Working Class Youth Culture

First published in 1976, Working Class Youth Culture offers a much-needed alternative viewpoint to the law-and-order lobby which treats the youth question as a dreadful pest to be exterminated or caged in. The contributors describe the real conditions of life for working-class youth; how they make sense of the world; and how we can understand their perspective. The subjects discussed include Teddy Boys, Mods, Skinheads and the Glamrock Cult; dance-hall fights; picking up girls and going steady; how schools manufacture delinquency, truancy and vandalism; how working-class kids slide from bad schools to bad jobs, or to no jobs at all; Paki-bashing, racism and the competition over jobs and houses; how social change in post-war Britain has influenced youth culture; and how social scientists have hidden the real character of youth troubles behind the myth of a classless society. This book will be of interest to students of sociology and anthropology.

List of contents

Preface Contributors Introduction 1. Youth and Class 2. Boys Will be Men 3. 'Paki-bashing' in a North East Lancashire Cotton Town 4. Youth in Pursuit of Itself 5. Beyond the Skinheads 6. When Pupils and the Teachers Refuse a Trace 7. Working Class Youth Cultures Bibliography

About the author

Geoff Mungham and Geoff Pearson

Product details

• Authors: Geoff Pearson Mungham
• Assisted by: Mungham Geoff (Editor), Pearson Geoff (Editor)
• Publisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd.
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 18.11.2025
• EAN: 9781032606996
• ISBN: 978-1-0-3260699-6
• No. of pages: 173
• Series: Routledge Revivals
• Subjects: Social sciences, law, business > Sociology > Sociological theories; SOCIAL SCIENCE / General, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Popular Culture, Social Theory, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Sociology / General, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Demography, working class;youth culture;delinquency;law and order