Subculture, Resistance, Violence and the Female Perspective

International Journal of Research and Innovation in Social Science (IJRISS) | Volume IV, Issue III, March 2020 | ISSN 2454–6186

Subculture, Resistance, Violence and the Female Perspective

Nicole Cullinan
The University of Melbourne

An exploration of the female perspective on the role violence plays in the resistance paradigm and the history of subculture as pertaining to females.
This paper aims to discuss the concept of resistance through investigating subculture. Specifically, the role of female gender in the resistance paradigm will be discussed in relation to its intersection with politics and history. Violence in resistance will be acknowledged as an agent for political change and recognition. Looking at the evolution of subculture from the Chicago School of Sociology 1920-1940, to the second wave Birmingham School subcultural theory of the 1970s. Investigating the place in history that suffragettes occupy in relation to subculture. Finally, regarding the post subcultural theory through the female perspective, using the Riot Grrl Zine and the #Metoo movement as examples of where subculture, gender and politics intersect.
The first literary examples focusing on youth culture and subculture emerged from the Chicago School. Their studies focused on the first half of last century 1900-1950. Prior to World War One the focus on youth culture was quantitative and looked at deviance and crime (Jenson, 2018). But after the War there is a new focus on qualitative data, a need to explain these observations that extended beyond numbers and data. “Youth Culture emerged out of a much wider debate about the whole nature of post war social change” (Clarke, Hall, Jefferson & Roberts 1976, p.13). Some academics doubted the validity of the idea of youth culture and did not agree that youth could have separate looks, ideas and belief systems to their parents. Others believed it was the war that had created youth culture due to absent Fathers, abnormal family life and other stresses that war produce.
The arrival of ‘teddy boys’ (a style of dressing for men and a taste for rock-and-roll music) signalled that youth culture did exist. At this time most sociologists were white male sand there appears to be little interest in researching female subculture. This resulted in an incomplete narrow representation of girls. It is like girls are peripheral to the subculture. “Some aspects of the new ‘Youth Culture’ were seen, portentously, as representing the worst effects of a new ‘mass culture’ – its tendency to ‘unbend the springs’ of working-class action and resistance.” (Clarke, Hall, Jefferson & Roberts 1976, p.12). A focus on understanding resistance became important in research of Youth Culture.

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