Youth Subcultures
The subcultural examples outlined and discussed in this section generally refer to youth subcultures, mainly because these are the most obvious and numerous forms of age-related subcultural groupings.
In addition, a wide and diverse range of sociological theories have been put-forward to explain how and why youth subcultures develop and in this section we can look briefly at some of these using the two basic categories (reactive subcultures and independent subcultures) noted at the start of this section.
However, it is significant to note that in modern industrial societies where average life expectancy has increased and the majority of the population are forced to legally stop working at around 60 - 65 years of age (the precise age limit varies across different societies), a relatively new phenomenon of elderly sub-cultural groups (for want of a better phrase) has emerged in recent years (especially in the USA). These too, of course, are age-related subcultural groups and, although by no-means as prevalent as their youth counterparts, their significance should not be ignored in this context.