For the term in biology, see subculture (biology). In Biology, a subculture is either a Microbiological culture made by transferring Microorganisms from a previous culture to a fresh Growth medium

For the song by New Order, see Sub-culture (song). " Sub-culture " is the name of a single released in November 1985 by New Order.

In sociology, anthropology and cultural studies, a subculture is a group of people with a culture (whether distinct or hidden) which differentiates them from the larger culture to which they belong. Sociology (from Latin: socius "companion" and the suffix -ology "the study of" from Greek λόγος lógos "knowledge" Anthropology (/ˌænθɹəˈpɒlədʒi/ from Greek grc ἄνθρωπος anthrōpos, "human" -λογία -logia) is the study of Cultural studies is an academic discipline which combines Political economy, Communication, Sociology, Social theory, Literary theory Culture (from the Latin cultura stemming from colere, meaning "to cultivate" generally refers to patterns of human activity and the symbolic If a particular subculture is characterized by a systematic opposition to the dominant culture, it may be described as a counterculture. Counterculture (also " counter-culture " is a sociological term used to describe the values and norms of behavior of a Cultural group, or As Ken Gelder notes, subcultures are social, with their own shared conventions, values and rituals, but they can also seem 'immersed' or self-absorbed - another feature that distinguishes them from countercultures. He identifies six key ways in which subcultures can be understood: 1. through their often negative relations to work (as 'idle', 'parasitic', at play or at leisure, etc. ); 2. through their negative or ambivalent relation to class (since subcultures are not 'class-conscious' and don't conform to traditional class definitions); 3. through their association with territory (the 'street', the 'hood, the club, etc. ), rather than property; 4. through their movement out of the home and into non-domestic forms of belonging (i. e. social groups other than the family); 5. through their stylistic ties to excess and exaggeration (with some exceptions); 6. through their refusal of the banalities of ordinary life and massification. ^[1]

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. David Riesman (born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, September 22, 1909; died in Binghamton New York, May 10, 2002 A majority, also known as a simple majority in the US, is a Subset of a group that is more than half of the entire group Commerce is a division of trade or production which deals with the exchange of goods and services from producer to final consumer . . and interpreted it in accordance with subversive values". A personal and cultural value is a Relative ethic value, an assumption upon which implementation can be extrapolated ^[2] Sarah Thornton, drawing on Pierre Bourdieu, has 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. Sarah Thornton is a Writer, Ethnographer, and Sociologist of Culture. ^[3]

Contents 1 Identifying subcultures 2 Subcultures' relationships with mainstream culture 3 Punk subculture 4 Urban tribes 5 Footnotes 6 References 7 See also 8 External links

Identifying subcultures

Subcultures can be distinctive because of the age, race, ethnicity, class, location, and/or gender of the members. The qualities that determine a subculture as distinct may be linguistic, aesthetic, religious, political, sexual, geographical, or a combination of factors. Members of a subculture often signal their membership through a distinctive and symbolic use of style, which includes fashions, mannerisms, and argot. Fashion refers to styles of dress (but can also include cuisine literature art architecture and general comportment that are popular in a culture at any given time Argot ( French, Spanish and Catalan for " Slang " is a Secret language used by various groups—including but not limited ^[4] They also live out particular relations to places: Ken Gelder talks about 'subcultural geographies' along these lines.

The study of subcultures often consists of the study of symbolism attached to clothing, music and other visible affectations by members of subcultures, and also the ways in which these same symbols are interpreted by members of the dominant culture. Clothing (also called clothes, accoutrements, accouterments, or habiliments) protects the Human body from extreme Weather Music is an Art form in which the medium is Sound organized in Time. Subcultures have been chronicled by others for a long time, documented, analysed, classified, rationalised, monitored, scrutinised. In some cases - think of homeless subcultures or criminal gangs or skateboarders - subcultures have been legislated against, their activities regulated or curtailed. But subcultures also talk about themselves, constantly. It is helpful to think about subcultural narratives, told either by subcultures or about them by others. Subcultural narratives - whether one approves or disapproves, what one assumes about a subculture, the tone of one's engagement with a subculture - are a matter of position-taking. There are no neutral accounts of subcultures.

Subcultures' relationships with mainstream culture

It may be difficult to identify certain subcultures because their style (particularly clothing and music) may be adopted by mass culture for commercial purposes. Businesses often seek to capitalize on the subversive allure of subcultures in search of cool, which remains valuable in the selling of any product. Cool is an Aesthetic of attitude behavior comportment appearance style and Zeitgeist. This process of cultural appropriation may often result in the death or evolution of the subculture, as its members adopt new styles that appear alien to mainstream society. Cultural appropriation is the adoption of some specific elements of one culture by a different cultural group This process provides a constant stream of styles which may be commercially adopted.

Music-based subcultures are particularly vulnerable to this process, and so what may be considered a subculture at one stage in its history — such as jazz, goth, punk, hip hop and rave cultures — may represent mainstream taste within a short period of time. Jazz is an American Musical art form which originated in the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States The goth subculture is a contemporary Subculture found in many countries The punk subculture is based around Punk rock. It emerged from the larger Rock music scene in the mid-to-late-1970s in the United Kingdom, the United Hip hop is a Subculture, which is said to have begun with the work of DJ Kool Herc, Grandmaster Flash & the Furious Five, and Afrika Bambaattaa A rave (or rave party) is a term in use since the 1980s to describe Dance Parties (often all-night events Some subcultures reject or modify the importance of style, stressing membership through the adoption of an ideology which may be much more resistant to commercial exploitation. An ideology is a set of beliefs aims and Ideas especially in politics

Punk subculture

The punk subculture's distinctive (and initially shocking) style of clothing was adopted by mass-market fashion companies once the subculture became a media interest. According to Dick Hebdige, subcultural styles are distinguished from mainstream styles by being intentionally fabricated. Dick Hebdige (born 1951 is an expatriate British media theorist and Sociologist, most commonly associated with the study of Subcultures and its resistance He argues that the punk subculture shares 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. The punk subculture is based around Punk rock. It emerged from the larger Rock music scene in the mid-to-late-1970s in the United Kingdom, the United For other meanings see Dada (disambiguation DaDa is a Concept album by Alice Cooper, released Surrealism is a cultural movement that began in the early-1920s and is best known for the visual artworks and writings of the group members . . Objects borrowed from the most sordid of contexts found a place in punks' ensembles; lavatory chains were draped in graceful arcs across chests in plastic bin liners. 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. ^[5]

Urban tribes

In 1985, French sociologist Michel Maffesoli coined the term urban tribe, and it gained widespread use after the publication of his Le temps des tribus: le déclin de l'individualisme dans les sociétés postmodernes (1988). ^[6] Eight years later, this book was published in the United Kingdom as The Time of the Tribes: The Decline of Individualism in Mass Society. The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom, the UK or Britain,is a Sovereign state located ^[7]

According to Maffesoli, urban tribes are microgroups of people who share common interests in metropolitan areas. The members of these relatively small groups tend to have similar worldviews, dress styles and behavioral patterns. Their social interactions are largely informal and emotionally-laden, different than late capitalism's corporate-bourgeoisie cultures, based on dispassionate logic. Social interaction is a dynamic changing sequence of Social actions between individuals (or groups who modify their actions and reactions according to the actions by their A formality is an established procedure or set of specific behaviors and utterances conceptually similar to a Ritual although typically secular and less involved In his work Late Capitalism Ernest Mandel argues for three periods in the development of Capitalism. A corporation is a separate legal entity usually used to conduct business Maffesoli claims that punks are a typical example of an "urban tribe"^[8]. The punk subculture is based around Punk rock. It emerged from the larger Rock music scene in the mid-to-late-1970s in the United Kingdom, the United

Five years after the first English translation of Le temps des tribus, writer Ethan Watters claims to have coined the same neologism in a New York Times Magazine article. A neologism (from Greek neo = "new" + logos = "word" is a word that although devised relatively recently in a specific time period has been The New York Times Magazine is a supplement to the Sunday The New York Times newspaper This was later expanded upon the idea in his book Urban Tribes: A Generation Redefines Friendship, Family, and Commitment. According Watters, urban tribes are groups of never-married's between the ages of 25 and 45 who gather in common-interest groups and enjoy an urban lifestyle, which offers an alternative to traditional family structures^[9]. NOTICE TO WOULD-BE ROMEOS ************** The term lifestyle was originally coined by Austrian psychologist Alfred Adler in 1929 Family denotes a group of People affiliated by consanguinity affinity or co-residence

Footnotes

References

• Cante, Richard C. (March 2008). Gay Men and the Forms of Contemporary US Culture. London: Ashgate Publishing. ISBN 0 7546 7230 1.  
• Gelder, Ken (2007). Subcultures: Cultural Histories and Social Practice (Routledge, March 2007; softcover ISBN 0-415-37952-0)
• Hebdige, Dick (1979). Subculture: The Meaning of Style (Routledge, March 10, 1981; softcover ISBN 0-415-03949-5). Cited in Negus, Keith (1996). Popular Music in Theory: An Introduction. Wesleyan University Press. ISBN 0-8195-6310-2.
• Huq, Rupa (2006) 'Beyond subculture' (Routledge, 2006; softcover ISBN 0-415-27815-5. Hardcover ISBN 0-415-27814-7)
• Maffesoli, Michel (1996). The Time of the Tribes: The Decline of Individualism in Mass Society. (London: Sage Publications. ISBN-10: 080398474X)
• McKay, George (1996) Senseless Acts of Beauty: Cultures of Resistance since the Sixties. (London: Verso. ISBN 1-85984-028-0. )
• McKay, George (2005) Circular Breathing: The Cultural Politics of Jazz in Britain. Durham NC: Duke University Press. ISBN 0-8223-3573-5.
• Riesman, David (1950). David Riesman (born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, September 22, 1909; died in Binghamton New York, May 10, 2002 "Listening to popular music", American Quarterly, 2, p. 359-71. Cited in Middleton, Richard (1990/2002). Richard Middleton FBA is Professor of Music at Newcastle University in Newcastle upon Tyne. Studying Popular Music, p. 155. Philadelphia: Open University Press. ISBN 0-335-15275-9.
• Thornton, Sarah (1995). Club Cultures: Music, Media, and Subcultural Capital. Cambridge: Polity Press. Cited in Negus, Keith (1996). Popular Music in Theory: An Introduction. Wesleyan University Press. ISBN 0-8195-6310-2.
• Watters, Ethan (2003). Urban Tribes: A Generation Redefines Friendship, Family, and Commitment. ISBN 1-58234-264-4.

See also

• Art world
• Adolescence
• Counterculture
• Folk culture
• History of subcultures in the 20th century
• Intercultural competence
• Lifestyle
• List of subcultures
• List of youth subcultures
• Popular culture
• Underclass
• Urban culture
• Urban sociology
• Youth subculture

External links

• http://www.intcul.tohoku.ac.jp/~holden/MediatedSociety/Readings/2003_04/Appadurai.html - Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Economy
• http://depts.washington.edu/chid/intersections.php?article=1994e - "Punk and the Aesthetics of American Dystopia. The art world is the " world " comprised of all the people involved in the production commission preservation promotion criticism, and sale of Art Counterculture (also " counter-culture " is a sociological term used to describe the values and norms of behavior of a Cultural group, or Folk culture refers to the localized Lifestyle of a Culture. It is usually handed down through Oral tradition, relates to a sense of Community 1900-World War I In the early part of the 20th century subcultures were mostly informal groupings of like-minded individuals Intercultural competence is the ability of successful Communication with people of other Cultures This ability can exist in someone at a young age or may be developed The term lifestyle was originally coined by Austrian psychologist Alfred Adler in 1929 This is a list of Subcultures A Anarcho-punk B BDSM Beat Generation, see Popular culture (or pop culture) is the Culture — patterns of human activity and the symbolic structures that give such activities significance and importance — The contemporary concept of the underclass is a sanitized term for what was known in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries as the undeserving poor and may have been coined by American sociologist Urban culture is the Culture of cities. Cities all over the world past and present have behaviors and cultural elements that separate them from otherwise comparable Urban sociology is the sociological study of social life and human interaction in Metropolitan areas It is a normative discipline of sociology seeking to study the A youth subculture is a Youth -based Subculture with distinct styles behaviours and interests "
• http://webfiles.uci.edu/mkaminsk/www/book.html - Games Prisoners Play
• What are Urban Tribes? on http://www.urbantribes.net/

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