ABSTRACT
This essay was first written in April 1980, as a working paper for the School, Home and Work project, in an attempt to get to grips with what was currently the most influential account of the relations among adolescence, class, culture and schooling. The researchers at the University of Birmingham’s Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS) had, in the second half of the 1970s, published a series of books which had virtually revolutionised discussions of this set of issues. In analysing our interviews, we found ourselves increasingly at odds with their approach. This is an attempt to set out the basic reasons why.
The focus is on the argument about youth subcultures and education, the main texts for which are Resistance Through Rituals (1975), Learning to Labour (1977), Women Take Issue (1978), and Working Class Culture (1979). This doesn’t exhaust the concerns of the Birmingham Centre, but is perhaps the most influential part of its work, and displays what I think are its underlying difficulties. I perhaps unfairly ignore the differences between different authors (e.g. McRobbie and Willis on sexism), and the shifts in focus over the years, in order to concentrate on what seem to be the most basic arguments.
