s intergenerational conflict. Rules were made to control people during large-scale societal transformations. Populations were moving around and the nature of production was changing. . . . This is happening again (Gaines, 1991, 260).
Gaines argues, in a far less complex sociological context than Brake provides, that society sees youth---especially misbehaving youth---as a serious threat to social order and public morality. Controlling social structures---the legal system, schools, the economic system with its closed doors and minimum wage, advertising---all combine to force youth into creating their own subcultures.
Brake writes that the black youth in the cultures he studies are faced with structural conditions even worse than those faced by the alienated suicidal group in Gaines. They are driven "into the lower strata of a meritocratic educational system which then trains them for occupations which are meaningless, poorly paid and uncreative" (Brake, 1993, 21).
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