Paul Willis

Willis argued that these subcultures also represented an organised, realistic, attempt to come to terms with a wider cultural world that had already, by the time they had entered secondary school, earmarked the boys in his study as failures. 

Subcultural organisation was an attempt to develop a shared set of behavioural guidelines (norms) that stressed the importance of "having a laff", "mucking about" and so forth as way of making something that was largely intolerable (school and the boredom it entailed) a bit more tolerable.

Willis argued that the working class boys in his study already had their future working lives mapped-out - they would follow their fathers into manual labour - and so school, with its emphasis on conformity and academic qualifications, was simply an irritation that had to be tolerated; time had to be passed as best they could. In this respect, the boys were not simply responding to the school as such, but rather to a system that made them attend school when what they really wanted to be "out in the world", earning a living.

Thus, one aspect of Willis' argument is that youth subcultures are not necessarily related to status denial and status frustration. The boys in the study were, in some respects, quite accepting of their overall social status - they were simply reacting against a system that seemed to take little or no account of their needs.