Some things that, in the early explorations of Yobbism in the literature of modern Britain and discussions in class, I have come to associate with Yobbism and that I think most of our classmates would agree with are the following
- Class dynamics as well as prevalent attitudes and stereotypes of one class towards another.
- Money, and the lack thereof, which in turn can easily be related to class.
- Young men and aggression.
Are these issues ones that did not exist in the past? Have they just emerged as plagues on a modern sinful era, steadily growing worse since the collapse of the glorious British Empire? Do these things only exist in England, Britain, and the 20th and 21st centuries? I think we could all agree upon looking at any number of counter example that this is clearly not the case. Here are a few personal counter examples off the top of my head:
- The Crusades: At least partially an excuse to give a whole bunch of trouble making young European men, the second sons of noble families entitled to little more than their names, an opportunity to take out their idle aggression on something other than their countries, towns, and one other.
- Duelling and its subsequent banishment across Europe: Which arose, at least partly, out of yet another surplus of young men with nothing better to do than pick fights with one another.
Anyway I'm sure we can all think of better an more illustrative examples, however, this serves to illustrate the point that restless idle young men have been damaging things, hurting one another, and making general nuisances of themselves for a LONG time and Yobbism, which is certainly related to these issues has been around for far longer than just that span of one century, and the fall of one empire. So to establish what a "Yob" is and how to deal with them one must take into account these various historical and cultural factors rather than just relying on reactionary appeals to such dead-end cliches of the people crying for a return to "The good old days".
4 comments:
I agree that yobs are certainly not a creation of the fall of empire, and they have presented a consistent problem throughout history. However I think that the question we are trying to answer, (is thugism a valid form of measuring masculinity) forces us to look at todays thugs, and not yesterdays yobs.
As you yourself stated, rowdy young men have always had a way to measure their masculinity. Be it the crusades, the defense of empire, or what have you. However our generation was brought up with the internet and television, in a society largely free from performative demands. Our 20-something generation has no means of "testing" their manliness, so we must find a new framework to preserve the idea of performative masculinity.
Thus, while yobs and thugs are by no means a new issue in society, a lack of a male performative measure is. As such, I feel it is modern thugism that warrants our almost exclusive attention, as its possible validation as a means of measuring performance is only a recent development.
I think your point is excellent in that it helps provide focus to my relatively unfocused post. A place to move on to. One note that I think is important to make clear however is the fact that the crusades etc. were not institutions already in place to deal with rowdy young men but were in fact one shot kinds of enterprises acting as pressure release valves for the energies of growing populations of idle young men. So from here one can look at the problem of modern hooliganism not as existing in the lack of previous institutions but as a situation waiting to reach a critical point where change is enforced one way or another. Hopefully what we can find is a way to divert these building pressures into something productive rather than destructive as seems to have been the trend in the past.
To put a slightly different spin on the topic of where yobs come from, I venture to pose the question of the actual presence of thugism today as a rising force within our Westernized society.
I wish to address the posting on the course blog "Among the Thugs" of "Droog-ism: 'Happy Slapping'". It states that "violence is on a totally different level than it used to be..." and "[t]he danger is that in the next 30-40 years there will be a huge crowd of uneducated young men with nothing to do except become more and more violent and anti-social". I seriously question if violent acts committed by young men have increased these last few decades, or if, through the media we are more aware of what has already existed for millennia. Moreover, in our increasingly mechanized society, we are becomming more and more isolated from eachother and I would think that young men bored with life, wondering the streets in gangs looking for trouble would be less prevalent in our Westernized society as say in more under-developed developed countries. In our society, we have thugs and hooligans, yes. However, more than not, they act independently and generally with personal motive (driven by drugs, etc.) rather than gangs of thugs wondering the streets, committing senseless violent acts. Just a thought.
These comments are all really great and certainly some of them like lynne-anne's seem like they could be posts in their own right. Is there a way to make them more visible on the main page? Or would anyone feel like possibly elaborating on them and building a new post? This goes for these comments as well as the others I have read in general.
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