ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the application of subculture in Australian youth research, and investigates whether it has conceptual validity or has become as redundant in Australia as it has in other developed, Westernised countries. It then discusses the development of sub cultural theory. The sub cultural perspective as applied to style-based and music-based youth culture in Australia and elsewhere is indebted to the work of the Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS), whose adaptation of the Chicago School model of subculture to examine issues of class, style and resistance became highly fashionable from the mid-1970s through to the early 1990s. Australian skinhead culture, like a number of other style-based youth cultures found in the country, has British roots. Interestingly, despite its long-standing centrality in Australian youth culture, surfing is only now beginning to achieve critical mass in the academic literature on youth, consumption and leisure.
