ABSTRACT
The study of youth and youth culture in the United States has a history that dates back to the early work of scholars in the Chicago School at the turn of the twentieth century. From the time when Talcott Parsons coined the phrase “youth culture” in 1942 to recent years, this line of research has progressively developed to include more youth-centered approaches. However, it still remains constrained, to a certain extent, by the conventional frameworks of criminology and deviance. Since the youthful revolts in the late 1960s, research on youth and youth cultures has ranged from work that documents and interprets the histories, activities, value systems, and multifaceted lived experiences of American youth, particularly as they developed in schools and peer groups. Later studies linked youth cultural expression, consumption, and production to socioeconomic outcomes, including both direct and indirect effects on upward or downward mobility (Bennett, 2000; Bielby, 2003; Coleman, 1961; Griffin, 1985; Jensen and Rojek, 1992; Redhead, 1993; Scarpitti and Datesman, 1980; South, 1999; Wooden and Blazak, 2001).
