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Youth Subcultures

Labelling, identity, gender, ethnicity and moral panics in youth deviance

  • 3 things to know
  • Component 01

Overview

Recall questions on left realist objections to neo-Marxism, labelling with Becker and Lemert's primary and secondary deviance, deviant careers and Young's Notting Hill drug users, Thornton's subcultural capital, deviance and identity, Messerschmidt on masculinity, Gilroy and Sewell on ethnicity, and Cohen's moral panics, folk devils and deviance amplification.

What you need to know

Answer each one before you reveal it.

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Key term

Distinguish primary from secondary deviance.

Key term

How can labelling produce a deviant career?

Key term

What is Gilroy's explanation of black youth crime, and how do left realists answer it?

Questions from this subtopic

Each one with the model answer underneath.

  1. 1

    What do left realists object to in the neo-Marxist account of youth deviance?

    Model answer

    It romanticises young offenders as political rebels, when most youth crime has no political content and its victims are overwhelmingly other working-class people.

  2. 2

    What is the interactionist starting point on youth deviance?

    Model answer

    Becker argued that no act is deviant in itself; it becomes deviant only when a rule is applied to it and the label successfully sticks to the person.

  3. 3

    Distinguish primary from secondary deviance.

    Model answer

    Lemert's primary deviance is rule-breaking that goes unlabelled and has no effect on how a person sees themselves, while secondary deviance is the further offending that follows once the person has been publicly labelled and responds to that reaction.

  4. 4

    How can labelling produce a deviant career?

    Model answer

    The label becomes a master status that overrides everything else about the young person; others react to it, legitimate opportunities close off, and they take on the deviant identity and seek out others who share it.

  5. 5

    What did Young's study of drug users in Notting Hill show?

    Model answer

    That heavy police attention pushed marijuana use from a fringe activity to the centre of the group's identity, producing a more organised and secretive deviant subculture, which is a clear case of secondary deviance.

  6. 6

    What are the main weaknesses of the labelling explanation?

    Model answer

    It is deterministic in assuming labels are always accepted, when some young people reject or resist them, and it says nothing about why the original act was committed.

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Introducing Socialisation, Culture and Identity
Families and Relationships
Youth Subcultures
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Murdock identified sexual, , economic and educational functions.
reproductiveemotionalpolitical

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AVictims may fear reprisal, or feel shame or economic dependence.
BAbuse in the home has historically been treated as a private matter.
CMany incidents are never reported or recorded.

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Sex refers to the biological category of male or female.
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