Abstract
Utilising testimony from over twenty oral history interviews this chapter challenges traditional approaches to youth culture that position alternative and mainstream cultures as necessarily opposed. Young people’s identities and youth cultural experiences have often been categorised and labelled by adults, ranging from academics to the media, with far less emphasis placed on the views of the young people under observation. This chapter illuminates the nuances in young people’s cultural identification, and sheds light on the experiences of ‘ordinary’ young people whose experiences are so often absent from studies of youth culture. It argues that oral testimony is a valuable tool for scholars wishing to access the voices and experiences of young people who are less often represented in the traditional archive.
Material from this chapter appears in a fuller form in Sarah Kenny, Unspectacular Youth? Evening Leisure Space and Youth Culture in Sheffield, c.1960–c.1989 (PhD thesis, University of Sheffield, 2017).
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
Notable examples include Anna Davin, Growing Up Poor: Home, School and Street in London, 1870–1914 (London: Rivers Oram, 1996); Linda A. Pollock, Forgotten Children: Parent–Child Relations from 1500 to 1900 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983); Colin Heywood, A History of Childhood (Cambridge: Polity, 2001); Harry Hendrick, Child Welfare: England 1872–1989 (London: Routledge, 1994).
- 2.
Publications include Jon Garland et al., “Youth Culture and the End of ‘Consensus’ in Post-War Britain,” Contemporary British History 26, no. 3 (September 2012): 265–271; The Subcultures Network, eds., Subcultures, Popular Music and Social Change (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars, 2014); The Subcultures Network, eds., Fight Back: Punk, Politics and Resistance (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2015).
- 3.
Stanley Cohen, Folk Devils and Moral Panics: The Creation of the Mods and Rockers, 3rd ed. (Abingdon: Routledge Classics, 2002); Stuart Hall and Tony Jefferson, eds., Resistance Through Rituals: Youth Subcultures in Post-War Britain (London: Routledge, 1993).
- 4.
Examples of this include Robert Perks and Alistair Thomson, eds., The Oral History Reader (London: Routledge, 1997); Kate Fisher, “‘She Was Quite Satisfied with the Arrangements I Made’: Gender and Birth Control in Britain 1920–1950,” Past & Present 169, no. 1 (November 2000): 161–193; Simon Szreter and Kate Fisher, Sex Before the Sexual Revolution: Intimate Life in England 1918–1963 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010); Penny Summerfield, Reconstructing Women’s Wartime Lives: Discourse and Subjectivity in Oral Histories of the Second World War (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1998).
- 5.
Paul Thompson, The Voice of the Past: Oral History, 3rd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 8.
- 6.
Andy Bennett, Culture and Everyday Life (London: Sage, 2005), 4.
- 7.
For more on debates surrounding the concept of the mainstream see Sarah Baker, Andy Bennett, and Jodie Taylor, eds., Redefining Mainstream Popular Music (New York: Routledge, 2013).
- 8.
The work of the CCCS established subculture as a key way of analysing the cultures and behaviours of young people in post-war Britain, and debates around subculture have continued to dominate the field. See Shane Blackman, “Youth Subcultural Theory: A Critical Engagement with the Concept, Its Origins and Politics, from the Chicago School to Postmodernism,” Journal of Youth Studies 8, no. 1 (2005): 1–20; Andy Bennett and Keith Kahn-Harris, eds., After Subculture: Critical Studies in Contemporary Youth Culture, 4th ed. (London: Palgrave, 2004); David Muggleton and Rupert Weinzierl, eds., The Post-Subcultures Reader (London: Bloomsbury, 2003); Steve Redhead, Derek Wynne, and Justin O’Connor, eds., The Clubcultures Reader: Readings in Popular Cultural Studies (Oxford: Wiley, 1998); Sarah Thornton, Club Cultures: Music, Media and Subcultural Capital (Cambridge: Polity, 1995); Tracy Shildrick and Robert MacDonald, “In Defence of Subculture: Young People, Leisure and Social Divisions,” Journal of Youth Studies 9, no. 2 (2006): 124–140.
- 9.
Bill Osgerby, Youth in Britain Since 1945 (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 1998), 74.
- 10.
Tess Coslett, Ceilia Lury, and Penny Summerfield, eds., Feminismand Autobiography: Texts, Theories, Methods (London: Routledge, 2000), 4.
- 11.
Maurice Halbwachs, On Collective Memory, trans. Lewis A. Coser (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), 40.
- 12.
Alessando Portelli, “What Makes Oral History Different,” in The Oral History Reader, eds. Robert Perks and Alistair Thomson (London: Routledge, 1997), 68.
- 13.
Portelli, “What Makes Oral History Different,” 67.
- 14.
Helena Mills, “Using the Personal to Critique the Popular: Women’s Memories of 1960s Youth,” Contemporary British History 30, no. 4 (2016): 467.
- 15.
Daisy Payling, “‘Socialist Republic of South Yorkshire’: Grassroots Activism and Left-Wing Solidarity in 1980s Sheffield,” Twentieth Century British History 25, no. 4 (2014): 604.
- 16.
Dave Child and Mick Paddon, “Sheffield: Steelyard Blues,” Marxism Today 18 (July 1984): 19.
- 17.
Examples include Paul Chatterton and Robert Hollands, Urban Nightscapes: Youth Cultures, Pleasure Spaces and Corporate Power (London: Sage, 2003); Andy Bennett, “‘Going Down the Pub!’: The Pub Rock Scene as a Resource for the Consumption of Popular Music,” Popular Music 16, no. 1 (1997): 97–108; Pepper G. Glass, “Doing Scene: Identity, Space, and the Interactional Accomplishment of Youth Culture,” Journal of Contemporary Ethnography 41, no. 6 (2012): 695–716.
- 18.
Jacqueline interviewed by Sarah Kenny on September 3, 2015 All interviews are in the possession of the author.
- 19.
Jacqueline interview.
- 20.
Tamar interviewed by Sarah Kenny on September 22, 2015.
- 21.
Juan interviewed by Sarah Kenny on January 27, 2015. Note: The Boys’ Brigade is a Christian youth organisation founded in 1883 in Glasgow, Scotland. For a recent analysis on the activities and objectives of the Boys’ Brigade see Sian Edwards, Youth Movements, Citizenship and the English Countryside: Creating Good Citizens, 1930–1960 (London: Palgrave, 2018).
- 22.
Jacqueline interview.
- 23.
Jacqueline interview.
- 24.
Juan interview.
- 25.
Juan interview.
- 26.
Juan interview.
- 27.
Debbie interviewed by Sarah Kenny on November 7, 2014.
- 28.
Debbie interview.
- 29.
Debbie interview.
- 30.
Jeff interviewed by Sarah Kenny on September 28, 2015.
- 31.
Jeff interview.
- 32.
See, for example, BBC4’s series of Britannia documentaries, including Punk Britannia (United Kingdom: BBC, 2012); Q Magazine’s “The Best Gigs Ever” (September 1996); “Q’s 100 Best Albums” (January 1995).
- 33.
Angela McRobbie, “Shut Up and Dance: Youth Culture and Changing Modes of Femininity,” Young 1, no. 2 (May 1993): 19.
- 34.
Thornton, Club Cultures, 10.
- 35.
Thornton, Club Cultures, 11.
- 36.
Tamar interview.
- 37.
Tamar interview.
- 38.
Damon interviewed by Sarah Kenny on September 31, 2015.
- 39.
Damon interview.
- 40.
Adrian interviewed by Sarah Kenny on October 8, 2015.
- 41.
David interviewed by Sarah Kenny on October 10, 2015.
- 42.
David interview.
- 43.
Trish interviewed by Sarah Kenny on September 21, 2015.
- 44.
Tamar interview.
- 45.
Damon interview.
- 46.
Tamar interview.
- 47.
Damon interview.
- 48.
Thornton, Club Cultures, 14.
- 49.
Alison Huber, “Mainstream as Metaphor: Imagining Dominant Culture,” in Redefining Mainstream Popular Music, eds. Sarah Baker, Andy Bennett, and Jodie Taylor (New York: Routledge, 2013), 5.
- 50.
Tamar interview.
- 51.
Tamar interview.
- 52.
Adrian interview.
References
Baker, Sarah, Andy Bennett, and Jodie Taylor, eds. Redefining Mainstream Popular Music. New York: Routledge, 2013.
Beard, Martha Rose. “Re-Thinking Oral History—A Study of Narrative Performance.” Rethinking History 21, no. 4 (2017): 529–548.
Bennett, Andy. “‘Going Down the Pub!’: The Pub Rock Scene as a Resource for the Consumption of Popular Music.” Popular Music 16, no. 1 (1997): 97–108.
Bennett, Andy. Popular Music and Youth Culture: Music, Identity and Place. Basingstoke: MacMillan, 2000.
Bennett, Andy. Culture and Everyday Life. London: Sage, 2005.
Bennett, Andy, and Keith Kahn-Harris, eds. After Subculture: Critical Studies in Contemporary Youth Culture. 4th ed. London: Palgrave, 2004.
Blackman, Shane. “Youth Subcultural Theory: A Critical Engagement with the Concept, Its Origins and Politics, from the Chicago School to Postmodernism.” Journal of Youth Studies 8, no. 1 (2005): 1–20.
Carnevali, Francesca, and Julie-Marie Strange, eds. 20th Century Britain: Economic, Cultural and Social Change. 2nd ed. London: Routledge, 2007.
Chatterton, Paul, and Robert Hollands. Urban Nightscapes: Youth Cultures, Pleasure Spaces and Corporate Power. London: Sage, 2003.
Child, Dave, and Mick Paddon. “Sheffield: Steelyard Blues.” Marxism Today 18 (July 1984): 19.
Cohen, Stanley. Folk Devils and Moral Panics: The Creation of the Mods and Rockers. 3rd ed. Abingdon: Routledge Classics, 2002.
Connell, John, and Chris Gibson. Sound Tracks: Popular Music, Identity, and Place. London: Routledge, 2003.
Coslett, Tess, Celia Lury, and Penny Summerfield, eds. Feminism and Autobiography: Texts, Theories, Methods. London: Routledge, 2000.
Cosson, Fiona, “The Small Politics of Everyday Life: Local History Society Archives and the Production of Public Histories.” Archives and Records 38, no. 1 (2017): 45–60.
Davin, Anna. Growing Up Poor: Home, School and Street in London, 1870–1914. London: Rivers Oram, 1996.
Edwards, Sian. Youth Movements, Citizenship and the English Countryside: Creating Good Citizens, 1930–1960. London: Palgrave, 2018.
Fisher, Kate. “‘She Was Quite Satisfied with the Arrangements I Made’: Gender and Birth Control in Britain 1920–1950.” Past & Present 169, no. 1 (2000): 161–193.
Garland, Jon, Keith Gildart, Anna Gough-Yates, Paul Hodkinson, Bill Osgerby, Lucy Robinson, John Street, Pete Webb, and Matthew Worley. “Youth Culture and the End of ‘Consensus’ in Post-War Britain.” Contemporary British History 26, no. 3 (2012): 265–271.
Glass, Pepper, G. “Doing Scene: Identity, Space, and the Interactional Accomplishment of Youth Culture.” Journal of Contemporary Ethnography 41, no. 6 (2012): 695–716.
Halbwachs, M. On Collective Memory. Translated by Lewis A. Coser. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992.
Hall, Stuart, and Tony Jefferson, eds. Resistance Through Rituals: Youth Subcultures in Post-War Britain. London: Routledge, 1993.
Hebdige, Dick. Subculture: The Meaning of Style. London: Methuen, 1979.
Hendrick, Harry. Child Welfare: England 1872–1989. London: Routledge, 1994.
Heywood, Colin. A History of Childhood. Cambridge: Polity, 2001.
Marwick, Arthur. British Society Since 1945. 4th ed. London: Penguin, 2003.
McRobbie, Angela. “Shut Up and Dance: Youth Culture and Changing Modes of Femininity.” Young 1, no. 2 (1993): 13–31.
Mills, Helena. “Using the Personal to Critique the Popular: Women’s Memories of 1960s Youth.” Contemporary British History 30, no. 4 (2016): 463–483.
Muggleton, David, and Rupert Weinzierl, eds. The Post-subcultures Reader. London: Bloomsbury, 2003.
Nott, James. Going to the Palais: A Social And Cultural History of Dancing and Dance Halls in Britain, 1918–1960. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015.
Osgerby, Bill. Youth in Britain Since 1945. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 1998.
Payling, Daisy. “‘Socialist Republic of South Yorkshire’: Grassroots Activism and Left-Wing Solidarity in 1980s Sheffield.” Twentieth Century British History 25, no. 4 (2014): 602–627.
Perks, Robert, and Alistair Thomson, eds. The Oral History Reader. London: Routledge, 1997.
Pollock, Linda A. Forgotten Children: Parent–Child Relations from 1500 to 1900. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983.
Rappaport, Erika, Sandra Trudgen Dawson, and Mark J. Crowley, eds. Consuming Behaviours: Identity, Politics and Pleasure in Twentieth-Century Britain. London: Bloomsbury, 2015.
Redhead, Steve, Derek Wynne, and Justin O’Connor, eds. The Clubcultures Reader: Readings in Popular Cultural Studies. Oxford: Wiley, 1998.
Shildrick, Tracy, and Robert MacDonald, “In Defence of Subculture: Young People, Leisure and Social Divisions.” Journal of Youth Studies 9, no. 2 (2006): 124–140.
Summerfield, Penny. Reconstructing Women’s Wartime Lives: Discourse and Subjectivity in Oral Histories of the Second World War. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1998.
Summerfield, Penny, and Corinna Peniston-Bird. “Women in the Firing Line: The Home Guard and the Defence of Gender Boundaries in Britain in the Second World War.” Women’s History Review 9, no. 2 (2000): 231–255.
Szreter, Simon, and Kate Fisher. Sex Before the Sexual Revolution: Intimate Life in England 1918–1963. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010.
The Subcultures Network, eds. Fight Back: Punk, Politics and Resistance. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2015.
The Subcultures Network, eds. Subcultures, Popular Music and Social Change. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars, 2014.
Thompson, Paul. The Voice of the Past: Oral History. 3rd ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000.
Thornton, Sarah. Club Cultures: Music, Media and Subcultural Capital. Cambridge: Polity, 1995.
Whiteley, Sheila, Andy Bennett, and Stan Hawkins, eds. Music, Space and Place: Popular Music and Cultural Identity. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2019 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Kenny, S. (2019). “Basically You Were Either a Mainstream Sort of Person or You Went to the Leadmill and the Limit”: Understanding Post-War British Youth Culture Through Oral History. In: Moruzi, K., Musgrove, N., Pascoe Leahy, C. (eds) Children’s Voices from the Past. Palgrave Studies in the History of Childhood. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-11896-9_10
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-11896-9_10
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-11895-2
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-11896-9
eBook Packages: HistoryHistory (R0)