Youth Subculture

A youth subculture is a youth-based subculture with distinct styles, behaviors, and interests. Youth subcultures offer participants an identity outside of that ascribed by social institutions such as family, work, home and school. Youth subcultures that show a systematic hostility to the dominant culture are sometimes described as countercultures.

Youth music genres are associated with many youth subcultures, such as punks, emos, ravers, Juggalos, metalheads and goths. The study of subcultures often consists of the study of the symbolism attached to clothing, music, other visible affections by members of the subculture, and also the ways in which these same symbols are interpreted by members of the dominant culture.

Socioeconomic class, gender, intelligence, conformity, morality, and ethnicity can be important in relation to youth subcultures. Youth subcultures can be defined as meaning systems, modes of expression or lifestyles developed by groups in subordinate structural positions in response to dominant systems — and which reflect their attempt to solve structural contradictions rising from the wider societal context.


The term scene can refer to an exclusive subculture or faction. Scenes are distinguished from the broad culture through either fashion; identification with specific (sometimes obscure or experimental) musical genres or political perspectives; and a strong in-group or tribal mentality. The term can be used to describe geographic subsets of a subculture, such as the Detroit drum and bass scene or the London goth scene.

Read more about Youth Subculture:  Theories About Youth Subculture

Famous quotes containing the word youth:

    A glimpse through an interstice caught,
    Of a crowd of workmen and drivers in a barroom around the stove late of a winter night, and I unremarked seated in a corner,
    Of a youth who loves me and whom I love, silently approaching and seating himself near, that he may hold me by the hand,
    A long while amid the noises of coming and going, of drinking and
    oath and smutty jest,
    There we two, content, happy in being together, speaking little,
    perhaps not a word.
    Walt Whitman (1819–1892)