The subculture and subcultural theory's premise has its origins in two distinctive schools of thought: the Marxists of the 1970s and beyond suggested by the British and the liberalistic view of the 960s and 1950s proffered by the Americans. The subcultural theory is used to define and expound the behaviors of a deviant section of the youth who defy the norms and values of the working-class late adolescent male, while subculture explains the characteristics of the delinquents identified above ( Blackman, 2014) . Theorists from the Chicago School and Birmingham Center for Contemporary Cultural Studies pioneered the use of the terms' subculture and subcultural theory" to explain juvenile delinquent actions, with the Chicago School's elites intimating that social inequalities, low-income homes, and societal injustices are the backbone of violent and aggressive subcultures, while the latter study center suggested that subcultures with grassroots in Britain were reacting negatively to the country's new structure post the British war. Therefore, the terms subculture and subcultural theories are vital terms that can be used to conceptualize the motives of late male adolescents in Britain or the United States who engage in deviant demeanors characterized by aggression, violence, nonchalance, and a general disdain for peers in the same age bracket who appear to have succeeded because they hailed from wealthy backgrounds.
Article Summary
The article Rethinking Subculture and the Subcultural Theory in the Study of Youth Crime-a Theoretical Discourse by Chijioke J. Nwalozie expounds on the subculture's premise as the principal substructure of conceptualizing criminal actions in the youth populace. The author explains that the formation of subcultures is founded on the notion that the dominant society is unjust and fosters inequality, which propels gangs with a radical and fanatical glorification of aggression, violence, and blatant expression male machismo as the key to succeeding in life. Chijioke (2015) notes that the embodiment of harmful, ritualistic lifestyles explained above is a preserve of the African American late adolescent males and youth who hail from disadvantaged backgrounds that had limited opportunities to leverage quality education as a platform of acquiring wealth while young. However, other theorists have criticized Chijioke's view by arguing that deviant behavior may also originate from psychological and biological orientations and that the scholars who devised the subcultural theory undermined the role of free will in advancing juvenile delinquent behavior.
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Other critics also indicate that the Chicago School's scholars were wrong to insinuate that subcultures are a male preserve, arguing that there exist female criminals who do not necessarily hail from Black homes or economically challenged backgrounds. Furthermore, the subcultural theory does not have a unique definition, with its ambiguity engendered by the use of the words' gangs" and "subcultures" being associated as one, yet the term subculture may also be used in other contexts, such as to explain a group of individuals who have similar music or clothing lifestyle, and must not necessarily be the youth.
Finally, the article concludes by proffering the future of studying delinquent behavior manifested by late adolescents. In the contemporary context, the author argues that the aforementioned actions result from the world being a global village, which has numerous social media platforms influence criminal activities embodied by the youth. Further, the author indicates that the use of the subcultural theory as the alpha and omega of explaining juvenile delinquency should be abolished, and other factors that could foster deviant behavior in late adolescents, such as biological orientation, should be explored. After all, there exists youth whom society accords all the privileges, such as being from the White community and wealthy homes, who still engage in delinquent actions, a phenomenon that cannot be explained by the subcultural theory.
References
Blackman, S. (2014). Subculture theory: An historical and contemporary assessment of the concept for understanding deviance. Deviant Behavior , 35 (6), 496-512. https://doi.org/10.1080/01639625.2013.859049
Nwalozie, C. J. (2015). Rethinking Subculture and Subcultural Theory in the Study of Youth Crime – A Theoretical Discourse. Journal of Theoretical and Philosophical Criminology , 7 (1), 1-17.
