Being boys : youth, leisure and identity in the inter-war years / Melanie Tebbutt.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Tebbutt, Melanie.

Series:

Gender in history

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Teenage boys--Great Britain--Social conditions--20th century.

Teenage boys.

Young men--Great Britain--Social conditions--20th century.

Young men.

Working class men--Great Britain--Social conditions--20th century.

Working class men.

Social conditions.

Great Britain.

Physical Description:

xii, 321 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm.

Place of Publication:

Manchester ; New York : Manchester University Press ; New York : distributed in the United States exclusively by Palgrave Macmillan, 2012.

Summary:

Offering a fresh and original approach to the masculinities, subjectivities and emotions of adolescence, this book explores the leisure lives of working-class boys and young men in the inter-war years, and delves beneath their collective identities and conformity to peer-pressure to offer fresh and important perspectives on the social and cultural history of this period.

Being boys develops a subtle analysis of the everyday youthful male conformity of the time, suggesting new approaches and questions on youth and leisure. It draws upon a wide range of autobiographies and personal accounts and is particularly distinctive in offering an unusual insight into working-class adolescence through the teenage diaries of the author's father, which are interwoven with the book's broader analysis of a range of contemporary leisure developments, including the cinema and mass consumption, boys' clubs, personal advice pages, street cultures, dancing, sexuality, mobility and the body.

This engaging volume will be of particular interest to cultural and gender historians, as well as to those teaching and studying in the fields of child development, education, and youth and community studies. Book jacket.

Contents:

1 Looking at youth 44

2 Ordinary boys and masculine men 70

3 Bodies and appearance 106

4 Sex and sentiment 141

5 Seeking advice 169

6 Dancing and gender 201

7 Place and mobility 233.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780719066139

0719066131

OCLC:

748328673