| How to Obtain
Documents |
| |
| NCJ Number:
|
NCJ 162547
|
| Title:
|
On the Streets: Working Class Youth Culture in the Nineteenth Century (From Youth Subcultures: Theory, History and the Australian Experience, P 75-79, 1993, Rob White, ed. -- See NCJ-162536)
|
| Author(s):
|
L Finch
|
| Sale:
|
National Clearinghouse for Youth Studies
Youth Sales Australia
GPO Box 252C
Hobart Tasmania 7001, Australia |
| Publication Date:
|
1993 |
| Pages:
|
5 |
| Type:
|
Histories/historical perspectives |
| Origin:
|
Australia |
| Language:
|
English |
| Annotation:
|
A historical perspective on the development of a working class youth culture in Australia during the 19th century is presented. |
| Abstract:
|
Parliamentary papers, newspaper articles, and police records dating from the 1870's indicated Australian urban society was under a threat from "larrikin" gangs of working class youth organized along paramilitary lines. The social outrage over larrikinism was of middle class design, however, and did not actually exist to the extent portrayed. Rather, the articulation of a working class youth culture in gang-related terms was the way middle class commentators such as journalists, evangelicals, and politicians came to describe behavior they perceived to be threatening. Working class young people experienced the streets of their cities and towns as multifunctional streets, as places for socializing and for traveling from one point to another. The moral panic about larrikins was not due to a change in the behavior of working class youth but rather to a change in bourgeois notions about what the street was for, and lingering on the street was viewed by the middle class as inherently dangerous and immoral. Fear of the multifunctional street's revolutionary potential, combined with the new importance of the orderly footpath in commercial activities and spectacle-based consumerism, created the "folk devil" of larrikins. 11 references and 1 figure |
| Main Term(s):
|
Foreign juvenile delinquency |
| Index Term(s):
|
Social conditions ; Urban area studies ; Juvenile gangs ; Social classes ; Cultural influences ; Urban criminality ; Crime in foreign countries ; Sociological analyses ; History of juvenile justice ; Australia |
| |
To cite this abstract, use the following link:
http://www.ncjrs.gov/App/Publications/abstract.aspx?ID=162547
|
* A link to the full-text document is provided whenever possible. For documents
not available online, a link to the publisher's web site is provided.
|
|
Help | Contact Us | Home
