ABSTRACT
In the mid-1970s, rather than being part of a coherent youth culture, it seemed to many observers that youth consisted of a mainstream majority, and minority subcultures whose distinctiveness was shaped largely by the social class and ethnic background of their members (cf. the counter culture of the 1960s, and the view of youth as a generational unit). Sociological interest concentrated on the various youth subcultures, whose members were seen to rely on leisure and style as a means of winning their own cultural space, and thus represented cultural oppositional politics at the symbolic level.
