Seminar 9: Hooligans or Rebels? Delinquent Youth Throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries Britain’s youth were being characterised as a problem for society. They have been labelled as hooligans, delinquents and antisocial. In this seminar we will therefore consider the ideas of a growing youth culture, the construction of the teenager, generational conflict and the relationship between young people and the state.
Seminar/Essay Questions:
- ‘Fluctuations in public concern about crime bear almost no relation to its actual incidence’. Discuss.
- How has the experience of adolescence been influenced by gender, class and ethnicity?
- Is the ‘teenager’ a creation of the second half of the twentieth century?
Seminar Reading: A. Davies, ‘These Viragoes are No Less Cruel Than the Lads’. Young Women, Gangs and Violence in Late Victorian Manchester and Salford’
British Journal of Criminology 39 (1999) 72–89. D. Fowler, ‘From Jukebox Boys to Revolting Students. Richard Hoggart and the Study of British Youth Culture’
International Journal of Cultural Studies 10 (2007) 73-84. J. R. Gillis, ‘The Evolution of Juvenile Delinquency in England’
Past and Present 67 (1975) 96-126. D. Thom, ‘
The Healthy Citizen of Empire or Juvenile Delinquent?: Beating and Mental Health in the UK’ in M. Gijswijt-Hofstra and H. Marland,
Cultures of Child Health in Britain and the Netherlands in the Twentieth Century (2003) 189-212. A. Wills, ‘Delinquency, Masculinity and Citizenship in England 1950–1970’
Past and Present 187 (2005) 157-85.
Additional Reading: V. Bailey,
Delinquency and Citizenship: Reclaiming the Young Offender (1987). M. Brake,
The Sociology of Youth Culture and Youth Subcultures - Sex and Drugs and Rock ’n’ Roll? (1980). J. Bowlby,
Forty-Four Juvenile Thieves (1944). C. Burt,
The Young Delinquent (1925). A. Campbell,
Girl Delinquents (1981). E. Chesser, C. Davey and G. Gorer,
Teenage Morals (1961). S. Cohen,
Folk Devils and Moral Panics: The Creation of the Mods and Rockers (1972). P. Cox,
Gender, Justice and Welfare: Bad girls in Britain, 1900-1950 (2003). N. Emler and S. Reicher,
Adolescence and Delinquency: The collective Management of Reputation (1995). D. Fowler, ‘Teenage Consumers? Young Wage-Earners and Leisure in Manchester, 1919-1939’ in A. Davies and S. Fielding (eds.),
Workers’ Worlds. Cultures and Communities in Manchester and Salford, 1880-1939 (1992). C. Griffin,
Typical Girls? Young Women from School to the Job Market (1985). H. Hendrick,
Images of Youth: Age, Class, and the Male Youth Problem 1880-1920 (1990). S. Humphries,
Hooligans Or Rebels? An Oral History of Working-Class Childhood and Youth 1889-1939 (1981). P. King, ‘The Rise of Juvenile Delinquency in England 1780–1840: Changing Patterns of Perception and Prosecution’
Past and Present 160 (1998), 116-166. B. Littlewood and L. Mahood, ‘The “Vicious” Girl and the “Street-Corner” Boy - Sexuality and the Gendered Delinquent in the Scottish Child-Saving Movement, 1850-1940’
Journal of the History of Sexuality 4 (1994). J.B. Mays,
Growing Up in the City: A Study of Juvenile Delinquency in an Urban Neighbourhood (1954). G. Pearson,
Hooligan: A History of Respectable Fears (1984). M. Plant and M. Plant,
Risk-takers - Alcohol, Drugs, Sex and Youth (1999). R. Porter and M. Teich (eds.),
Drugs and Narcotics in History (1995). H. Shore,
Artful Dodgers: Youth and Crime in Early Nineteenth-Century London (1999). H. Shore, ‘Home, Play and Street Life: Causes of, and Explanations for, Juvenile Crime in the Early Nineteenth Century’ in A. Fletcher and S. Hussey (eds.),
Childhood in Question: Children, Parents and the State (1999) 96-114. H. Shore with P. Cox, ‘Introduction: Re-inventing the Juvenile Delinquent in Britain and Europe 1650–1950’ in P. Cox and H. Shore (eds.),
Becoming Delinquent: British and European Youth, 1650–1950 (2002) 1-22. J. Springhall,
Youth, Popular Culture and Moral Panics: Penny Gaffs to Gangsta-Rap, 1830-1996 (1998). D. Thom, ‘The Healthy Citizen of Empire or Juvenile Delinquent? Beating and Mental Health in the UK’ in M. Gijswijt-Hofstra and H. Marland (eds.),
Cultures of Child Health in Britain and the Netherlands in the Twentieth Century (2003) 189-212. D.J. West,
Delinquency: Its Roots, Careers and Prospects (1982).
