Roe (1990) uses the term symbolic capital. Sarah Thornton (1995), after Pierre Bourdieu (1986), described subcultural capital as the cultural knowledge and commodities acquired by members of a subculture, raising their status and helping differentiate themselves from members of other groups. Safety pins were taken out of their domestic 'utility' context and worn as gruesome ornaments through the cheek, ear or lip.fragments of school uniform (white bri-nylon shirts, school ties) were symbolically defiled (the shirts covered in graffiti, or fake blood the ties left undone) and juxtaposed against leather drains or shocking pink mohair tops." (p.106-12) Hebdige considered punk subculture to share the same "radical aesthetic practices" as dada and surrealism: "Like Duchamp's 'ready mades' - manufactured objects which qualified as art because he chose to call them such, the most unremarkable and inappropriate items - a pin, a plastic clothes peg, a television component, a razor blade, a tampon - could be brought within the province of punk (un)fashion.Objects borrowed from the most sordid of contexts found a place in punks' ensembles lavatory chains were draped in graceful arcs across chests encased in plastic bin liners. Subcultural styles are distinguished from mainstream styles by being intentionally "fabricated", their constructedness, as different from conventional. Some subcultures achieve such a status that they acquire a name of their own.ĭick Hebdige (1981) used style as a subculture's fashions, mannerisms, jargon, activities, music, and interests. Subcultures incorporate large parts of their mother cultures, but in specifics they may differ radically. These groups not only rate the tunes but select for their members in more subtle ways what is to be 'heard' in each tune (ibid: 366)."Ī culture often contains numerous subcultures. In general what he perceives in the mass media is framed by his perception of the peer-groups to which he belongs. Thus when a member of a subculture "listens to music, even if no-one else is around, he listens in a context of imaginary 'others' - his listening is indeed often an effort to establish connection with them. Thus 'the audience.manipulates the product (and hence the producer), no less than the other way round' (Riesman 1950: 361)." As early as 1950 David Riesman distinguished between a majority, "which passively accepted commercially provided styles and meanings, and a 'subculture' which actively sought a minority style (hot jazz at the time) and interpreted it in accordance with subversive values. The essence of a subculture, that distinguishes it from other social groupings, is awareness of style and differences in style, in clothing, music or other interests. In sociology, a subculture is a culture or set of people with distinct behavior and beliefs within a larger culture. to bacterial cultures, from sub- + culture. See also "a history of 20th century subcultures" here. Since the late 1970s, the study of subculture, and indeed the concept of subculture itself, has largely been focused on an awareness of style and differences in style, in clothing, music or other cultural areas. Pat Rogers via Grub Street: studies in a subculture (1972). The concept has been most generally adopted by students of delinquency. The term subculture began to figure in anthropological and sociological writing around 1945. Thus they tend to represent, in however obscure and contradictory a fashion, the interests of the dominant groups in society.
"Maps of meaning are charged with a potentially explosive significance because they are traced and retraced along the lines laid down by the dominant discourses about reality, the dominant ideologies. In Subculture, The Meaning of Style, Dick Hebdige describes hegemony and the battle for subcultural meaning that resides beneath it. In other words, the way power is distributed in society relates to the way meaning is distributed in a hypertext narrative.
The relationship between mainstream, "hegemonic" culture and the subcultures that split off from it mirrors the relationship of a linear, dominant narrative strain to the skein of other paths that could be pursued by the reader of hypertext. Subculture: The Meaning of Style (1979) - Dick Hebdige