EDD5211 : Structure and Process of Schooling
Topic 3
Pupils and their Cultures
A. Sociology of Adolescence and Youth in Modern Society
1. Basic premise: adolescence and youth are socially constructed categories
rather than biological and psychological stages of life
2. Adolescence and youth as “betwixt and between” stage in lifecourse. This
stage has been prolonged in modern industrial society. A large number of
newcomers are deferred or denied of full membership, i.e. adulthood
3. Social conditions for the emergence of adolescence problem
a. Industrialization and urbanization
b. Functional differentiation of modern family
c. The rise and expansion of compulsory secondary education
4. Social conditions for the emergence of youth problem
a. The advent of post-industrial society and affluent economy
b. The expansion of tertiary education
c. The emergence of postmodernity
i Incredulity of metanarrative
ii Ephemerality, fragmentation, discontinuity and chaotic
iii Periodic moral panic
B. Sociology of Adolescence and Youth in the Information Age
1. The Hurried Child (Elkind, 1981) and Child without Childhood (Winn, 1984)
a. By simplifying the access to information through TV and then PC and
Internet, it opens children to experiences that were once reserved for
adults, e.g. sex and violence
b. By blurring the boundary between adults and children and revealing the
secrecy of adults in electronic media, children are less deferential to adults’
authority and they become less likely to trust or respect simply because
they are adults
c. “Growing up too fast too soon.” (Elkind, 1981)
“Growing up too fast in the world of sex and drug.” (Winn, 1984))
2. Disappearance of Childhood:
a. From literacy of printed materials to literacy of TV and then IT, the closure
of adult world erodes and evaporates as the disclosure media of TV and
then PC rise to dominance
b. These result in the exposure of the “backstage” of adulthood in front of
screens of TV and then PC (Meyrowitz, 1985) and the disappearance of
children (Postman, 1983)
c. Exposure of children to mass media (Sanders, 1995) and “unrestricted
knowledge about things once kept secret from nonadults” (Steinberg and
Kinchloe, 1997) have caused the death of childhood and the loss of the
literal selves of children
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3. The coming of the Y Generation:
a. Constitution of generation in global-informational age
i. A generation can be defined as “a group of individuals who were born at
about the same time, or in the same era, and who have been subject
to common social, cultural and economic influence.” (Mackay, 1997, p.
3)
ii. Availability of convergence of common cultural experiences in the
global-informational age
b. The Y Generation (O’Leary, 1998): Those born after 1980 as a distinction
from the X Generation, those born from 1966 to1979
“Grow up in the confines of cookie-cutter suburbia, these kids are
developing their interest in the world of exploding technological opportunity,
learning through computers, video and a bursting array of cable options.
The sophisticated, mouse-wielding, joystick-operating group grew up with
advanced eye-hand coordination and a low threshold for boredom. Within
five years, they are expected to produce term paper with full-motion video.
All the conventions that shaped a more traditional past are being left
behind as these early adopters rush into ever-changing
technology. …There are no rules for this group … With all the media
stimulus, things like the Internet, there’s no one authority for them. Every
voice has equal power and you see more fusions and hybrid” (O’Leary,
1998, p.49)
c. The Options Generation (Mackay, 1997): “The Options Generation simply
respond to the world as they find it, their ‘kaleidoscope keeps moving and
the patterns are not set for long’ (1997, p. 141). They are not anxious
about rapid change or social destabilization ‘constant change is in their air
they breathe; the water they swim in’ (p.138). … Its members keep their
options open, remaining noncommittal for as long as possible and adopting
short-term goals and temporary solutions when they are rady. They do not
expect stability and predictability. …It is a generation that ‘is proud of [its]
ability to live in a fluid and hybrid culture’ (p.174) (Quoted in Kenway &
Bullen, 2001, p. 59)
d. The Net Generation (Tapscott, 1998) The Net Generation “have new
powerful tools for inquiry, analysis, self-expression, influence, and play.
They have unprecedented mobility. They are shrinking the planet in ways
their parent could never imagine. Unlike television which was done to them,
they are the actors in the digital world.” (Tapscott, 1998, P.3)
e. The screenagers (Rushkoff, 1996): embrace discontinuity, turbulence and
complexity. They have the natural adaptive skills that enable them to deal
with the problem pf postmodernity.
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C. The Sociology of Youth Culture
1. A methodology of youth-culture study
a. Distinction between high-art/high culture and common culture/low culture
b. The politics of culture and the hegemony of high culture
b. The concept of symbolic work and symbolic creativity
c. Basic symbolic resources in common culture: music, drama, language, and
active body
d. The outcome of symbolic work and creativity: identity, membership and
group solidarity, and capacities and power
2. An anatomy of youth culture: Common backgrounds
a. The common social conditions of the youth “common” culture
b. Youth ‘common’ culture as leisure culture, i.e. antithesis of work culture
c. Youth ‘common’ culture as commercialized culture of consumerism
d. Youth culture as cultural bricolage
3. An anatomy of youth culture: the components and features
a. The visual culture media: films, TV, VCD & DVD, microcomputer and the
internet
b. The ‘literate’ culture media: magazines, novel and comics
c. Popular music and audio media
d. Style, fashion and the presentation of the self
e. Languages
4. The rise of adolescence society and features of youth culture
a. Tension between self and society: pervasive ambivalence between self
autonomy and social involvement
b. Estrangement and omni-potentiality
c. Solidarity within peers: inward-looking and psychic attachment to peer
group
d. Concern for the underdog, anti-establishment and counterculture
e. The advent of mass-consumption society and the culture of consumerism
D. Youth Culture and Consumer Culture in Information Society
1. Cultural logic of late capitalism and information society
a. Production of information and knowledge replacing production of
manufacturing goods, especially heavy industrial goods, as the core of
productivity enhancement and wealth accumulation
b. The rise of mass production, mass distribution, mass consumption, and
mass communication
c. The rise of culture industry: From mass production to manufacturing goods
to mass production of meanings
d. The concept of commoditfication and reification:
i. The commodification cycle: MCPC’M’, i.e. Money capital 
Commodity (i.e. labor and the means of production)  Production 
Commodity (products)  Money
ii. Distinction between used value and exchange value
iii. Reification: The consequence of commoditification
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e. The commodification of culture and information
i. The use value of cultural products: Communicative values and
meaningfulness
ii. The exchange value of cultural products: Reifying cultural
meaningfulness into cultural commodities and properties
iii. Culture of signifiers of “referent depth” was replaced by self-referencing
and free-floating signifiers, information, data, icon….
iv. Empirically existing reality replaced by hyper-reality and virtual reality
iv. The proliferation of simulacra and the coming of the culture of simulacra
v. The culture of heritage and tradition was replaced by culture of pastiche
and hybrid
2. The rise of culture of consumerism
a. Retreat of culture of production and spirit of capitalism: Retreat of the
culture of asceticism, endurance, industrious, enterprising and
investment
b. Constituents of culture of consumerism
i. Hedonism: Consumption as desire-satisfaction was replaced by
consumption as desire-creation. “Desire does not desire satisfaction.
To the contrary, desire desires desire." (Bauman, 1998, p. 25)
ii. Ephemeralism: "Consumer goods are meant to be used up and to
disappear; the idea of temporariness and transitoriness is intrinsic to
their very denomination as objects of consumption" (Bauman, 1998,
P.28)
iii. Instantaneousness: "Ideally, the consumer's satisfaction ought to be
instant, and this in a double sense. Consumed goods should bring
satisfaction immediately, requiring no delay, no protracted learning of
skills and no lengthy groundwork; but the satisfaction should end the
moment the time needed for their consumption is up, and that time
ought to be reduced to a bare minimum." (Bauman, 1998, p. 25)
iv. Fetishism: From consumption of commodity to collection of commodity;
from consumption as act of desire-satisfaction to consumption (or
possession) as identification of status and life style
3. Youth Pop-culture as an Extreme from of Consumer Culture
a. The case of punk culture
i. Punk rock as obnoxious musical form, e.g. Sex Pistols, Nirvana
ii. Punk look as shock-effect body adornment
iii. Punk as an extreme denial of the establishment of late capitalism
b. The cases of youth pop-culture in Hong Kong
i. 無厘頭 culture
ii. Content analysis of youth popular magazine
iii. The LMF phenomenon:
- 粗口 as an act of defiance to high culture
- Nihilism and life of aimlessness
- Total-skepticism in social issues
- Total disorganization of family
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E. Pupils' Subculture: Youth Culture in School
1. Typology of pupils' subcultures
a. Aaron V. Cicourel's thesis of adolescent careers within social organization
of high school
i Academic career
ii Delinquent career
iii Clinical career
b.
Andrew Pollard's goodies, jokers and gangs
c.
Robert K. Merton's typology of modes of individual adaptation
d.
Peter Woods' typology of modes of adaptation
2. The origin of deviants in School: Crash between culture of production and
consumption in late capitalism
a. Modern education system as the embodiment of the culture of production
of capitalism
i. Worldly asceticism
- Delay gratification
- Endurance and patience
- Long-term saving and investment
ii. Methodical and instrumental rationalism
- Methodical self-control
- Controllability and calculability of other means of production
- Instrumental ends of production: Profit maximization
iii. Possessive individualism
- Attribution of success to solely individual effort
- Individual success measured solely by possession of wealth
b. Modern education system as the anti-thesis of the youth culture and
consumer culture of late capitalism
i.
Ephemeral
Hedonism
ii. Parodic and grotesque nihilism
iii. Fetishistic individualism
iv. Othering adults
W.K. Tsang
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