FAMST 192CT Lecture Notes - Lecture 8: Moral Panic, Angela Mcrobbie, Subculture
Document Summary
Part 3 - limits and critiques of british subcultural theory. Problems of theory and interpretation: style as resistance. Stanley cohen complained that cccs theorists overstretched the concept of resistance and simultaneously reduced it to a question of mere style. Style"s import exaggerated, robbed of its elements of fun, flattened to only a political matter. Interpretations are disputable and young people are made to carry too much. Too much weight being placed on subcultural styles. "the nagging sense here is that these lives, selves, and identities do not always coincide wit what they are supposed to stand for"(cohen) According to one critic, theorists were guilty of reducing members "to the status of dumb, anonymous mannequins incapable of producing their own meanings and awaiting the arrival of the code-breaker of their secret identity" (gary clarke) Basically, this criticism blames subcultural theorists for neglecting to engage with members" own accounts of their subcultural involvement and experiences: homology.
