Originally published in 1966, this is a sociological study of boys growing up in East London. Previous books from the Institute of Community Studies had looked at the lives of other residents of Bethnal Green – couples with young children, middle-aged ‘Mums’, old people, widows. Now the subject is adolescent boys – a study of them not in isolation nor primarily as a ‘problem’ group but as young people moving between childhood and adulthood in the setting of a particular local community. What is it like to grow up in a district like Bethnal Green? How do the boys adjust to the process? What part is played by school, work, youth club, family? What are the boys’ relationships with their fellows and with girls? Where does delinquency fit in? To help answer such questions, a sample of 246 boys aged 14 to 20 were interviewed. The statistical analysis of this survey has been supplemented by illustrative material from diaries, tape-recorded interviews, and informal observation. The outcome is a vivid account, much of it in the boys’ own words, which was rather different from some popular views of contemporary adolescence at the time. Today it can be read and enjoyed in its historical context.

First Published in 1998. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

This book applies the historical materialist, or Marxist view of urban sociology and collates some fundamental sources of this perspective available. This book was first published in 1976.

In this volume and its companion Adolescence and Breakdown, originally published in 1975, members of the Adolescent Department at the Tavistock Clinic and of the Tavistock Institute of Human Relations, together with other leading experts on the subject, present a unique study of adolescence. Of all living species only human beings go through a period of adolescence – and because the conflicting influences that adolescents encounter both within themselves and in the outside world are so complex, even normal adolescence is a time of crises and adjustment. While Adolescence and Breakdown traces what happens when these crises are not sufficiently well negotiated, the present volume is devoted to the dynamics and complexities of normal adolescence. The topics debated and explored include: the nature of puberty; family relationships; change and personality; adolescent sexuality; adolescents and authority; protest and politics; adolescence and creativity; groups, subcultures and countercultures in the adolescent world.

A major contribution to criminology in which Taylor, Walton and Young provide a framework for a fully social theory of crime.

An international quarterly devoted to the physiological, psychological, psychiatric, sociological, and educational aspects of the second decade of human life.

Changing Cultures brings together a selection of challenging essays which have their roots in the fertile convergence of feminism, sociology and cultural studies. Themes include the assessment of feminist theory, its transformations and its ability to illuminate issues and practices. The complex relationship between objects of study, their political implications and their historical context is a recurring theme. The book includes analyses of the utopianism of feminist thought on the family; sexuality and sexual difference in youth service provision; and the symbolic resonance of the urban and the domestic in the education of girls. It goes on to investigate child sexual abuse in relation to problems of interpretation and the politics of media representation. The final section examines different theorizations of consumerism and advertising and their implications for our understanding of youth and consumerism.