Revisiting <i>Resistance through Rituals</i> 50 years on

This article introduces the special issue of Crime Media Culture that considers the legacy and currency of Resistance through Rituals (RTR) since its publication in 1976. While RTR and the wider work of the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS) influenced a succession of research studies on youth culture and subculture, as well as paving some of the way for what has come to be called cultural criminology (which provided a foundation for establishing Crime Media Culture ), they have not received universal affirmation. Most prominently, from the 1990s, RTR and the work of the CCCS were criticised by researchers associated with the post-subcultural turn for focusing on socio-economic class, and working-class youth in particular, when youth identities and styles at the turn of the century appeared far more fluid and fragmented than the clearly delineated and internally coherent youth subcultures of RTR. Notwithstanding those criticisms, many contributing to the special issue maintain there is currency in RTR, including in relation to its method of conjunctural analysis.