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Subculture, Sociology of
Subculture, Sociology of Rebecca G Adams and Amy M Ernstes, The University of North Carolina at Greensboro, Greensboro, NC, USA Kelly M Lucey, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC, USA Ó 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. This article is a revision of the previous edition article by F. Dubet, volume 22, pp. 15245–15247, Ó 2001, Elsevier Ltd.
Abstract In this article, ‘subculture’ is defined simply as a culture embedded within a broader culture. Despite theoretical debates concerning its usage within the two main schools of thought, the Chicago School and the Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies, the concept remains important. Discussion of the underlying unity of conceptualizations and their variation invites reflection on the development of research on subculture and also foreshadows its future. Consideration of the emergence of similar terms, some proposed as replacements to subculture, and of the benefits of the application of such terminology, suggests pathways for future research. Specific issues include the changing relevance and understanding of subculture with advancing technology, as well as the insights to be gleaned from the related literature on community. This article concludes with a discussion of methodological approaches used to study subculture, with considerations for the future of its conceptualization and study in an increasingly digital age.
Introduction In the most general sense, a ‘subculture’ is a culture embedded within a broader culture. The terminology used here is purposefully vague. This definition does not, for example, stipulate the relationship between a subculture and the broader culture in which it is embedded; it does not specify whether they are distinctly different, share some similarities, coexist in harmony, or are in conflict with each other. Furthermore, this definition does not describe the relationships among members of the subculture, whether they interact only online, sometimes see each other face-to-face, know each other, or are strangers. Thus, though extremely basic, this simple definition of a subculture as a culture within another culture seems the most reasonable place to start this article, especially given the degree to which the concept has been debated historically. This initial simplicity does not deny the complexities, controversies, and challenges bound to the concept of ‘subculture,’ but to circumvent these issues, focuses on ‘culture’ as its defining feature. Honing in on culture provides an entrée into this discussion of subculture. Despite slight variations in terminology specified and prioritized, most social science textbooks provide a definition of ‘culture’ as resting upon a foundation of certain elements. Elements commonly included as part of this list are beliefs, values, norms, customs, rituals, ideas, knowledge, physical artifacts, language, symbols, and gestures. Often, these elements are separated into those that constitute material culture (physical and material objects) and those that constitute nonmaterial culture (values, norms, etc.). These disparate elements are united by a web of meanings shared by the members of a culture, or more pertinent here, by the members of a subculture. Thus, to elaborate on the basic definition of subculture provided here, we can now add that a subculture finds its distinction from another subculture or from the broader culture on the basis of these same disparate elements and the meanings attributed to them differing to some degree.
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At this point the simplicity of this definition begins to dissolve. The difficulty in unpacking this definition any further arises from the problem of operationalizing the notion of difference. The question becomes how different and how self-consciously different a social group must be in order to be considered distinct. Establishing such parameters has become more problematic as our world has become increasingly globalized and as modern technological advancements in information, communication, and transportation have served to erode temporal and geographic boundaries that once confined the members of social groups to shared times and spaces (Adams, 1998). Descriptions that define a subculture as a distinct culture from a dominant culture have grown less relevant in a postmodern age in which templates of cultural hierarchies have at the least become blurred, if not identifiable as entirely historically inaccurate and useless. Furthermore, the notion of a dominant culture has long been critiqued for implying ‘normalization’ through which subcultures have often been narrowly cast as deviant, whether subtly or overtly. Yet, despite the challenges of defining subculture and questions regarding the ongoing relevance of the concept, studies of subculture have clearly added to the understanding of society. Studying subcultures has allowed both a detailed and nuanced perspective on cultural groups not necessarily well known or understood by the ‘mainstream’ (as the larger, dominant culture is often called) and at the same time has provided a broad and inclusive approach in terms of recognizing instead of ignoring these distinct groups. The study of subcultures thus provides a more realistic picture of a society by recognizing complex layers of divergent groupings within it. For, as is the case given the nature of humans and humanity, as long as societies have existed, so too have a variety of ways of building culture within them. This necessarily social process of providing meaning to that existence will inevitably vary in form and expression across different societies and social groupings. Furthermore, although much of the research on subcultures focuses on social groups within the English-speaking world,
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culturally distinct groups exist within all societies. In other words, subcultures have been present throughout time (i.e., history) and across space (i.e., the globe); the elements of subcultures have been transmitted from one generation to the next and diffused across geographic boundaries. Subcultures serve as the basis for individual identity and group solidarity, which in turn leads to both social integration and intergroup dynamics. Not only are subcultures intrinsic parts of societies and thus important to study, but doing so has also allowed for the recognition, understanding, and sometimes even acceptance or appreciation of these social groups, which has had important consequences, especially for those subcultures that were considered deviant and consequently were marginalized (e.g., see Decade in Brief (2012) for a discussion of the Decade of Roma Inclusion 2005–15, “an unprecedented political commitment by European governments to eliminate discrimination against Roma and close unacceptable gaps between Roma and the rest of society”).
Theoretical Issues: The Definition of Subculture Despite the initial simplistic definition, and the undeniable value of studying subcultures, the trajectory of its use in the social sciences has not been so straightforward. Although two main schools of thought have dominated conceptualizations of subculture – the Chicago School and the Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS) – so too have the critiques of these conceptualizations. Yet, despite the debates that have come to hallmark the term, questioning its validity and even arguing against its relevance, beneath this divergence is an arguably unified understanding of the term. In other words, while broadened and narrowed, expanded, and simplified, and redirected and refocused, the various conceptualizations of subculture have nonetheless generally unfolded within a shared framework. Although early anthropologists used the term to mean universal tendencies that occur in all societies (e.g., Linton, 1936), that definition was later eclipsed by broader ones resting on such facets as those discussed earlier in this entry; an example is “normative systems of groups smaller than a society, to give emphasis to the ways these groups differ in such things as language, values, religion, diet, and style of life from the larger society of which they are a part” (Yinger, 1960: p. 626). Chicago School sociologists popularized this type of definition in research to explain deviant behavior, arguing that behavior perceived to be deviant from a mainstream perspective could be in keeping with the norms of a smaller group within society (Becker, 1963; Matza and Sykes, 1961). As early as 1960, Yinger noted that a third definition of subculture as determined by “norms that arise specifically from a frustrating situation or from conflict between a group and a larger society” had also been used in the literature; rather than recommending the element of conflict be incorporated into the definition of subculture, he suggested these subcultures be designated as ‘contracultures’ to distinguish them from subcultures that existed more harmoniously with the mainstream (Yinger, 1960: p. 629). This distinction between subcultures and contracultures continued to be recognized in much of the research that was
conducted in the 1960s and 1970s (e.g., Dorn, 1969; Kando, 1975; Rich, 1972; Sebald, 1975); the two notions were not reconflated until the CCCS began its research on post–World War II working-class youth subculture. Although building on Chicago School studies of deviant subcultures, the publication of Resistance through Rituals (Hall and Jefferson, 1976) and Subculture: The Meaning of Style (Hebdige, 1979) shifted the discussion from an examination of the patterns across a variety of deviant subcultures to a societal perspective on the ongoing class struggle in Great Britain and the stylistic responses of youth. Although some scholars have continued to apply the more general definition of subculture in their work on youth subcultures (e.g., Hunt, 2008, 2010; Latysheva, 2011), and especially in examinations of subcultures not associated exclusively with youth (Lieske, 2004; Spencer, 1997), after the introduction of the notion of youth subcultures as ‘cultures of resistance,’ this more specified definition has dominated the subculture literature and much of the critique of the notion of subculture since then is a response to this more specific usage (e.g., Crosset and Beal, 1997; Miles, 2000; Straw, 1999). Muggleton and Weinzierl (2003), for example, question the validity of this approach in a postmodern world, and champion “a more pragmatic approach compared to the romanticism of the CCCS” (p. 4). Short of a direct critique, others have suggested moving beyond this narrow scope, such as Fincham (2007), who champions the aspect of ‘enjoyment,’ as one often overlooked as an attraction to membership in a subculture. Interestingly enough, Simon Frith (2004), a major contributor to this literature on British youth subculture, recently observed that what is being called ‘postsubcultural theory’ (Bennett and Kahn-Harris, 2004; Muggleton and Weinzierl, 2003) does not focus on youth at all. So, despite all the controversy, it appears that the usage of the concept of ‘subculture’ may have come full circle and is now being used in the same two ways Yinger noted were common in 1960, in a more general sense but sometimes also in what is now identified as a Birmingham School approach incorporating a notion of resistance or conflict. Albeit the approach to subculture inspired by the Birmingham School seems to have run its course, now much more is known about youth subculture, not just in Britain, but globally (e.g., Baron, 1989; Jasper, 2004; Johnston and Snow, 1998; Maira, 1999; Mitchell, 2003; Platek, 1990). Furthermore, the debates over the validity and utility of the concept of subculture have led to the application and sometimes development of related concepts that have shed light on other aspects of social groups that could have been studied using a subcultural theoretical lens. So, although as Muggleton and Weinzierl (2003: p. 5) observe, “a new, dominant paradigm has yet to develop,” a plethora of concepts have been proposed to replace or supplement the old one. Although most of the critiques of the concept of subculture have been in response to attempts to apply it to study a specific type of social group that has characteristics not revealed by its application, the tendency of most authors seems to be to try to propose a definition of subculture or an alternative concept that will be consistently useful to apply across social groups. Here we propose a different approach, which is to embrace the use of a variety of concepts, including subculture, to study the component social groupings of a larger one and thereby to increase what is known about them.
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To elaborate on this proposal, it is useful to understand subculture and its related concepts as what Vaihinger (1925) called ‘neglective fictions.’ Although fictions are devoid of reality, they are not devoid of utility. According to Vaihinger, ‘fictions’ have been used to advance scientific understanding of phenomena, much like hypothesis testing has. We are suggesting here that concepts such as ‘subculture,’ ‘contraculture,’ and others to be discussed in this article be applied to social groupings, much as Adam Smith (1776/1976) wrote about human behavior ‘as if’ it were all egoistic. He deliberately substituted a fraction of reality, what Vaihinger called a ‘neglective fiction,’ for the total range of possible explanations and facts. Without this substitution, Smith would have been unable to construct an ordered interpretation of the political economy. Similarly, without using neglective fictions such as subculture, contraculture, culture of resistance, lifestyle, tribe, scene, subworld, or subsociety as lenses, the understanding of the role of these groupings in shaping identity and society would not be as great. We are suggesting that researchers could use and have used various concepts related to subculture either independently or in sequence as lenses to study subgroups of a larger culture or society as Simmel (1986/1907) would apply various forms (i.e., various neglective fictions) to the same content (Adams, 2010; Kaern, 1983). Through this process, which is already ongoing though the researchers using this approach might not associate it with Vaihinger’s scientific fictions, not only will we learn more about the social groupings under scrutiny, we will also reach greater understanding of the utility and patterns of relevance of the theoretical concepts themselves. In keeping with this perspective on subculture and related concepts as neglective fictions, many of the related concepts just mentioned have been developed in response to attempts to understand specific social groupings by first using subculture as a lens and finding it lacking for some theoretical or substantive reason. For example, Crosset and Beal (1997) propose the use of the concept ‘subworld’ in addition to the concept ‘subculture.’ Building on Unruh’s (1983) definition of social worlds “as large and highly permeable, amorphous and spatially transcendent forms of social organization made up of people sharing common interests and sharing common channels of communication,” they note that “[t]he concept of ‘social world’ pushes the researchers’ gaze in a slightly different direction than does ‘subculture’” (p. 81). Unlike analyzing sports as subculture, analyzing it as a social world allows the discovery of subworlds within social worlds, and at least unlike analyzing sports from a CCCS perspective, it “frees the researcher from looking for signs of cultural resistance in every sporting practice.” Similarly, although the concept of ‘scene’ is not a new one (Irwin, 1977) and originally described expressive, voluntary, public gatherings that take place in urban locations, Straw (1999: p. 373) and others have recently introduced the term scene in part to replace older conceptions of music communities as having relatively permanent membership focused on specific musical idioms. Straw’s reconceptualization of ‘scene’ casts it as a space in which a range of musical activities coexist and cross-fertilization and change take place. Miles (2000) provided a third example of a concept introduced in order to understand a specific phenomenon when he argued that the application of the term ‘subculture’ to heavy drug users
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makes sense, but suggested ‘lifestyle’ as a more useful term when researching people whose drug use is intermittent. Rather than suggesting ‘subculture’ be replaced with other concepts because of the inadequacy of subculture to highlight the important features of a specific social grouping, sometimes theorists have recommended it be replaced by other concepts in response to widespread social changes such as globalization and multiculturalism. Like Miles (2000), Chaney (2004) also suggests the use of the term ‘lifestyle’ might be more useful in the contemporary context but for very different reasons. He argued that the idea of a multicultural world has rendered the distinction between dominant and subcultural norms moot and therefore the notion of a dominant culture as a context for subcultures archaic. Furthermore, he (Chaney, 2004) argued that the widespread availability of a greater variety of cultural styles and identities suggests the notion of subculture with that of lifestyles as the basis for the negotiation of identity, community, affiliation, and difference. Implicitly he argues that subcultures no longer exist. More recently, the definition of subculture is being scrutinized for its usefulness in the context of improved communications and transportation technology (Bennett, 2004). The Chicago School studies of subcultures such as taxi dancers (Cressey, 1932) and gangs (Thrasher, 1927) were situated in local contexts and the need for close proximity and face-to-face interaction were assumed to provide a foundation for their development, persistence, and stability. Although it is the advent of the Internet that has led subculture scholars to challenge these assumptions, other earlier improvements in communications and transportation technology such as the postal system, telegraph, telephone, steam ships, locomotives, and automobile began changing the way subcultures developed and persisted much earlier (Adams, 1998). Nonetheless, the Birmingham School’s examination of punks in the United Kingdom in the 1970s continued the Chicago tradition of focusing on subcultures in the local context, and much of the work accomplished by scholars elsewhere but working within these traditions often did the same. In this regard, the subculture literature has lagged behind the community literature in which the discussion of nonterritorial communities had already begun in the 1960s (Webber, 1963; Effrat, 1974) and has continued since (Adams, 1998; Wellman, 1999). As a result, scholars who have studied migrating groups or intermittently territorial groups such as the New Age Travellers (Frediani, 1998), some music fans (Gardner, 2004), or National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing spectators (Wright, 2002) have sometimes implicitly if not explicitly used ‘community’ as a conceptual lens rather than ‘subculture.’ For example, in her study of Deadheads, the fans of the Unites States rock group the Grateful Dead, Adams originally intended to use ‘subculture’ as a conceptual lens (Adams, 1990), but subsequently shifted to using the concept of ‘community’ for this purpose in part because it allowed a focus on the development and continuity of identity and solidarity across time and space (Adams et al., 2014). Although the members of such communities do not share a permanent territory, like members of local subcultures and traditional communities, they are bound by affect, customs, and common interests (Nels, A. and Council of Social Agencies of Chicago,
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1923; Tönnies, 1963/1887). Also like local subcultures and traditional communities, these intermittently territorial communities sometimes serve the functions of production, distribution, and consumption; socialization; social control; social participation; and mutual support (Humphreys, 1970; Warren, 1978). In contrast to Chaney’s (2004) position that the notion of subculture is archaic in a multicultural world, it could be argued that with the advent of the Internet and the related development of virtual media of various forms, it is even easier for subcultures to transcend space and time and for true global subcultures to exist. As one celebrates the 25th anniversary of the World Wide Web, it seems particularly appropriate to reflect on its impact on culture. As early as 1994, Rheingold discussed the ‘virtual community’ and connectivity within it. Shortly thereafter, Healy (1997) described it as a ‘loose collection’ or ‘ecosystem’ of subcultures (p. 65). Subsequently, scholars in both the community (Smith and Kolluck, 1999) and subculture traditions (Bennett, 1999) began considering how the Internet challenged the relevance of concepts developed in an earlier time period. The literature on migrating or intermittently territorial communities is somewhat useful here, because like the literature on online subcultures, it does not assume permanent shared territory and once the Internet developed these communities also manifested themselves online. Although as Bennett (2004) astutely observed, subcultural studies often overlook the continuities between online and offline interactions, not all virtual communities manifest themselves locally. The development of the Internet has thus exacerbated concerns of postmodernists such as unstable identities (Lash and Urry, 1987, 1994) and the lack of emotional and moral depth of communities based solely on common interests (Bauman, 1992). Taken together, these concerns beg the current question of whether this technology detracts from the development of subcultures that provide the context for stable identities and feelings of solidarity with a subculture of like-minded people or leads to shifting identities and weak commitments to multiple subcultures. This question is particularly salient in light of the emergence of ‘one device’ portable technology and the ability of people to remain ‘plugged in’ constantly and to manage activity in multiple subcultures or communities at one time. On the one hand, simultaneous ties to multiple communities can be hypothesized to weaken the individual connection to a subculture, thereby making it more likely that individual identities will shift over time and weaken subcultural solidarity. On the other hand, even before the advent to of the Internet, Fine and Kleinman (1979: p. 12) noted that multiple group memberships promote cultural diffusion and the spread of subcultures, and more recently Thornton (1996) has argued that media, including the Internet, are integral to the formation of subcultures, playing a significant role in both their origin as well as prolonging their life cycle. McArthur’s study of the virtual subculture of ‘geeks’ supports Thornton’s observation as it would have been very difficult for his participants to meet in person as they were from many nations including The Philippines, England, Argentina, and Czech Republic (McArthur, 2009). Future scholarship will hopefully reveal the waxing or waning of the significance of subcultures in a global society.
Methodology Subculture researchers have relied mainly on ethnographic methods, as qualitative approaches afford insight into valuable details difficult to capture with a broader lens. Due to previous conceptions of subculture as local and therefore convenient (both in the traditions of the Chicago and Birmingham Schools) and the tendency of researchers to study deviant subcultures that are difficult to enter, much of the research on subcultures has specifically involved participant observation. Nonetheless, as many researchers, including Fine and Kleinman (1979), acknowledged years ago, the narrowness of such methods embodies their own limitations. For example, a case study of one gang could not claim representation of all gangs in a given population or yield any definite findings regarding the degree of interrelatedness between them. Some subculture researchers have thus instead conducted surveys of samples of general populations (e.g., King, 2007; Latysheva, 2011), but this method can be ineffective, especially if the interviewer is not identified with the subculture or when the interviewer’s values differ from the subculture’s. Returning to the aforementioned limitations of a finer lens, “while case studies provide valuable information about the culture, it is unclear to what extent they provide evidence of the culture as a population segment” (Fine and Kleinman, 1979: p. 4). Yet, the broader study of general populations also yields difficulty, particularly in identifying subcultural groups (King, 2007). Given that in order to demonstrate a subculture’s existence, a subpopulation’s relative agreement on a set of attitudes, behaviors, or values must be identified, the researcher must necessarily show that communication occurs within that subpopulation and that its members identify as a group. For this reason, even in the challenging case of studying migrating or intermittently territorial subcultures, researchers examining them have tended to supplement any survey or documentary research with their observations (e.g., Hunt, 2008, 2010; Riley, 1988). The globalization of culture and the introduction of the Internet and related technologies have not only challenged theoretical conceptions of subculture, but have also led to changes in how they are studied. As exemplified by McArthur (2009) in his study of ‘geeks,’ the Internet allows new formats for data to be gathered on subcultures, at the same time that it allows for new forms of expressing subcultural identity, as well as influencing those identities themselves. The future of subculture analysis may benefit from the accessibility of information and even the resurfacing of past information and data previously obscured by data security policies (although individuals participating in subcultures through different mediums in the past may never have realized that information would one day be made available electronically and via search engines). The criticism that studies are focused on subcultures at one point in time can now be addressed by expanding the search backward and more broadly to include an everincreasing amount of information available online. The Internet also makes it possible to study distant subcultures remotely. Finally, videos and multimedia files produced by other researchers are shared in the advent of a very open attitude toward information sharing.
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Although the advent of the Internet facilitates research on subcultures, it also complicates it. Despite the growth of the Internet, it is not equally accessible to all populations. The ‘digital divide’ represents the absence or limitation of access to the Internet for certain people or groups based on affordability, knowledge, or motivation. Furthermore, even in the hypothetical scenario that all potentially desired participants would have similar access to and know-how regarding these technological means, self-selection would remain an issue. Nonetheless, the increased availability of information will certainly aid in research on subcultures that exist in a variety of modes and will address some of the previously articulated, but nonetheless still valid, challenges of qualitative research identified by Fine and Kleinman (1979): the Internet makes it possible to discover linkages among groups, track the transmission and forms of information and exchanges of communication, and identify kinds of information that is transmitted. Furthermore, given the progression of technology to allow for more remote and anonymous participation in a subculture, many studies themselves may in turn become focused purely on online cultures (King, 2007). While ethnography remains an important method for studying subculture, the existence of the Internet may lead to the realization of a new form of interdisciplinary research, combining ethnography with methods such as textual analysis (Pollex, 1997), an approach some have called ‘postmodern ethnography’ (Tyler, 1986). Such a new method would have to be focused on mining data and organizing it in such a way that large numbers of disparate pieces can be integrated and interpreted in meaningful ways. The Internet spreads information quickly and retains it forever, so future subcultural analysts will need to develop methods for sampling this vast array of information and deciding how valid it is. As the information age continues to unfold, the challenges and benefits the Internet poses to theorists and researchers will no doubt lead to substantial changes in how subculture is understood and studied.
See also: Community Sociology; Community Studies: Anthropological; Community and Society: History of the Concepts; Counterculture: 1960s and Beyond; Counterculture: The Classical View; Cultural Sociology, History of; Gay, Lesbian, and Bisexual Youth; Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Trans-sexual Butch-Femme Subcultures; Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer: Bear and Leather Subcultures; Popular Culture; Popular Sexual Cultures in Western Europe (1930s to the Present); Roma People; Youth Culture, Anthropology of; Youth Culture, Sociology of; Youth Movements; Youth, Geography of; Youth, Music, and Peace Building.
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Straw, W., 1999. Systems of articulation, logics of change: communities and scenes in popular music. Cultural Studies 5 (3), 368–388. Thornton, S., 1996. Club Cultures: Music, Media and Subcultural Capital. Wesleyan University Press, Hanover, NH. Thrasher, Frederick, 1927. The Gang. University of Chicago Press. Tönnies, F., 1963/1887. In: Loomis, C.P. (Ed. and Trans.), Community and Society. Harper & Row, New York. Tyler, S., 1986. Postmodern ethnography from document of the occult to occult document. In: Clifford, J., Marcus, G. (Eds.), Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography, pp. 122–140. Unruh, D.R., 1983. Invisible Lives: Social Worlds of the Aged. Sage, Newbury Park. Vaihinger, H., 1925. The Philosophy of the ‘as if’. Harcourt, New York. Warren, R.L., 1978. The Community in America. Rand McNally, Chicago. Webber, M., 1963. Order and diversity: community without propinquity. In: Wingo Jr., L. (Ed.), Cities and Space. Johns Hopkins, pp. 23–54. Wellman, B. (Ed.), 1999. Networks in the Global Village: Life in Contemporary Communities. Westview Press, Boulder, CO. Wright, Jim, 2002. Fixin to Git: One Fan’s Love Affair with NASCAR’s Winston Cup. Duke University Press, Durham, NC and London. Yinger, J.M., 1960. Contraculture and subculture. American Sociological Review 25 (5), 625–635.
Relevant Websites https://www.youtube.com/ – Cantelo, Erin (series creator), 2013. Subcultures – a documentary series spotlighting niche communities you might want to be part of. From “Roller Derby Girls” to “Guerilla Gardeners”. http://www.romadecade.org/ – Decade in Brief, 2012. Decade of Roma Inclusion Secretariat Foundation. http://designtaxi.com – A Guide To Recognizing 21st Century Subcultural Tribes. http://www.theguardian.com/ – A Journey through London Subculture: 1980s to Now, 2013.
Abstract In this article, ‘subculture’ is defined simply as a culture embedded within a broader culture. Despite theoretical debates concerning its usage within the two main schools of thought, the Chicago School and the Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies, the concept remains important. Discussion of the underlying unity of conceptualizations and their variation invites reflection on the development of research on subculture and also foreshadows its future. Consideration of the emergence of similar terms, some proposed as replacements to subculture, and of the benefits of the application of such terminology, suggests pathways for future research. Specific issues include the changing relevance and understanding of subculture with advancing technology, as well as the insights to be gleaned from the related literature on community. This article concludes with a discussion of methodological approaches used to study subculture, with considerations for the future of its conceptualization and study in an increasingly digital age.
Introduction In the most general sense, a ‘subculture’ is a culture embedded within a broader culture. The terminology used here is purposefully vague. This definition does not, for example, stipulate the relationship between a subculture and the broader culture in which it is embedded; it does not specify whether they are distinctly different, share some similarities, coexist in harmony, or are in conflict with each other. Furthermore, this definition does not describe the relationships among members of the subculture, whether they interact only online, sometimes see each other face-to-face, know each other, or are strangers. Thus, though extremely basic, this simple definition of a subculture as a culture within another culture seems the most reasonable place to start this article, especially given the degree to which the concept has been debated historically. This initial simplicity does not deny the complexities, controversies, and challenges bound to the concept of ‘subculture,’ but to circumvent these issues, focuses on ‘culture’ as its defining feature. Honing in on culture provides an entrée into this discussion of subculture. Despite slight variations in terminology specified and prioritized, most social science textbooks provide a definition of ‘culture’ as resting upon a foundation of certain elements. Elements commonly included as part of this list are beliefs, values, norms, customs, rituals, ideas, knowledge, physical artifacts, language, symbols, and gestures. Often, these elements are separated into those that constitute material culture (physical and material objects) and those that constitute nonmaterial culture (values, norms, etc.). These disparate elements are united by a web of meanings shared by the members of a culture, or more pertinent here, by the members of a subculture. Thus, to elaborate on the basic definition of subculture provided here, we can now add that a subculture finds its distinction from another subculture or from the broader culture on the basis of these same disparate elements and the meanings attributed to them differing to some degree.
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At this point the simplicity of this definition begins to dissolve. The difficulty in unpacking this definition any further arises from the problem of operationalizing the notion of difference. The question becomes how different and how self-consciously different a social group must be in order to be considered distinct. Establishing such parameters has become more problematic as our world has become increasingly globalized and as modern technological advancements in information, communication, and transportation have served to erode temporal and geographic boundaries that once confined the members of social groups to shared times and spaces (Adams, 1998). Descriptions that define a subculture as a distinct culture from a dominant culture have grown less relevant in a postmodern age in which templates of cultural hierarchies have at the least become blurred, if not identifiable as entirely historically inaccurate and useless. Furthermore, the notion of a dominant culture has long been critiqued for implying ‘normalization’ through which subcultures have often been narrowly cast as deviant, whether subtly or overtly. Yet, despite the challenges of defining subculture and questions regarding the ongoing relevance of the concept, studies of subculture have clearly added to the understanding of society. Studying subcultures has allowed both a detailed and nuanced perspective on cultural groups not necessarily well known or understood by the ‘mainstream’ (as the larger, dominant culture is often called) and at the same time has provided a broad and inclusive approach in terms of recognizing instead of ignoring these distinct groups. The study of subcultures thus provides a more realistic picture of a society by recognizing complex layers of divergent groupings within it. For, as is the case given the nature of humans and humanity, as long as societies have existed, so too have a variety of ways of building culture within them. This necessarily social process of providing meaning to that existence will inevitably vary in form and expression across different societies and social groupings. Furthermore, although much of the research on subcultures focuses on social groups within the English-speaking world,
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culturally distinct groups exist within all societies. In other words, subcultures have been present throughout time (i.e., history) and across space (i.e., the globe); the elements of subcultures have been transmitted from one generation to the next and diffused across geographic boundaries. Subcultures serve as the basis for individual identity and group solidarity, which in turn leads to both social integration and intergroup dynamics. Not only are subcultures intrinsic parts of societies and thus important to study, but doing so has also allowed for the recognition, understanding, and sometimes even acceptance or appreciation of these social groups, which has had important consequences, especially for those subcultures that were considered deviant and consequently were marginalized (e.g., see Decade in Brief (2012) for a discussion of the Decade of Roma Inclusion 2005–15, “an unprecedented political commitment by European governments to eliminate discrimination against Roma and close unacceptable gaps between Roma and the rest of society”).
Theoretical Issues: The Definition of Subculture Despite the initial simplistic definition, and the undeniable value of studying subcultures, the trajectory of its use in the social sciences has not been so straightforward. Although two main schools of thought have dominated conceptualizations of subculture – the Chicago School and the Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS) – so too have the critiques of these conceptualizations. Yet, despite the debates that have come to hallmark the term, questioning its validity and even arguing against its relevance, beneath this divergence is an arguably unified understanding of the term. In other words, while broadened and narrowed, expanded, and simplified, and redirected and refocused, the various conceptualizations of subculture have nonetheless generally unfolded within a shared framework. Although early anthropologists used the term to mean universal tendencies that occur in all societies (e.g., Linton, 1936), that definition was later eclipsed by broader ones resting on such facets as those discussed earlier in this entry; an example is “normative systems of groups smaller than a society, to give emphasis to the ways these groups differ in such things as language, values, religion, diet, and style of life from the larger society of which they are a part” (Yinger, 1960: p. 626). Chicago School sociologists popularized this type of definition in research to explain deviant behavior, arguing that behavior perceived to be deviant from a mainstream perspective could be in keeping with the norms of a smaller group within society (Becker, 1963; Matza and Sykes, 1961). As early as 1960, Yinger noted that a third definition of subculture as determined by “norms that arise specifically from a frustrating situation or from conflict between a group and a larger society” had also been used in the literature; rather than recommending the element of conflict be incorporated into the definition of subculture, he suggested these subcultures be designated as ‘contracultures’ to distinguish them from subcultures that existed more harmoniously with the mainstream (Yinger, 1960: p. 629). This distinction between subcultures and contracultures continued to be recognized in much of the research that was
conducted in the 1960s and 1970s (e.g., Dorn, 1969; Kando, 1975; Rich, 1972; Sebald, 1975); the two notions were not reconflated until the CCCS began its research on post–World War II working-class youth subculture. Although building on Chicago School studies of deviant subcultures, the publication of Resistance through Rituals (Hall and Jefferson, 1976) and Subculture: The Meaning of Style (Hebdige, 1979) shifted the discussion from an examination of the patterns across a variety of deviant subcultures to a societal perspective on the ongoing class struggle in Great Britain and the stylistic responses of youth. Although some scholars have continued to apply the more general definition of subculture in their work on youth subcultures (e.g., Hunt, 2008, 2010; Latysheva, 2011), and especially in examinations of subcultures not associated exclusively with youth (Lieske, 2004; Spencer, 1997), after the introduction of the notion of youth subcultures as ‘cultures of resistance,’ this more specified definition has dominated the subculture literature and much of the critique of the notion of subculture since then is a response to this more specific usage (e.g., Crosset and Beal, 1997; Miles, 2000; Straw, 1999). Muggleton and Weinzierl (2003), for example, question the validity of this approach in a postmodern world, and champion “a more pragmatic approach compared to the romanticism of the CCCS” (p. 4). Short of a direct critique, others have suggested moving beyond this narrow scope, such as Fincham (2007), who champions the aspect of ‘enjoyment,’ as one often overlooked as an attraction to membership in a subculture. Interestingly enough, Simon Frith (2004), a major contributor to this literature on British youth subculture, recently observed that what is being called ‘postsubcultural theory’ (Bennett and Kahn-Harris, 2004; Muggleton and Weinzierl, 2003) does not focus on youth at all. So, despite all the controversy, it appears that the usage of the concept of ‘subculture’ may have come full circle and is now being used in the same two ways Yinger noted were common in 1960, in a more general sense but sometimes also in what is now identified as a Birmingham School approach incorporating a notion of resistance or conflict. Albeit the approach to subculture inspired by the Birmingham School seems to have run its course, now much more is known about youth subculture, not just in Britain, but globally (e.g., Baron, 1989; Jasper, 2004; Johnston and Snow, 1998; Maira, 1999; Mitchell, 2003; Platek, 1990). Furthermore, the debates over the validity and utility of the concept of subculture have led to the application and sometimes development of related concepts that have shed light on other aspects of social groups that could have been studied using a subcultural theoretical lens. So, although as Muggleton and Weinzierl (2003: p. 5) observe, “a new, dominant paradigm has yet to develop,” a plethora of concepts have been proposed to replace or supplement the old one. Although most of the critiques of the concept of subculture have been in response to attempts to apply it to study a specific type of social group that has characteristics not revealed by its application, the tendency of most authors seems to be to try to propose a definition of subculture or an alternative concept that will be consistently useful to apply across social groups. Here we propose a different approach, which is to embrace the use of a variety of concepts, including subculture, to study the component social groupings of a larger one and thereby to increase what is known about them.
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To elaborate on this proposal, it is useful to understand subculture and its related concepts as what Vaihinger (1925) called ‘neglective fictions.’ Although fictions are devoid of reality, they are not devoid of utility. According to Vaihinger, ‘fictions’ have been used to advance scientific understanding of phenomena, much like hypothesis testing has. We are suggesting here that concepts such as ‘subculture,’ ‘contraculture,’ and others to be discussed in this article be applied to social groupings, much as Adam Smith (1776/1976) wrote about human behavior ‘as if’ it were all egoistic. He deliberately substituted a fraction of reality, what Vaihinger called a ‘neglective fiction,’ for the total range of possible explanations and facts. Without this substitution, Smith would have been unable to construct an ordered interpretation of the political economy. Similarly, without using neglective fictions such as subculture, contraculture, culture of resistance, lifestyle, tribe, scene, subworld, or subsociety as lenses, the understanding of the role of these groupings in shaping identity and society would not be as great. We are suggesting that researchers could use and have used various concepts related to subculture either independently or in sequence as lenses to study subgroups of a larger culture or society as Simmel (1986/1907) would apply various forms (i.e., various neglective fictions) to the same content (Adams, 2010; Kaern, 1983). Through this process, which is already ongoing though the researchers using this approach might not associate it with Vaihinger’s scientific fictions, not only will we learn more about the social groupings under scrutiny, we will also reach greater understanding of the utility and patterns of relevance of the theoretical concepts themselves. In keeping with this perspective on subculture and related concepts as neglective fictions, many of the related concepts just mentioned have been developed in response to attempts to understand specific social groupings by first using subculture as a lens and finding it lacking for some theoretical or substantive reason. For example, Crosset and Beal (1997) propose the use of the concept ‘subworld’ in addition to the concept ‘subculture.’ Building on Unruh’s (1983) definition of social worlds “as large and highly permeable, amorphous and spatially transcendent forms of social organization made up of people sharing common interests and sharing common channels of communication,” they note that “[t]he concept of ‘social world’ pushes the researchers’ gaze in a slightly different direction than does ‘subculture’” (p. 81). Unlike analyzing sports as subculture, analyzing it as a social world allows the discovery of subworlds within social worlds, and at least unlike analyzing sports from a CCCS perspective, it “frees the researcher from looking for signs of cultural resistance in every sporting practice.” Similarly, although the concept of ‘scene’ is not a new one (Irwin, 1977) and originally described expressive, voluntary, public gatherings that take place in urban locations, Straw (1999: p. 373) and others have recently introduced the term scene in part to replace older conceptions of music communities as having relatively permanent membership focused on specific musical idioms. Straw’s reconceptualization of ‘scene’ casts it as a space in which a range of musical activities coexist and cross-fertilization and change take place. Miles (2000) provided a third example of a concept introduced in order to understand a specific phenomenon when he argued that the application of the term ‘subculture’ to heavy drug users
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makes sense, but suggested ‘lifestyle’ as a more useful term when researching people whose drug use is intermittent. Rather than suggesting ‘subculture’ be replaced with other concepts because of the inadequacy of subculture to highlight the important features of a specific social grouping, sometimes theorists have recommended it be replaced by other concepts in response to widespread social changes such as globalization and multiculturalism. Like Miles (2000), Chaney (2004) also suggests the use of the term ‘lifestyle’ might be more useful in the contemporary context but for very different reasons. He argued that the idea of a multicultural world has rendered the distinction between dominant and subcultural norms moot and therefore the notion of a dominant culture as a context for subcultures archaic. Furthermore, he (Chaney, 2004) argued that the widespread availability of a greater variety of cultural styles and identities suggests the notion of subculture with that of lifestyles as the basis for the negotiation of identity, community, affiliation, and difference. Implicitly he argues that subcultures no longer exist. More recently, the definition of subculture is being scrutinized for its usefulness in the context of improved communications and transportation technology (Bennett, 2004). The Chicago School studies of subcultures such as taxi dancers (Cressey, 1932) and gangs (Thrasher, 1927) were situated in local contexts and the need for close proximity and face-to-face interaction were assumed to provide a foundation for their development, persistence, and stability. Although it is the advent of the Internet that has led subculture scholars to challenge these assumptions, other earlier improvements in communications and transportation technology such as the postal system, telegraph, telephone, steam ships, locomotives, and automobile began changing the way subcultures developed and persisted much earlier (Adams, 1998). Nonetheless, the Birmingham School’s examination of punks in the United Kingdom in the 1970s continued the Chicago tradition of focusing on subcultures in the local context, and much of the work accomplished by scholars elsewhere but working within these traditions often did the same. In this regard, the subculture literature has lagged behind the community literature in which the discussion of nonterritorial communities had already begun in the 1960s (Webber, 1963; Effrat, 1974) and has continued since (Adams, 1998; Wellman, 1999). As a result, scholars who have studied migrating groups or intermittently territorial groups such as the New Age Travellers (Frediani, 1998), some music fans (Gardner, 2004), or National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing spectators (Wright, 2002) have sometimes implicitly if not explicitly used ‘community’ as a conceptual lens rather than ‘subculture.’ For example, in her study of Deadheads, the fans of the Unites States rock group the Grateful Dead, Adams originally intended to use ‘subculture’ as a conceptual lens (Adams, 1990), but subsequently shifted to using the concept of ‘community’ for this purpose in part because it allowed a focus on the development and continuity of identity and solidarity across time and space (Adams et al., 2014). Although the members of such communities do not share a permanent territory, like members of local subcultures and traditional communities, they are bound by affect, customs, and common interests (Nels, A. and Council of Social Agencies of Chicago,
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1923; Tönnies, 1963/1887). Also like local subcultures and traditional communities, these intermittently territorial communities sometimes serve the functions of production, distribution, and consumption; socialization; social control; social participation; and mutual support (Humphreys, 1970; Warren, 1978). In contrast to Chaney’s (2004) position that the notion of subculture is archaic in a multicultural world, it could be argued that with the advent of the Internet and the related development of virtual media of various forms, it is even easier for subcultures to transcend space and time and for true global subcultures to exist. As one celebrates the 25th anniversary of the World Wide Web, it seems particularly appropriate to reflect on its impact on culture. As early as 1994, Rheingold discussed the ‘virtual community’ and connectivity within it. Shortly thereafter, Healy (1997) described it as a ‘loose collection’ or ‘ecosystem’ of subcultures (p. 65). Subsequently, scholars in both the community (Smith and Kolluck, 1999) and subculture traditions (Bennett, 1999) began considering how the Internet challenged the relevance of concepts developed in an earlier time period. The literature on migrating or intermittently territorial communities is somewhat useful here, because like the literature on online subcultures, it does not assume permanent shared territory and once the Internet developed these communities also manifested themselves online. Although as Bennett (2004) astutely observed, subcultural studies often overlook the continuities between online and offline interactions, not all virtual communities manifest themselves locally. The development of the Internet has thus exacerbated concerns of postmodernists such as unstable identities (Lash and Urry, 1987, 1994) and the lack of emotional and moral depth of communities based solely on common interests (Bauman, 1992). Taken together, these concerns beg the current question of whether this technology detracts from the development of subcultures that provide the context for stable identities and feelings of solidarity with a subculture of like-minded people or leads to shifting identities and weak commitments to multiple subcultures. This question is particularly salient in light of the emergence of ‘one device’ portable technology and the ability of people to remain ‘plugged in’ constantly and to manage activity in multiple subcultures or communities at one time. On the one hand, simultaneous ties to multiple communities can be hypothesized to weaken the individual connection to a subculture, thereby making it more likely that individual identities will shift over time and weaken subcultural solidarity. On the other hand, even before the advent to of the Internet, Fine and Kleinman (1979: p. 12) noted that multiple group memberships promote cultural diffusion and the spread of subcultures, and more recently Thornton (1996) has argued that media, including the Internet, are integral to the formation of subcultures, playing a significant role in both their origin as well as prolonging their life cycle. McArthur’s study of the virtual subculture of ‘geeks’ supports Thornton’s observation as it would have been very difficult for his participants to meet in person as they were from many nations including The Philippines, England, Argentina, and Czech Republic (McArthur, 2009). Future scholarship will hopefully reveal the waxing or waning of the significance of subcultures in a global society.
Methodology Subculture researchers have relied mainly on ethnographic methods, as qualitative approaches afford insight into valuable details difficult to capture with a broader lens. Due to previous conceptions of subculture as local and therefore convenient (both in the traditions of the Chicago and Birmingham Schools) and the tendency of researchers to study deviant subcultures that are difficult to enter, much of the research on subcultures has specifically involved participant observation. Nonetheless, as many researchers, including Fine and Kleinman (1979), acknowledged years ago, the narrowness of such methods embodies their own limitations. For example, a case study of one gang could not claim representation of all gangs in a given population or yield any definite findings regarding the degree of interrelatedness between them. Some subculture researchers have thus instead conducted surveys of samples of general populations (e.g., King, 2007; Latysheva, 2011), but this method can be ineffective, especially if the interviewer is not identified with the subculture or when the interviewer’s values differ from the subculture’s. Returning to the aforementioned limitations of a finer lens, “while case studies provide valuable information about the culture, it is unclear to what extent they provide evidence of the culture as a population segment” (Fine and Kleinman, 1979: p. 4). Yet, the broader study of general populations also yields difficulty, particularly in identifying subcultural groups (King, 2007). Given that in order to demonstrate a subculture’s existence, a subpopulation’s relative agreement on a set of attitudes, behaviors, or values must be identified, the researcher must necessarily show that communication occurs within that subpopulation and that its members identify as a group. For this reason, even in the challenging case of studying migrating or intermittently territorial subcultures, researchers examining them have tended to supplement any survey or documentary research with their observations (e.g., Hunt, 2008, 2010; Riley, 1988). The globalization of culture and the introduction of the Internet and related technologies have not only challenged theoretical conceptions of subculture, but have also led to changes in how they are studied. As exemplified by McArthur (2009) in his study of ‘geeks,’ the Internet allows new formats for data to be gathered on subcultures, at the same time that it allows for new forms of expressing subcultural identity, as well as influencing those identities themselves. The future of subculture analysis may benefit from the accessibility of information and even the resurfacing of past information and data previously obscured by data security policies (although individuals participating in subcultures through different mediums in the past may never have realized that information would one day be made available electronically and via search engines). The criticism that studies are focused on subcultures at one point in time can now be addressed by expanding the search backward and more broadly to include an everincreasing amount of information available online. The Internet also makes it possible to study distant subcultures remotely. Finally, videos and multimedia files produced by other researchers are shared in the advent of a very open attitude toward information sharing.
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Although the advent of the Internet facilitates research on subcultures, it also complicates it. Despite the growth of the Internet, it is not equally accessible to all populations. The ‘digital divide’ represents the absence or limitation of access to the Internet for certain people or groups based on affordability, knowledge, or motivation. Furthermore, even in the hypothetical scenario that all potentially desired participants would have similar access to and know-how regarding these technological means, self-selection would remain an issue. Nonetheless, the increased availability of information will certainly aid in research on subcultures that exist in a variety of modes and will address some of the previously articulated, but nonetheless still valid, challenges of qualitative research identified by Fine and Kleinman (1979): the Internet makes it possible to discover linkages among groups, track the transmission and forms of information and exchanges of communication, and identify kinds of information that is transmitted. Furthermore, given the progression of technology to allow for more remote and anonymous participation in a subculture, many studies themselves may in turn become focused purely on online cultures (King, 2007). While ethnography remains an important method for studying subculture, the existence of the Internet may lead to the realization of a new form of interdisciplinary research, combining ethnography with methods such as textual analysis (Pollex, 1997), an approach some have called ‘postmodern ethnography’ (Tyler, 1986). Such a new method would have to be focused on mining data and organizing it in such a way that large numbers of disparate pieces can be integrated and interpreted in meaningful ways. The Internet spreads information quickly and retains it forever, so future subcultural analysts will need to develop methods for sampling this vast array of information and deciding how valid it is. As the information age continues to unfold, the challenges and benefits the Internet poses to theorists and researchers will no doubt lead to substantial changes in how subculture is understood and studied.
See also: Community Sociology; Community Studies: Anthropological; Community and Society: History of the Concepts; Counterculture: 1960s and Beyond; Counterculture: The Classical View; Cultural Sociology, History of; Gay, Lesbian, and Bisexual Youth; Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Trans-sexual Butch-Femme Subcultures; Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer: Bear and Leather Subcultures; Popular Culture; Popular Sexual Cultures in Western Europe (1930s to the Present); Roma People; Youth Culture, Anthropology of; Youth Culture, Sociology of; Youth Movements; Youth, Geography of; Youth, Music, and Peace Building.
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Relevant Websites https://www.youtube.com/ – Cantelo, Erin (series creator), 2013. Subcultures – a documentary series spotlighting niche communities you might want to be part of. From “Roller Derby Girls” to “Guerilla Gardeners”. http://www.romadecade.org/ – Decade in Brief, 2012. Decade of Roma Inclusion Secretariat Foundation. http://designtaxi.com – A Guide To Recognizing 21st Century Subcultural Tribes. http://www.theguardian.com/ – A Journey through London Subculture: 1980s to Now, 2013.