Title

Model of Marginality-Diagram C

Description

We would argue that such a conception of a control problem directs us to thinking the problem of marginality in a very different way; by looking at the problem as identifying a potential “weak link” in the reproduction of the social relations of the society, it directs us to looking at girls’ relations to the major institutional structures designed to effect that transition. This allows the real possibility of a symmetrical analysis, by analysing the differential relation of boys and girls to the same set of major institutions. By differential we mean an awareness of the relative salience and power of each institution in relation to boys or girls through that passage. We have argued earlier in this volume that (male) subcultures inhabit the weak points between home/school and work. A symmetrical analysis for girls directs us to the nature of that transition (to the question of whether girls stand in the same relation of marginality as boys to those institutions), and to available forms in which they can inhabit that passage. As a starting point we would (over) schematise the two passages as follows:
Notes.
1. The family of origin exerts a tighter and more permanent hold over girls than it does for boys, both in terms of their functions for its internal economy, and as practical training for their passage to the next. Diagram
2. The reproduction of the girl as “wife/mother” is reinforced in the other institutional spheres (school—depression of opportunity, feminine “vocational” training, etc.; leisure—consumable feminity, Romance, etc.).
3. Work exists as a potential source of relative freedom (economically, etc.) but it is counterbalanced by: (a) the dominant conception of it as an interruption in the family based dominant career; and (b) patterns of home residence among working girls—in part enforced by female wage levels.

Designer

Powell, Rachel

Clarke, John

Date

2003

Source

Resistance Through Rituals: Youth Subcultures in Post-war Britain

Bibliographic Citation

Hall, S. 2003. "Resistance through rituals: Youth subcultures in post-war Britain." Routledge. Page 225.