not young people wereaware of stylistically recognizable groups of young people or, indeed, whether such

64 Young 14(1)




groups existed within Deighton’s youth population. In this sample of young peoplethree very broad youth cultural groupings were noted. The vast majority of the youngpeople who took part in this research were not committed to a recognizable orvisually-distinctive style and did not describe themselves as being part of a recogniz-able youth group or culture. This is not especially surprising, as the majority of youngpeople do not appear to dress in particularly distinctive or unusual ways. These youngpeople were by their own admission ‘just normal’ or ‘just ordinary’. ‘Conventional’(Muggleton, 2000) or ‘ordinary’ (Ball et al., 2000; Brown, 1987; Jenkins, 1983) youngpeople are sometimes referred to in the youth literature, although it has been arguedthat these are a neglected element of the youth population (Waters, 1981). ‘Spectac-ular’ youth were the second discernable youth group in this project. ‘Spectacular’youth had adopted visually-distinctive ways of dressing, which, in their view and theviews of other young people, separated them out as distinctive in youth culturalterms. For most this reflected a commitment to a very specific youth cultural group,for example punks or goths (for a fuller discussion of these groups see Shildrick,2003).

The third group of young people I have chosen to call ‘trackers’. In view of theoriginal research questions the ‘trackers’ proved to be a particularly interesting groupof young people. Prior to the research, I was unaware of the groups who were easilyand often noted in ‘spectacular’ and ‘ordinary’ young people’s accounts. Thequotation below was typical of the sort of responses that young people gave to myquestions about the possible existence of youth cultural groups in Deighton:

There’s this group me and me friends call ‘trackers’. They are like tracksuit wearingthugs. There’s a lot of people in this town now wearing tracksuits. It’s the fashion, Ithink. Yeah, they are the main group that you would see in the town that you wouldrecognize. (Brendan, ‘ordinary’ youth)

‘Trackers’ were distinctive from both ‘spectacular’ and ‘ordinary’ youth in a numberof respects. They were known to relatively uniformly adopt ‘sports’ clothes.‘Trackers’ spent a disproportionate amount of their time hanging around the streets.Beyond the age of 16 none of the other young people (‘spectacular’ and ‘ordinary’)told me that they spent any time hanging around the streets, although a number didengage in this relatively popular activity in the earlier teenage years. ‘Trackers’ werealso unusual in so far as they rarely described taking part in the more mainstreamyouth cultural activities that others reported (going out to pubs and clubs) and, forthe most part, spending time on the streets tended to replace this type of activity.The following section of this article discusses the ‘trackers’ in more detail.

‘Trackers’: youth culture and illicit drugs

Eighteen ‘trackers’ took part in this project. They, like ‘spectacular’ youth, werecommitted to wearing particular types of clothes. This was often referred to by otheryoung people (‘spectacular’ and ‘ordinary’) as the ‘uniform’. Unlike ‘spectacular’youth, however, and more like ‘ordinary’ youth, ‘trackers’ perceived their modes ofdress to be normal and largely unremarkable. Very often the ‘trackers’ wore namedtracksuits and trainers. Often these were accompanied by a jacket of a similar type.Young men were noted for the wearing of a particular type of woollen hat and oftenyoung women wore peaked caps. Whereas modes of dress were clearly important to


05_shildrick_059815 (jk-t) 9/1/06 12:18 pm 5



‘trackers’, for most of them it was not something that, in their view, served to setthem apart from other young people. Moreover, ‘trackers’ were to a large extentunaware of the ways in which they were perceived to be stylistically different fromother young people:

All the young people wear tracksuits, you know the big names. I tell you would bereally surprised, they wear all the big names, Kappa, Adidas, Kicker Airmaxs . . . theyall wear them . . .they do I’m telling you. You may wonder how they afford it, it’s notthe cheap stuff, it’s all the names. But they do, that is what they wear’. (William,‘tracker’)

Lauren and Bianca were very clear about the sorts of clothes that were consideredappropriate within the ‘tracker’ locales (locality and its particular importance inrelation to ‘trackers’ is discussed below):

There was a lot of pressure to dress in a certain way while we were at school.Everybody had to have the names ’coz if you didn’t then you were sort of labelled. Itwas as if they didn’t have the names or if they came with a name which wasn’t verygood they would always get jeered at, say with HiTec trainers . . . if you go out you willsee people in all the trackies, Adidas and Reebocks. But for the girls Adidas tracksuitsand Reebok tops and always Nike Airmax trainers. Everyone used to say Nike Airmaxtrainers were the uniform ’coz everyone has them. They were not the [official school]uniform as you had to have shoes but everyone still wore them. (Bianca, ‘ordinary’youth)

For ‘trackers’ their youth cultural experiences were much less likely to include visitsto pubs and clubs than other young people. More often their leisure time continuedto be focused around the streets where they lived. Simply wandering around andhanging around was a common theme in the trackers’ accounts of their leisure time.

Dean: Well we just hang around the place, that is it.TS: What do you mean ‘hang around’?Dean: Well sometimes we walk around the streets, other times it’s on the school field

just hanging aroundTS: What do you do though?Dean: Well usually we have some cider, a couple of bottles. We drink that and

sometimes smoke dope.

Clarke et al. (1976) suggested that the street provided a focal point for youngpeople in their collective resistance through ritual, while for Paul Corrigan (1976)the street was simply the place where most young people met. More recently,however, Watt and Stenson (1997) argue that young people’s access to the streets isnot always equally distributed. For many of the other young people in their study thestreet was a place to be avoided. Watt and Stenson point out that class, racial andgender inequalities can be reinforced and played out in the ways in which youngpeople make use of the street. In their study of young people’s use of the streets,they found patterns of interaction that indicated a ‘complex pattern of ethnic, racialand class rivalries’ (Watt and Stenson, 1997: 262). There was evidence of this sort ofconflict and avoidance of certain areas in my research too. As Alex points out: ‘It’sthe Kappa and Adidas group that you see on the streets, the other styles they hideaway, you just don’t see them on the streets’.

While the vast majority of the young people in this project had knowledge ofdrugs and most claimed that they could access them if they wished, the ‘trackers’

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relationship to drug use different in a number of ways. For them, drugs were oftenan integral and accepted part of their leisure activities. ‘Trackers’ were unusual in sofar as they accessed and often used a wider range of illicit drugs than the other youngpeople in this sample. Many of the ‘trackers’ expressed no preference betweenalcohol and (some) illicit drugs. Indeed for ‘trackers’, illicit drug consumption is anaccepted, regular and largely unremarkable part of their leisure landscapes:

Well it’s what most of the kids round here do. I mean what else is there? They provideplaces [youth club] like this, yeah . . .but well it’s crap. I’m telling you. No-one wants toknow. Yeah the drugs they are all over the place . . .I mean, I don’t know many whodon’t do it. You will get the odd ones I suppose, but they would be odd ones. (Maria,‘tracker’)

‘Trackers’ frequently refer to the notion that drug dealers live within their locales andneighbourhoods:

TS: Can you easily got hold of drugs in DeightonKeith: Yes, it’s dead easy. If you want it you can get it, or if you can’t get it you just go

round the dealer’s door and give them a knock and they sort you out or theywill tell you straight away where to go. Or you could just see one of the lads[friends] and they will tell you where to go. It’s easy to get served at the dealers.When I was about 14, even 13 you just go.

‘Trackers’ were clearly very different to ‘ordinary’ and ‘spectacular’ young people inthis respect. They were unusual in so far as they almost all made reference to the factthat they were aware of drug dealers who lived in their communities. Whereas mostyoung people (across all three groups), talked about obtaining drugs from friends,for ‘spectacular’ and ‘ordinary’ young people pubs and clubs were a common venuewhere drugs might be accessed. ‘Trackers’ were unusual and distinctive in that theywere much more likely to report that their access to drugs was based within theirown neighbourhoods. There is now an increasing body of evidence that notes thatwhere young people are caught up in street-based youth culture(s) they are verylikely to come into contact with illicit drugs (Measham et al., 1998). Steve Pavis andSarah Cunningham-Burley have suggested that drug use is neither ‘marginal norperipheral to street youth culture’ (1999: 593). Mike Collison suggests that, whiledrugs are generally widely available, ‘some locations are saturated with them. In theselocales drugs take on the shape of an ‘ordinary’ everyday commodity’ (1996: 433).For ‘trackers’ the use of a range of illicit drugs, most notably cannabis and prescrip-tion tablets, was a usual activity and not especially notable. The social contexts inwhich ‘trackers’ gained knowledge of and subsequently, for many, used illicit drugs,was one which was firmly located in their immediate neighbourhoods. It was signifi-cant that most of them talked about their awareness of drug dealers living withintheir neighbourhoods. For ‘trackers’ the use of some drugs, particularly cannabis andprescription tablets, was a more ‘normalized’ and regular feature of their time-outleisure experiences (for a fuller discussion of the question of normalization, seeShildrick, 2002).

‘Trackers’: significance of neighbourhood

Well, you do associate different people with different areas – those who live in Allen’sPark are not as well off as me. In everyone’s opinion this is quite important because





that is how you relate to them and how you think about them. (Bianca, ‘ordinary’youth)

One of the mechanisms that young people used to describe social differentiation inDeighton was by different types of neighbourhood. Generally housing status can beused as a broader measure of social class positioning (Saunders, 1990) with the lowestsocial class positions found in the poorest forms of housing (Lee and Murie, 1997;Saunders, 1990). In this research, divisions by area of residence emerged as one ofthe most robust markers of social differentiation across this sample. Withoutexception, all of the ‘trackers’ lived (or had previously lived) on council housingestates within Deighton. Lydia Morris points out, in relation to her research on classin Hartlepool (a place with great similarity to Deighton), that the town has a ‘distinctspatial dimension to social polarisation’ in so far as the ‘arrangement of housing stockin the town translates into a distinct spatial pattern with high concentrations of un-employed in particular areas’ (1995: 193). She notes that:

. . . the long term unemployed tend to live on public-sector housing estates with highlevels of unemployment, tend to have partners who are also unemployed, to showconcentrations of unemployment in their extended networks, and to name closefriends who are also unemployed (Morris, 1995: 193).

It was these apparent differences between two types of housing (council and private)and the sorts of people perceived as living in them, which dominated young people’saccounts of Deighton. In interviews many young people (‘ordinary’ and ‘spectacu-lar’) made the link between the ‘trackers’ and the council estates explicitly:

Nicola: The ‘trackers’, they seem to live in the run down areas like . . . // . . . I meanthat would be where you would find then if you wanted to. Go to any of thosetypes of areas and the place is swarming with them. All the same, dressed thesame, doing the same things. They think they are cool and will hassle anyonewho looks different to them. Yeah, I would say if you are interested in them goand have a look at . . . You will definitely see them around there.

TS: Why do you think that is?Nicola: I don’t know really. It seems to be a thing that the kids around there will do.

They have that dress code and a bad habit of hanging around the streets andthe like. I suppose maybe that is just an accepted thing around there, like it isnot accepted around where I live.

‘Trackers’ too were aware of the disadvantages and deprivation that characterizedthese areas:

Paul: It all started with me hanging around with the wrong crowd. We were pinchingstuff every day. I thought it would go nowhere, but it did. I’ve stopped nowthough. I am taking control of my life.

TS: What do you mean?Paul: Well, when you get into trouble it has a lot to do with your background and

where you live. If you live in a dodgy area you are bound to get into trouble. Youmeet with the wrong people. If you knock about with the wrong people youhave had it. It’s the areas as well . . . there is nothing to do here. You startpinching and you get caught.

TS: Tell me about your friendsPaul: Well they were all rogues, a lot worse than me. But then that was where I lived,

everyone was a rogue – it’s rogue city.

68 Young 14(1)




‘Trackers’ lived in disadvantaged local authority estates in Deighton. The apparentdifferences between (some) council estates and the rest of Deighton emerged as arobust marker of differentiation, both in terms of experience (in that living in suchan area was felt to increase the likelihood of becoming a ‘tracker’) and perceptions(such areas were noted as being different, as a consequence of their perceived disad-vantage as well as for their association with ‘trackers’).

DIFFERENTIATED YOUTH CULTURE: A RETURN TO SUBCULTURE?

Recent accounts of youth culture have tended to infer the homogeneity of youth andrelatively little attention has been paid to the differentiated aspects of youth culturalidentity (see Hollands, 2002; Nayak, 2003; Shildrick, 2003, for notable exceptions).For some, youth cultural affiliations have become tribal (Bennett, 2000; Muggleton,2000) or, indeed, global in their nature. In addition, it has often been suggested thateither stylistic differences have receded in significance or young people are thoughtto be non-committal in stylistic terms, allegedly mixing and changing their styles liketins of soup on a supermarket shelf (Polhemus, 1994, 1996). Such propositions aboutcontemporary youth experiences are, however, based upon explorations of veryspecific and particular groups of young people, for example non-conventional or‘spectacular’ stylistic groups (Hodkinson, 2002; Muggleton, 2000; Polhemus, 1996)or rave culture participants (Redhead, 1993). It was a key aim of the researchreported upon here to move beyond a fascination with the most visible and spectac-ular of youth groups and to focus upon a more ‘ordinary’ group of young people,who were not identified as participants due to their involvement in particular youthcultures or for their known use of illicit drugs.

A number of studies have concluded that different youth cultures or youth groupsare notable (Blackman, 1995; Hall and Jefferson, 1976; Jenkins, 1983) and the resultsof the research reported upon in this article lead to similar conclusions. Area emergedas a particularly robust measure of inequality, both between different young peopleand in young people’s perceptions of differentiation in Deighton. Differences inneighbourhood were among the key factors that divided the ‘trackers’ from theremainder of the young people in this study. Areas were readily divided up into‘rough’ and more ‘respectable’ locales. This is not an unusual discovery. Other studieshave drawn similar conclusions (Damer, 1989; Shucksmith and Hendry, 1998). Areasdesignated as ‘rough’ were directly associated with the ‘trackers’ in two key ways.First, particular areas and estates within Deighton were identified (by ‘spectacular’and ‘ordinary’ young people) as locales where ‘trackers’ could be found. Second, the‘trackers’ who took part in this study lived (and socialized) within these particularlydeprived estates. ‘Trackers’’ leisure and cultural identities were more firmlyembedded in the use of the street, with ‘trackers’ consistently reporting less orminimal engagement with the sorts of mainstream activities described by the ‘spec-tacular’ and ‘ordinary’ young people.

While the potential importance of locality is missing from many recent studies ofyouth culture, the idea that area or residence can affect lifestyles and experiences isa theme in many other studies of young people’s lives (for example, Furlong et al.,1996; Jenkins, 1983). Shucksmith and Hendry have made similar observations fromtheir youth research and they too point to the importance of locality in helping to





shape young people’s broader leisure and cultural experiences. Moreover, theyconclude that:

Stark contrasts existed between the lifestyles of the boys and girls from differentcatchments. These were expressed not only in the differences in the patterns of leisureactivity or associations with friends but also in the pattern of health behaviors andbeliefs. (Shucksmith and Hendry, 1998: 47)

They go on to point to the spatial and social determinism that affects young people’sexperiences and behaviours and, thus, conclude that ‘there are very clear differencesbetween the groups and areas in which young people live in terms of their pursuitsand leisure habits’ (1998: 43). Johnston et al., too, are very clear about the ways inwhich locality affects young people’s lifestyles and experiences:

The local area was a key influence on young people’s experiences. Interviewees’opportunities and frames of reference were highly localized. The viability of a job,college course, training placement or health service provision was largely dependenton its physical proximity to the neighbourhood. Friends and leisure activities were alsohighly localized. (Johnston et al., 2000: 2)

The example of the ‘trackers’ provides a useful illustration of how neighbourhoodcan be important for the formation of youth cultural identities and experiences.Similarly the ‘trackers’’ attitudes towards, and experiences of, illicit drugs were veryclearly framed by their experiences of their local areas. The contexts in which‘trackers’ used and accessed illicit drugs tended to be firmly located on the streets oftheir immediate neighbourhoods. They were more likely to access and use a widerrange of illicit drugs than either the ‘ordinary’ or the ‘spectacular’ young people.They were particularly distinctive in their use of solvents and prescription tabletssuch as Temazepam. The abuse of such drugs is also closely associated with poorcommunities and some have suggested that prescription drugs have taken on thestatus as a ‘poor man’s drug’ (Fountain et al., 1999). For a small number of the‘trackers’ their drug use had extended to their use of heroin. While some have arguedthat more middle-class people are taking ‘up the (heroin) habit’ (Carnwath and Smith,2002: 12), most of the evidence still very much supports the view that the majorityof serious drug problems exist in deprived communities and are frequently supportedby the widespread use of heroin (MacDonald and Marsh, 2002).

Increasingly it is being recognized that some contemporary youth cultural experi-ences continue to be characterized by divisions and inequalities, and that not allyoung people are able to participate equally in global youth culture (Hollands, 2002;MacDonald et al., 2001; Nayak, 2003; Pilkington and Johnson, 2003). In fact, somestudies increasingly point to the deeply divided nature of youth culture, as it is recog-nized that the wider inequalities and disadvantages that young people experience canalso permeate their leisure and cultural lives. Anoop Nayak’s recent study of youthculture, also in the north-east of England, found deep divisions within young people’sidentities and experiences. His research uncovered three different youth culturalgroups, ‘Real Geordies’, ‘White Wannabes’ and ‘Charvers’. The ‘Real Geordies’ weretypically white working-class men, ‘the salt of the earth natives’ (Nayak , 2003: 311).The ‘White Wannabes’ were white young people who ‘wanted to be black’ (2003:316) and, thus, adopted many of the attributes associated with black (youth) culture.But it was the ‘Charvers’ who were found to inhabit ‘a different “youth-scape” tothat of other north-east young people’, one which involved ‘making different

70 Young 14(1)




transitions in the post-industrial economy that involved forging different pathwaysinto “gang” and neighbourhood networks’ (2003: 312). It is the key contention ofthis article that it is only by exploring the wider socio-economic contexts of youngpeople’s lives that connections between social class location, youth cultural identityand experience and patterns of drug use can be uncovered. For ‘trackers’ their disad-vantaged structural positions tended to predispose them to engagement in localizedleisure cultures and networks which tended to revolve around the ‘street’. Thesewere more likely to involve the regular use of particular types of illicit drugs, which,for some, extended to involvement in more deviant, anti-social and/or criminalcareers.

CONCLUSIONS

Reconsideration of the potential relationship between young people’s wider socialand economic situations and their youth cultural identities and experiences allowsus to reassess the potential usefulness of some of the older, largely discarded subcul-tural theories. Whereas, for some, the work of the CCCS remains the ‘crown jewelsof British youth research’ (Roberts, 2000: 10), most contemporary youth culturalresearchers tend to subscribe to the general critique of the CCCS. It is seen as almostmoribund and as no longer providing ‘a useful description of young people’s socialworld or their experiences’ (Karvonen et al., 2001: 408). Indeed, much of the recentwork in youth cultural studies has been concerned with shedding the theoreticaltraditions that were so important to the field in its early development.

While most contemporary studies of youth culture have tended to shy away frommaking, or simply deny, any connection between broader class cultures and youthcultural identities, other studies, including this one, have pointed to the importanceof understanding such processes inclusively rather than in isolation (MacDonald andMarsh, 2001). Indeed it would be difficult to understand the ‘trackers’’ youth culturaland drug using experiences without recourse to their wider socio-economic situa-tions. It was the ‘trackers’ who were the most likely to be disengaged from mainstreamyouth cultural activity. Their prolonged engagement with street-based youth culturesmeant, for some, a broader engagement with criminal and drug using careers. Thus,it might well be that: ‘some of the potential of older criminological and sociologicaltheories of sub-culture – with their emphasis upon the ways that youth culturesemerge as localized class-based “solutions” to material inequalities – may have beentoo quickly forgotten’ (MacDonald et al., 2001: 11). In this study, it appeared that intra-class divisions were played out and experienced through diversity in youth culturalidentities and experiences, including that of illicit drugs. Moreover, whereas in thepast the key differences were thought to exist between middle- and working-classyouth (Hall and Jefferson, 1976), in this study the key disparities were found to existwithin what might broadly be defined as the ‘working class’. As such, the potentialpertinence of older subcultural theories becomes most apparent in describing andtrying to understand the accounts of the ‘trackers’. For the CCCS, subcultures were‘elaborated on the terrain of class cultures’ (Clarke, 1979: 252). There was never anysuggestion that all working-class youth would respond to their situation in the sameway (Hall and Jefferson, 1976) or, indeed, that the working class constituted a homog-enous class in itself (Clarke, 1979). Moreover, they suggested that:





Locality continues to act as a focus for some working class cultural identifications, oftenamongst those who are in some sense marginal to production and to the collectivesolidarities generated there. Locality continues to act as a base for collective activityamong working class adolescents, both in the sense of providing cultural identities(. . . for many otherwise unnamed youth groupings) and constituting their ‘socialspace’ – ‘the street’, alleyways etc. which are public and less tightly regulated thanother areas. (Clarke, 1979: 251, emphasis added)

In this project one such group have been named – the ‘trackers’. It is not beingsuggested either that the older subcultural theories should be wholly embraced orthat they can explain young people’s youth cultural experiences in totality (of courseit was never meant to). Subcultural theory has been extensively, and often rightly,criticized and it is unlikely that it can ever be used wholly unmodified. Rather, it isthe contention here that some elements of subcultural theory – those which stressthe ways in which some youth cultural groups may form as a part of wider locally-based class cultural factions – might have some broader resonance with the youthcultural and drug using experiences of some working class youth.

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TRACY SHILDRICK is a lecturer in Youth Studies at the University of Teesside,UK. Her PhD explored the relationship between youth culture, illicit drugs andsocial class, and she has published a number of articles on these issues. Hersubsequent research interests remain in the area of youth and, in particular,revolve around young people’s transitions in poor neighbourhoods. Address:School of Social Sciences and Law, Borough Road, Middlesbrough TS1 3BA, UK.[email: [email protected]]




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