Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

Mike Brake suggests that subcultures develop in response to social problems which a group experiences collectively, and shows how individuals draw on collective identities to define themselves.

Reviews provided by Syndetics

CHOICE Review

Brake's latest work is an extension of the same research area treated in his previous study of British youth, The Sociology of Youth Culture and Youth Subcultures (1980). He has now produced a cross-cultural study that includes youth in Britain, the US, and Canada, and ranges in ethnic diversity from blacks to Hispanics to white British working-class gangs. The book is a long essay that integrates published literature with sociological principles. Brake's theses, considerably oversimplified here, are these: youth subcultures provide a collective identity; need for identity is a social problem that youth cannot solve; the current major social problem in England and North America is unemployment. If labels are needed for Brake's perspective, his explanation of youth subcultures can be described as Marxist. A prodigious amount of literature is surveyed and well incorporated into the text. The writing is careful, if somewhat dry. A brief subject index and an extensive, excellent bibliography are included. Upper-division undergraduates and above.-E.J. Green, Prince George's Community College