Resistance through rituals: Theoretical and methodological legacy

As an original, albeit short lived, researcher and member of the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies at Birmingham University in the mid-1970s, this author reflects about the legacy and influence of Resistance through Rituals (RTR) on the author’s scholarship and research, and the theoretical and methodological hinterland from which RTR emerges and to which it continues to be linked. The article argues that the main influence on RTR was a materialist theory of culture conveyed through everyday ritual and style. In this sense culture is the class arena through which each generation of young people attempts to resolve anew the dilemmas and contradictions of their parent culture, brought by disruptive rapid social and economic change. Focussed on work, leisure, housing and community, youth transitions and subcultures concentrate and expose, sometimes in exaggerated ways, the vulnerability and exposure felt by parent cultures towards change at key points in the intergenerational reproduction of social order.