Subculture Theorists

Subculture Theorists

• 1.
  David Reisman in1950 Mainstream: audiences who “passively accept commercially provided styles and meanings” Subcultures: audiences who “actively sought a minority style. Thus the audience manipulates the product to symbolise their values.
• 2.
  Stuart Hall • Wrote‘Resistance through Ritual’ • Young people who feel alienated from society or cut off from opportunities (because of class, age or ethnicity) will attempt to ‘resist’ the mainstream through crime, dress, music, art etc.
• 3.
  Phil Cohen • Marxistview on the subcultural theory • Research Pool: Studied young men in 1970s East End • Said that subcultures form in reaction to social divisions and loss of community
• 4.
  Dick Hebdige ‘TheMeaning of Style’ • Criticism of Hall and Cohen: only looked at white men. • Concentrated on subcultures rebel not through crime, but through STYLE • Subcultures upset the mainstream because they confront it with difference.
• 5.
  What did Hebdigefind? Hebdige focused on the origins of punk – and oddly located the roots in Rastafarian culture! His theory: •White working class youth felt threatened by the ‘invasion’ of Asian and Caribbean immigrants (and their culture) •White youth feels need for separate identity.
• 6.
  Conclusion • Disempowered whitesforges a new identity using dress-codes, music, slang, gestures, behaviours. • Subcultures aren’t that different from their ‘parent’ culture. Mostly they react against or continue some of the values or styles of the parent culture. • Hebdige also says that subcultures are eventually absorbed into the mainstream. • He said that subcultures emerge to replace an old subculture. • Subcultures express their ‘resistance’ through style – material things – capitalism can manufacture these ‘things’ and make a profit from them.
• 7.
  Conclusion • Disempowered whitesforges a new identity using dress-codes, music, slang, gestures, behaviours. • Subcultures aren’t that different from their ‘parent’ culture. Mostly they react against or continue some of the values or styles of the parent culture. • Hebdige also says that subcultures are eventually absorbed into the mainstream. • He said that subcultures emerge to replace an old subculture. • Subcultures express their ‘resistance’ through style – material things – capitalism can manufacture these ‘things’ and make a profit from them.